If anybody is ripping it to shreds for that reason, it's just gonna be the same people who didn't want women and black people in Star Wars or hated on Captain Marvel because it had a woman as the lead and didn't have any valid critiques of the movies (and there are some) beyond those. They're assholes and they don't matter.
Otherwise, you overestimate how much the general audience would prefer your take. They don't debate the different versions the way we do, and will ultimately turn up for anything as long as the right people are behind the camera.
Here's the thing...Nobody's rogues gallery's is as good as Batman's and Spider-Man's. Next to that, no hero measures to it.
But Superman's rogues are at least better than Wonder Woman's, Green Lantern's, The Flash's, Iron Man's, Aquaman's, Black Panther's, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, and so on and so forth.
Superman's rogues gallery are in the top 4 or 5. They are also among the most influential rogues...who else can claim to have two rogues enter the English dictionary i.e. Brainiac and Bizarro? Look at Mr. Mxyzsptlk, he was a famous and very influential character...Marvel created copies like The Impossible Man, The Flintstones created the Great Gazoo. He's one of the most unique villains in comics and the first character introduced in the mythos to be several times more powerful than Superman.
This idea that if your rogues aren't Batman quality then you are nothing is really bizarre. Does nobody know of the phrase, "don't let the perfection be the enemy of the good". Superman's rogues are more than sufficient to outfit a trilogy without Luthor and Zod. The MCU made movies about Iron Man into success even if his rogues are terrible. The recent MCU movies did well focusing on obscure villains like Vulture and Mysterio.
Hell if we're talking about how many truly great villains Batman has, it's basically just the core group that showed up in BTAS. Compared to the vast number he actually has, that's a very small sample size. Superman definitely has at least that much
Wonder Woman would too if they bothered to care about that IP, but...
People exaggerate how much of a rabble rouser Superman was in the '30s. The way it's made out it's as if Superman was reading out Karl Marx in-between every tall building he leapt.
He advocated fairly common left-of-center views for his time but Woody Guthrie he ain't. Charlie Chaplin he ain't.
Some of Superman's issues in the Golden Age have an element of absurdity to it.
Like he apparently dealt with the problem of slums by destroying it, fighting the National Guard and skulking away, with a caption saying low-income cheap housing was provided by the government in the aftermath. That's pretty silly. With the reality of gentrification being what it is, this kind of stuff wouldn't fly as intended.
Don't get me wrong, it's striking and it's interesting but let's be real, allowing Superman to take a punch from Muhammad Ali and treating Ali as an intellectual and ethical equal in the Neal Adams comic was about the most progressive gesture Superman ever made. More recently, you have the Smallville episode that came up on twitter, where Clark defends an undocumented immigrant. Those gestures are more progressive than in the '30s.
Dude the Flash had great rogues gallery, even better than Superman. I mean Flash had Thawne, Zolomon, Gorilla Grood, The Top, Captain Cold, Mirror Master, Rainbow Rider, Rag Doll, Golden Glider, Pied Piper, The Trickster, Cicada, Double Down, Captain Boomerang, Heat Wave, Magenta, Abra Kadabra, Dr. Alchemy, Shade, Weather Wizard, Savitar, Godspeed, and many more. He has much more fun rogue gallery than Superman could ever be. I believe that he had the third best rogue gallery after Batman and Spider-Man.
Better than the navel gazer who sits around all asking people to "hope harder". Blah! I prefer a guy based on zorro than a guy based on whatever that is.ofcourse, there is absurdity to it. Cause that's the name of the game. Superman is an absurd concept,itself.Entertainment requires personality, showmanship,.. Etc. Currently the guy acts like a dad.
Last edited by manwhohaseverything; 09-24-2020 at 07:30 PM.
I think it's more that the core ideas were perhaps present in the earlier creation but the execution when they did show up are not going to hold up from a modern perspective at all. Society back then was just not going to produce something like that.
But the idea of tackling it from a modern perspective and expanding on it using modern social topics is a sound one and if the character has endured so long, that idea can adapt to something that resonates with modern audiences. With how much of a shitshow the world is now, I agree that "hope harder" isn't going to cut it with most people, especially the younger crowd, anymore.
Whether we're trying to tackle social justice topics or avoiding them but going into crazy/high concept direction, either way embodying "old fashioned American values" need to be avoided like the plague.
Superman definitely has a better rogues gallery than Flash or GL, but those are still good. Honestly IMO, all the major DC heroes (Superman, Batman, WW, Captain Marvel, GL, Flash and even Aquaman though he's dead last) have better rogues galleries than Iron-Man or most of the individual Avengers.
I also prefer that Golden Age guy to the defender of the status quo or the waffling moper. The thing is, the less socially realistic aspects of the GA Superman can be adjusted. Even the guy in the video offered alternate versions of the stories that would be more grounded in reality while maintaining the core idea of Superman as the defender of Truth, Justice and the Oppressed.
Power with Girl is better.
Good luck with that. The guy was one punch man before one punch man became a thing. Realism is overrated. It doesn't work especially well for a character with glasses for a secret id. The absurd built the character . Moreover, superman was an outlaw vigilante. So i saw nothing that feels "out of character". It's not like modern day stupidity where ma and pa encourage their son to be vigilante. As a kid, more or less.