THE MAN OF STEEL Pre Release Thread - Page 3

I don't actually care if it's dark and edgy, I just want it to be good.

 

... I have no expectation of that, though.

Well, dark and edgy is kind of antithetical the Superman, so if it goes in hard for that its going to miss the mark in a big way.

 

Jor-El?

I was thinking more Swamp Thing myself.

Speaking of Jor-El, hopefully Russell Crowe will pronounce Krypton properly. It annoyed me how Brando kept referring to Superman's home planet as CRIPTIN.

 

They paid him like a truckload of money for one scene. He could have at least got the name of his character's home planet right.

 

And when they bring back Lex, it would be nice to hear his surname pronounced "Luthor" for once, instead of "Luther" like in past Superman movies.

 

The people making these movies really ought to take their cues from the DC Animated Universe people more, not just with pronunciation, but in general.

 

I understand them not going with the "Batman: The Animated Series" pronunciation of RAYSH Al Ghul, though. That just sounds goofy. Excessive fanboy nitpicking complete. Carry on, gentlemen.

I was thinking:

If MOS is anywhere as awful/amazing/trippy/beautiful as Dune or Labyrinth, I will be overjoyed.

Here, here! That WOULD be majestic.

 

Are you referring to that "darker is better" trend in superhero films that actually doesn't exist except in the minds of fanboys post THE DARK KNIGHT?

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The animated series notwithstanding, it's always annoyed me how several of the DC Comics editors always insist on using the whole "RAYSH al Ghul" pronunciation (like during the Batman Begins DVD interviews), when it's not necessarily spoken that way in real life.

 

A couple years back during a family get-together, Begins was playing on cable, and my cousin and his wife (who is French, of North African/Muslim heritage) were watching, when I turned and asked her to clarify the whole "Ra's al Ghul" pronunciation-thing for me once and for all. Apparently, "Raysh" is actually referring to the Hebrew version of the letter R, "Resh," which means "head" or "chief." The Arabic contrast to Resh is "Ra," and it too means "head."

However, in Arabic, you'd actually pronounce "Ra's" like "Raw-uhss."

Ra's = Head
al = of the (or simply "the")
Ghul = Demon/Ghoul

Ra's al Ghul = "The Demon's Head," or "Head of the Demon."

 

(Which all fanboys obviously know at this point.)

Denny O'Neil apparently researched how to pronounce "Ra's al Ghul," but for whatever reason, he chose to use "Resh" rather than "Ra's," and that ended up giving the character an Arabic/Hebrew hybrid of a name. I'm not sure what the Hebrew word for "demon" is, so I can't say whether or not you'd pronounce the "al Ghul" part the same way.

Technically, you can use either version, but to me personally, it comes across really awkward (and fucking pretentious as hell) for Ra's to be pronounced "Resh/Raysh," and I tend to always use the proper Arabic pronunciation (being actually correct, despite superficially sounding like a "dumb Amuhrican" mangling), as it sounds much smoother and fitting for that type of character. Also, my cousin mentioned that "Raysh" sounds like total gibberish when speaking Arabic.

I've said before how anyone with half a brain would take all the cues from All-Star Superman in doing this, right?
 

Well, I'll say it again. They should have taken all the cues from All-Star Superman in order to do him right. I mean, good grief. That's just obvious. Why didn't they do that.

 

Whatever the degree to which this is a trend, the producers of this movie have definitely indicated they want to make this "dark" and "edgy". I remember someone (it might have been one of the actors, so maybe it's to be taken with even more salt than usual) said something about how they didn't want it to be about how Superman is this big boy scout who's always helping people. Because that's obviously not what you want in a Superman movie, right?

 

I also remember the WB execs saying they were going to make all their comic book movies dark and edgy post-TDK, which may have derailed a Captain Marvel movie at the time. But Green Lantern wasn't particularly dark, so who knows.

Grant Morrison apparently pitched a movie version of A.S.S. (giggle) to Warner Brothers and they wanted no part of it. KInd of sucks since it's basically the best Superman story ever, not to mention one of the best superhero stories period, but realistically I don't think it ever could have been adapted to film without costing 800 million dollars and being like 5 hours long. They should have just hired Morrison to write a new Superman story in the style of All Star if they were smart...but alas.

Well, they made the DTDVD adaptation of the story, but I've heard nothing good about it.

 

It wasn't bad, but didn't have the pizazz of the comic, just seemed off and cut alot of the best parts which would have made it amazing instead of being rather mediocre. Really hard to adapt honestly especially with how the DC animated movies not being Batman stories have been. It's like unless it's not about The Dark Knight they aren't willing to be very experimental at all which shows apart from Justice League: New Frontier all the non Batman solo movies have been pretty poor.

 

Also I want to say overall I'm looking forward to Man of Steel since i feel an interesting can be made of Superman it just will take effort. I mean the 1978 movie came close to being amazing just lacked a few things and was a little too cheesy and the 1990's animated series was really good especially the Lex Luthor vs Superman stuff so I feel a story of Superman can be good, just still really worried with it being directed by Snyder mostly because of Watchmen and Sucker Punch, but hopefully Nolan and WB has reigned him in to tell a compelling visual awesome movie.

I think it really depends on how the villains are handled because I feel Superman is only as good as his supporting cast. The animated show was great since all the villains were realistic threats and were done very well, but alot of times in the comics and in TV/movie his threats are not done very well and play into the fact he's a cheesy boy scout. I feel they need to humanize the character more and allow for him to be more vulnerable psychically and emotional because there are alot of times he comes off as a robotic jerk. Also I might be in the minority but I hope they set up the next movie as the main bad guy being Luthor causing a lot of the problems for Metropolis. They need to do this because Luthor is his main antagonist and one of the figures that makes him who he is, The Joker to his Batman, if they do this right it could be as good as Dark Knight. Luthor done right could be awesome and reinforce the superman character being the pure good guy and luthor being the foil of greed, jealousy and how absolute power corrupts, I'd probably have Metallo as the guy he battles in the next movie though, and shows how he uses people making the Luthor character stronger in terms of intelligence and being a figure of temptation and having cool fight scenes as well.

We've had enough dark Superman, he smells of whiskey and comes home after the kids are asleep yelling abuse at Lois.

 

Dark Superman makes the children cry.

 

 

"We've had enough dark Superman, he smells of whiskey"

 

Not until we've seen Super Projectile Vomiting we haven't, good sir!

 

There's rich cheesy gold still to be mined in those hills. No doubt we'll see Red Kryptonite turn up sooner rather than later if this reboot takes. But rather than Vanilla Dark Supes I'd like to see it split Supes into the Odd Couple version of himself. The Grouchy Slob/Drunk and the Prissy Neatfreak/Nag. The dirty fighter vs the repressed guy who unleashes a single mighty Falcon Punch when he's provoked that one time too many.

Dad?

Jor El's armor looks far too warlike to be Kryptonian, and further, it looks really terrible. Far too over designed, unless that somehow looks better on film. Seems like it should have been a no brainer to have him in a crystal suit.

I'm ok with a dark Superman though. It's a valid interpretation of the character.

 

He's the lone survivor of his home planet, parents dead, and he has to grow up working on a farm. Makes sense.

 

Sorry Art, just cause ya Dad lived in a phone booth doesn't make him Superman.

Lived in a phone booth?! He told us that he worked for the phone company:(

 

I wouldn't say it doesn't exist.  The Spider-Man reboot is clearly going for a darker tone.  Same with Superman.  Both filmmaking teams have admitted Nolan's more serious bat films were an influence handed down by the studio.

There's a difference that needs to be learned that "serious" doesn't mean "darker."

 

Thank you.

 

Since THE DARK KNIGHT there have been exactly zero superhero films that struck the same dark tone as that film. Yet fanboys have been whining for 4 years that TDK has instigated this fictional trend. This is a TOTAL FALLACY.

 

As for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, I haven't seen it, but last time I checked it has a talking Lizard-man as the villain. Unless Nolan threw in Killer Croc when I wasn't looking, this disqualifies it as dark and serious ala the Nolan Batman films.

I hope they don't go with a desaturated color palette for the movie.  So sick of that.

Yeah, I think they were just marketing it more like a Nolan Batman film and that's about where it stops. Batman Returns is goofy, yet it's also the darkest Batman film to date.

 

I haven't been saying that, and I think those that are were talking about WB's decision to give Superman the Dark Knight treatment so to speak.  Same with Spider-Man.  I remember them specifically citing it, so we're not making this up.  And I'm certainly not whining about it, but I think those that were do have a point.  The studios admitted they want to slather superhero flicks with that brush.  Not Marvel really but they're not the only one making superhero flicks.

regardless of tone, and whether you like his style or not, the one thing for certain is that Snyder is going to give us action that a Superman movie deserves

 

I'm not pointing to you as an example. But I've had to listen to this crap for the last 4 years and frankly it's driving me bonkers. I think at one point the WB said something about taking a more "grounded, real-world approach" to Superman and since then it's been a torrent of whining about how DON'T MAKE EVERYTHING DARK LIKE NOLAN'S BATMAN!!!!! And no matter how many light and colorful superhero movies come out, the fanboys keep crying about this literally non-existent "trend". Christ, even the WB's own GREEN LANTERN was all rainbows and unicorns and soft fuzzies. There is no dark, grim and gritty superhero movie trend. It's like Satanic cults in the 70's and WMD's in Iraq: IT SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST.

 

There's the Nolan Batman films and there's everything else. People need to get the fuck over it.

In people's defense, someone at WB did literally say they were going approach Superman in a "darker," "grittier" angle, following on with something about how Nolan showed superhero movies could now be "mature." Or something like that.

Sure. But one out of context quote from some executive shouldn't be seen as a "trend". And any worries that Snyder's Superman was going to be too dark and real world should have disappeared with the first leaked photos of Henry Cavill in that shiny blue boner-suit.

I have a feeling we're already giving Man of Steel too much credit.  If it's more then a snyderfied remake of Superman 2 (with choice bits of one stuck in), I'll be shocked.

 

And the color palette will be highly desaturated, and I will hate that.

 

Its essentially a retread of Superman and Superman II and elements from J.J. Abrams' Flyby.

As long as it makes Superman relevant again, I'm all for it.

 

Which elements of Flyby?

 

 

 

 

We all hope, but what are the odds?

 

I believe a man can fly.

 

I believe we'll always return to the mythic template of gods that walk among men.

 

I believe in the Last Son of Krypton.

Unfortunately I do no believe as strongly in Zack Snyder and David Goyer.

"You no believe? Why you no believe? Solomon Grundy!!!"

 

I believe in Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and the power Christopher has been given by Warner Brothers.

Nolan's name is about the most significant thing he's loaned to this film, he's basically said as much.

See, I do believe in that. Which is why I am optimistic. Cautiously, but optimistic nontheless.

 

With elements coming into play like Hans Zimmer being brought on board and the fact Nolan doesn't actually seem to already have a post Batman film lined up yet, I get the feeling he has more of a guiding hand with this than he's publically letting on. Im sure he's giving Snyder his due and creative breathing room, but I get the feeling this is a lot more than a just ceremonial position to appease Time/Warner shareholders.

"Nolan" is one letter & a word away from being "Golan/Globus".

 

That's all I have to add to this conversation.

 

But to me,

 

Coming from you,

 

Nolan is a four letter word.

He's been working on TDKR the entire time that Snyder has been on MoS. At best he's made a handful of phone calls and taken a meeting or two. Snyder even brought in his 300 screenwriter to punch up the script. I guarantee his mark on the film will be marginal, certainly moreso than Snyder and Goyer's mark. Nolan is a brand now, that's why his name is there, as a favor to the WB.

Well I guess we'll have to wait and see JJ.

I can't be the only one wondering how much slow mo Snyder is gonna sneak into the film.