Zach Snyder planned for Bruce and Lois to have a son in his planned JL sequel

[HsssH]

I'm really interested in timeline, what came first, bat baby or unrequited love?

[manwhohaseverything]

I'm really interested in timeline, what came first, bat baby or unrequited love?

That's a given.Batbaby was trashed by the studio.Then snyder and co went with the unrequited love angle.I firmly believe snyder wanted to end the story with a baby.That's his objective.So,bruce kent is happening apparently to end the immigrant narrative(that's theory liked by snyder they say).

[Gaius]

Honestly, funniest thing about this is that it's trying to be a King Arthur analogy.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Plenty of people can like...in fact ,LOVE a character and when given the chance to write for that character,completely misses the target and or is chock full of Bad ideas that they aren't really aware are bad,but are indeed bad.

This is certainly true.

I've definitely not cared for Superman stories and adaptations done by self-proclaimed fans of the character -- Mark Waid, JMS, the Superman Returns movie, Geoff Johns.

So, no I won't say Zack Snyder dislikes Superman or question whether or not he admires or likes the character. He probably does like Superman. Doesn't mean his idea of having Superman ultimately raise Bruce and Lois's love child alongside Lois was anything but abysmal and tone deaf. Both can be true.

In the case of Snyder there's not much of a difference between him liking something and hating something.

From a Batman fan's perspective, his version of Bruce murders people by the buckets, he also tortures mooks and brands them, he pre-meditates and plans to murder Superman and the real reason he backs off is that he's a psychotic momma's boy for whom the fact that his mother's name "Martha" is in fact common and shared by other people is enough to calm him down. Also the "world's greatest detective" easily gets manipulated and has his identity ferreted out by the least impressive version of Lex Luthor in any medium. So while Snyder is very much on the Batgod train, Batman doesn't come off any better as a result of Snyder being a fanboy of him.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Honestly, funniest thing about this is that it's trying to be a King Arthur analogy.

All we need is Supergirl to be an evil sister who Superman has sex with to father an inbred bastard nephew who kills him.

I have to say, the next person who tries to relate Superman to some pre-existing analogy or myth -- whether it's Greek myth, King Arthur, Jesus, or even Moses for that matter -- anyone who does that ought to be sent to work in the salt mines or some other outdated bizarre punishment.

Superman deserves to be his own story and archetype separate from anything that came before. Treat Superman as Superman and not as King Arthur or any such thing.

[Johnny Thunders!]

Honestly, funniest thing about this is that it's trying to be a King Arthur analogy.

And I think it’s actually the movie Excalibur they are going for, it’s the movie the Wayne’s saw in B V S I think, plus the death of Doomsday and Kal was just like the death of Arthur and Mordred. Spoiler I guess , still like all the movies involved sorry to say. Lex is Morganna La Fey in the Snyderverse! Why not make the sequels and publish Twilight of the Superheroes while we’re at it!

[SiegePerilous02]

From a Batman fan's perspective, his version of Bruce murders people by the buckets, he also tortures mooks and brands them, he pre-meditates and plans to murder Superman and the real reason he backs off is that he's a psychotic momma's boy for whom the fact that his mother's name "Martha" is in fact common and shared by other people is enough to calm him down. Also the "world's greatest detective" easily gets manipulated and has his identity ferreted out by the least impressive version of Lex Luthor in any medium. So while Snyder is very much on the Batgod train, Batman doesn't come off any better as a result of Snyder being a fanboy of him.

My mother's name is Martha.

I've enjoyed many laughs over this fact since that movie came out.

All we need is Supergirl to be an evil sister who Superman has sex with to father an inbred bastard nephew who kills him.

I have to say, the next person who tries to relate Superman to some pre-existing analogy or myth -- whether it's Greek myth, King Arthur, Jesus, or even Moses for that matter -- anyone who does that ought to be sent to work in the salt mines or some other outdated bizarre punishment.

Superman deserves to be his own story and archetype separate from anything that came before. Treat Superman as Superman and not as King Arthur or any such thing.

IDK, I think it can work. Morrison tends to do it a lot, and they are the best modern Superman writer. The "Last Supper of the Justice League" line wouldn't be out of place in a comic script written by them.

They just also tend to inject other stuff into their Superman work (and superhero work in general). and take the piss once and a while. Like Snyder took the "they will join you in the sun" line from their work, but ignored the fact that it also featured stuff like a Bizarro planet, a flying dog and an issue focused on Jimmy Olsen being awesome (instead opting to shoot him in the face), or their later New 52 run having heavy focus on Mxy and 5th dimension stuff. None of which would ever likely to be considered to make an appearance in the DCEU. The religious symbolism can be very interesting, but you also have to put the work in to making the characters and plot fun and engaging as well. Superheros have their own mythology that echo other myths, but that should be used as an additional enhancement, not a crutch for the entire thing.

It's one thing to have a charismatic action star Superman have mythological symbolsim applied to him in addition to all the other crazy cool things he sees and does. It's another thing entirely to just have him strike a crucifix pose and drift passively from one plot beat to another. So I'd say shelve the myth stuff unless a creator can come onboard and do it right.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

IDK, I think it can work.

At the hands of people who know what they are doing, it definitely can work.

Those who understand how analogies and symbols work, the stuff that used to be so obvious that it didn't need to be spelled out, but now has to be done so. Just because Superman is analogous to a myth doesn't mean he's a total and exact copy and allegory. An analogy is not supposed to be a total copy but have thematic similarities, sometimes ironic, and sometimes tragic but not always 1:1 literal down to the wire. In fact a good artist will disguise it so that when it happens, it becomes surprising.

Morrison tends to do it a lot, and they are the best modern Superman writer.

I respect GM a lot even if I don't always like their works. In Morrison's stuff, the analogies and ideas are there and can be worked with, but it's not always the sole dominating interest, and you can still enjoy the stuff on the surface level genre entertainment front.

It's another thing entirely to just have him strike a crucifix pose and drift passively from one plot beat to another. So I'd say shelve the myth stuff unless a creator can come onboard and do it right.

The problem is that superheroes simply can't work as effective Christ parables or any religious allegory. Superheroes are fundamentally violent characters and stories. Every superhero story is about punching people, all the symbolism and stuff and so on people want to attach to it, that's about punching people to solve problems, having someone to punch, and then maybe a panel or two about feeling bad about punching while lounging in the sun.

People will say Superman is about hope and compassion and he doesn't kill. I am not saying that's not the case, but let's take the anti-grimdark Superman stories:
-- ALL STAR SUPERMAN by Morrison, and that's still a story where Superman punches people.
-- "What's so funny about truth, justice and the American Way?" still has Superman punching the Elite but showing them that they can do it without killing people.
-- Mark Waid's "Birthright" still has Superman doing punches.
-- Richard Donner's original 70s Superman, still has Reeve's noble Superman punching people in that movie.
-- Fleischer cartoons punches people.

I can go on. Any religion -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism -- whatever else you can say about them, they aren't founded on the idea that punching people will solve all of life's problems. That's why people who compare superhero comics fandom or superhero characters to religion or say it's like a religion, simply just don't understand fully what that implies.

Right now a lot of people like WandaVision and they talk about how it's a unique show and so on, but it's still a story that (no spoilers) in its final episode revoles around punching people.

That's why WATCHMEN is such a great comic and so authoritative a deconstruction of the genre, it really gets into fundamentally the issue of superheroes solving problems by punching at them, and then at the end of it, they face a situation they can't resolve by punching at it, and so on. Snyder of course f--ked it up in his execution by literally having Dan punch Ozy at the end which he didn't in the comic, to give the audience the smallest slice of cake they can have as a superhero story.

[Gaius]

All we need is Supergirl to be an evil sister who Superman has sex with to father an inbred bastard nephew who kills him.

I have to say, the next person who tries to relate Superman to some pre-existing analogy or myth -- whether it's Greek myth, King Arthur, Jesus, or even Moses for that matter -- anyone who does that ought to be sent to work in the salt mines or some other outdated bizarre punishment.

Superman deserves to be his own story and archetype separate from anything that came before. Treat Superman as Superman and not as King Arthur or any such thing.

I remember having an "oh come on" moment in theaters when watching MoS when Supes did the Christ pose and over the years the more Snyder fans have tried to say how these are all allegories for King Arthur/Jesus/Greek Myth have made them even harder to take seriously.

Reminds me how it took me years to realize the two Donner films were doing Christ allegories.

[JAK]

I may not have been able to "call" all of that garbage back in 2013, but now I know what I was somehow picking up on after watching Man Of Steel that had me sick to my stomach for a week after. I *knew* he/they didn't get Superman.

This sounds like it would have been pretty bad. The main thrust of the Justice League arc would have been essentially Dark Future Batman, guest-starring the Justice League against Evil Superman over and over again.

What a colossal series of miscalculations on the part of Warner Bros. in regards to their DC characters. They should have just had Snyder doing dark edgy Batman movies and given Superman to someone who actually wanted to tell a story with him. Jenkins's Wonder Woman and Wan's Aquaman are beginning to feel like flukes that ended up being successful despite the behind the scenes idiocy.

Definitely - WW and A always felt like happy accidents to me.

I'd be perfectly willing to cut Clark some slack for the Kryptonian invasion because he had no way of knowing that would happen and it was completely by accident. It might also have happened sooner or later anyway, and we have to give Zod and his cronies a lot of agency there for choosing to be tyrants

But that PLUS catching the attention of Apokolips and becoming Darkseid's mind controlled slave? He's a passive, unwitting cosmic horror from beyond the stars who brings our doom lol.

"They will join you in the sun." **** off Jor-El.

Right? It's telling that most of the best moments/lines from those were just lifted from other (better) creators.

You gotta respect just how one man can be a nexus for awful ideas. He can't help himself. They're always awful.

I ruined my back at work today. It genuinely hurts to breathe, worse to laugh, but this... This puts a smile on my face. I can't stop laughing. It's so god-awful that I know he thought it was brilliant. You can see the bounce in his step as he put it all down and shot it to whoever he sends his scripts for approval.

The only thing missing is for Clark to reveal to Lois at the end that he was in love with Bruce too and is jealous she gets to have his baby instead of Clark. He then gets reconstructive surgery to look like Bruce Wayne, adopts his identity and becomes the new Batman.

1: Yes, absolutely

2: Don't give WB any ideas. lol

These are terrible ideas...but the fact of the matter is that this was never really realistically going to actually make it to screen. I mean, even before BvS was released the Studio already had rejected the idea of Bruce unrequitedly falling in love with Lois. There was no way that Bruce impregnating Lois and Clark raising the kid with Lois eventually would ever make it to film. This story outline was basically spitballing more or less.

That being said....wow. I've defended MOS and Ultimate cut BvS,but ...this would have been terrible. Still curious about the Snyder cut...but I'm glad someone at WB was willing to tell Snyder "No".

True, but it tells us his tendencies/mindset when it comes to these characters, and that's enough for me.

No one ever tell me that Zack Snyder understands Superman. He doesn't.

He was going to destroy the most iconic couple in comics for more bat angst.

In his (kinda) defense, Bat angst is pretty on-brand for WB, even if they rejected this.

I have to say, reading these 9 pages of pure horror and disgust ocassionally disguised as humor has been more entertaining than any Snyder film I've seen. So thank you, random internet people.

lol, same!

[SiegePerilous02]

They specifically need to ditch the Christ stuff.

If they need to pull from any myth, do the more action heavy stuff like Greek or Norse. And even then, do it like Jack said:

I respect GM a lot even if I don't always like their works. In Morrison's stuff, the analogies and ideas are there and can be worked with, but it's not always the sole dominating interest, and you can still enjoy the stuff on the surface level genre entertainment front.

Actually, the fact that this outline just devolved into a big "epic" fight at the end just makes the religious stuff dumber. It was all pointless in the end because we just end up with explosions and kewl fights. And I can 100% be ok with surface level Christian elements being applied to everything as long as the creators are upfront about the fact that they are doing it because they think it's cool. Like Anno with Evangelion saying they used Christian stuff because it offered an exotic flavor to their main audience and it was cool (while homaging all his other favorite mecha and Ultraman tropes), but wasn't the main stuff needing to be examined. Whereas Snyder says his films are meant for adults and not Saturday morning cartoons...when they are in fact less mature than a lot of Saturday morning cartoons.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I remember having an "oh come on" moment in theaters when watching MoS when Supes did the Christ pose and over the years the more Snyder fans have tried to say how these are all allegories for King Arthur/Jesus/Greek Myth have made them even harder to take seriously.

Reminds me how it took me years to realize the two Donner films were doing Christ allegories.

That's another issue I have with Snyder. IN press and interviews he keeps talking smack about Donner and Chris Reeve's Superman. And to be honest, I don't think he's wrong that people have too much reverence for them. My feeling has always been that those movies have its charms and moments but they also didn't offer a complete look at the character and made changes and introduced concepts that didn't make sense, and I also think those films are quite dated.

My issue is that Snyder talks smack of those films while still more or less regurgitating ideas and concepts from those films (and also Superman Returns which is a Donner Cover Band Album).
-- The main bad guys in his movies are still Zod and Luthor, rather than introducing other concepts and villains.
-- Luthor is still some babbling semi-comical moron, with Eisenberg updating Gene Hackman, who futzes around with alien technology rather than a genius who builds and creates his own stuff.
-- Superman is still presented doing Christ-like poses and we have a lot of importance attached to the meaning of the Superman symbol.
-- Pa Kent's death is an important rite of passage for Superman when Pa Kent has been alive in his active career as a hero in plenty of other versions.

Either Snyder's a hypocrite who has no generosity to people who came before him, who also betrays those people who put their trust in him (i.e. inserting Batman into the films over Nolan's clear discomfort about rebooting him so quickly after his trilogy, and this being the guy who backed him to take the job to start with), or he's someone who has absolutely no irony or self-awareness, and no clue about what he's doing. Ultimately Snyder's movies is basically part of the same rut Superman movies have been stuck in where they are all trying to imitate Donner's ideas and appealing to the strings of John Williams' score and so on, rather than doing a more diverse, new and fresh take on Superman.

[kingaliencracker]

I'm really interested in timeline, what came first, bat baby or unrequited love?

From the sound of it, the baby angle came first when JL was originally planned as a trilogy (!) at or around the time Batman v Superman was in post production or soon-to-be released. Snyder, the writers, the producers, or all of the above realized that it was too much and it eventually transitioned to a quasi love triangle that was seemingly more one-sided with Bruce. The love triangle was the plot device completely nixed by WB executives.

From what I'm understanding, the baby angle never got so far as for WB executives to become aware of it, or surely they would have quashed it faster than the love triangle idea.

Regardless of my feelings about Snyder and what a poor choice he was for the DCEU, I would pay good money for an honest documentary from everyone involved regarding the development of Justice League.

[Vordan]

Yeah the irony is that despite fans of the DCEU talking about “let the character evolve”, most of Snyder’s stuff is just reusing the Donner films except poorly done. Same villains, same big emotional beats, the same Clois endgame (hey I like the Clois relationship but if you really wanted to do something new you would use one of the other major LIs), etc. And when he’s not taking from Donner, when he’s doing his own stuff, it’s frequently... stuff like the OP.

[MadFacedKid]

I legit read through every comment in this thread. Probably the most entertaining thread I’ve seen on CBR based off responses.


I don’t think a lot of you are using the term cuck properly or it might be intentional due to anger.