I don't think that you need to make a "retro" period piece film to do Superman right. There's still modern stories set in "today times" that are great and perfect.
But I'm not against it either. Frankly I want a Superman Smashes the Klan movie, and I want it now.
When has Warner Bros. actually said Superman is outdated?
I feel like people keep suggesting retro movies because they think it's an antidote to his problems rather than because it's a good idea.
It's a mixed bag. If anything, both his presentation on "Supergirl" and in "Justice League" indicate they think the audience does not find him outdated and that maybe the mistake was to think he was so outdated they had to give a very modern take in M o S and B v S.
For me, I find the idea of a movie about the Golden Age Superman to be fascinating as long as it's really what he was then and not just a modern take set in 1938.
It's not a solution because the main Superman has to be in the modern world and a modern guy.
Most people have no problem with the idea that the Golden, Bronze, Post-Crisis and Nu versions of Batman are all really Batman and even the Silver Age version is okay though few would want a movie or series about the SA Batman though I would. But, with Superman, depending on who you ask, of course, there is this feeling that the "real" Superman is the Silver Age version. There are people who argue that he has not really been Superman since 1986 and certainly that the M o S version was not him. Then again, plenty of people say that about the Batman of B v S. Maybe it's not about keeping Superman in the past but just certain modern takes that are disliked.
I understand that a lot of people will say they don't want the SA version but, in a lot of ways, that's what they recognize as Superman at the core. Also, most people liked the "Supergirl" show's version of Superman until he got beat in a fight by Supergirl. So, at the core, it's about his persona and his power. Likewise, Cavill was disliked until he stomped the League and developed a confident personality. Then, people who are primarily Superman fans applauded. So, again, it seems to be about power and persona.
I suspect any movie version of Superman in any time period will be accepted by the audience as long as he comes across as the most powerful, confident and positive.
I likewise suspect the majority of the audience does not perceive Superman as a proxy to delve into the world's social problems or nature. Perhaps unfortunate. But they probably just want a good superhero adventure that causes them to leave the theater or whatever method of seeing it happier and lighter than when they went in rather than more depressed than ever.
Power with Girl is better.
I think with JL, it was more how Cavill was allowed to act more confident than anything that won people over. I think the stomping of the JL is secondary, and at least here a lot of Superman fans didn't need the power gap between him and Wonder Woman to be so big even if the lack of ambiguity that he was the strongest was refreshing.
WB has never come right out and said they think he's outdated, but the struggled to make him work to the point where Snyder's take with Nolan (the Batman guy) at least initially producing does have an "actions speak louder than words" m air about it. Something like that shouldn't need to be so drastic though. Superman isn't the embodiment of old fashioned values shining bright in a cynical world, a take that has somewhat taken hold after Donner. Quite the contrary, he thinks the world is broken as it is and has strong ideas of the example he wants to set. He's fun, cool and has conviction but he shouldn't be naïve. He should be wise enough to know someone with his power should never enforce his will on society, but he loves his chosen job as a superhero and will not tolerate any bullshit, and would like to help the world move towards the future he thinks it can have, not cling to a rose tinted view of the past.
You don't need make him dark (or perhaps more accurate, put him in a dark story) to make him relevant again. The original ideas he embodies are more relevant now than they've ever been. We need to break both the "let's go back to Donnoer/Reeves" and "deconstruction" mentalities.
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For a Golden Age film, I wouldn't make the threat any bigger than, say, Ultra-Humanite (in his albino gorilla body) or Metallo. Definitely no "end of the world" stuff.
Maybe for the end credit scene you have Brainiac's ship descend on Metropolis, if that's the direction you want a potential sequel to go in. But even if you wanted to follow Morrison's footprints like that, I'd keep it to "Brainiac bottles a city for his collection" and ignore the "then blows up the rest of the planet" stuff, so even Brainiac is only technically a city-wide threat.
For right now. Down the road a bit, yeah they could try a more grim type of approach and there's so much potential to things like Kingdom Come, but after the last few films I think audiences need something simple and stupid and easily consumed. It's not that your idea is bad or wouldn't work, it's that I don't think audiences would get it.
It's true, allegory can serve the same purpose, but I think there's a little something extra when it's us....even a "us" from eighty years ago. But allegory is a powerful narrative tool, you're totally right. I mean, Star Trek is built entirely on the concept and it could/does work for Clark as well. But just like with Laufeyson's idea, I think *right now* using a period piece rather than allegory (and yeah there's not much difference when you boil it down) would hit a little harder, in a good way. But you could go either way with it. Clark's a versatile character and can fit into nearly any genre or tone you can think of, a sci-fi allegory film would work nearly as well as a period piece....but it'd also cost a lot more, which is one of the reasons I want a Golden Age project; easier for WB to make money and consider it a win.
Well get your ass in gear my friend, and finish it up!
And yeah, a period piece that still says "racism is bad" or whatever social commentary you want is still going to get hate from certain corners. F*ck them. Those are the people Superman *should* piss off. But a movie set today that says "racism is bad" will be seen as an attack on the current administration (whether it is or not) while a period piece won't (unless you make it blindingly obvious that's your intent), and nobody wants all the discussion about the movie to revolve around whether it insults some modern, thin-skinned politician.
As for whether a period piece film would "fix the overall problem/s" no, it won't. There's no single solution and easy fix here. WB will still have no idea how to handle the character as a whole. But what it will do (in theory) is give Superman a clear box office win (which he needs) and expose audiences to a wider concept of who and what Superman is (which they need).
"We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
~ Black Panther.
Retro Superhero Movies have been made:
-- Dick Tracy
-- The Rocketeer
-- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Want to know what they all in common? Yeah they weren't successful. That kind of nostalgia for old timey serials and stuff never really works if you go all in. So that's why WB doesn't go for it.
(Some people will bring up "Captain America: The First Avenger" but that's not the same thing. That's a movie with a character who existed in the 40s and ends it in the present day, that's not the same thing as presenting and inserting a character in some kind of fictional landscape composed of dated genre elements).
I think it's important that if you do Superman that you must have a strong visual style and a wide range of references but there's nothing inherent to Superman for him to work in the 40s specifically.
To be fair, none of those would ever do as good as a Superman move in the first place. As many hits as the IP has taken, it's still vastly bigger and going to draw more interest than any of those.
Superman is no longer inherently tied to that era, but I think a series of Superman movies set in the 30s-40s but with the high concept visuals from the later eras would at least stand out from the flood of superhero movies in terms of atmosphere. Or maybe not go all in, but do what Batman 1989 did and set in an ambiguous time period that evokes that era (cars and clothes) along with contemporary stuff in and not-so-realistic elements. Instead of Gothic Hellish Gotham, do Fritz Lang meets Shirow Masamune for Metropolis. Superman could shake things up by inhabiting a fantastical but rich world instead of doing the "it's just where we live, unless they visit another planet" stuff almost everyone else is doing.
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www.jamiekelleymusic.com
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Hear my new CD "Love The World Away", available on iTunes, Google Music, Spotify, Shazam, and Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01N5XYV..._waESybX1C0RXK via @amazon
www.jamiekelleymusic.com
TV interview here: https://snjtoday.com/snj-today-hotline-jamie-kelley/