erik lundegaard

Thursday October 14, 2010

5 Things The Atlantic Gets Wrong About '5 Ways to Revive the Superman Franchise'

Read their article here.

  1. “Superman is a part of our culture. But the America he protects in 2010 is a far cry from the one he protected in 1932.” Or 1938, the year he was created.
  2. “Snyder should follow the examples of Batman Begins and Iron Man: find a young, charismatic lead for your hero, and pad the rest of the cast with respected veteran character actors.” Did writer Scott Meslow mean young OR charismatic? Downey, Jr., brimming with charisma, was in his early 40s when Iron Man began, while Christian Bale, in his early 30s with Batman Begins, is hardly Mr. Charisma. And even early 30s isn't exactly young.
  3. “Keep the John Williams theme song.” Even in 1978, this thing seemed too “Star Wars” to me.
  4. “Speed through the origin story” and “Do everything Chris Nolan says”: Don't these contradict each other? Meslow writes, “Nolan masterfully revived the Batman franchise with Batman Begins”... in which he didn't speed through the origin story. It took more than an hour before we even saw Batman as Batman. Compare with Tim Burton's “Batman” (1989) in which we saw Batman as Batman in the first three minutes.
  5. Suggestions 1-5: These thoughts are either obvious (cast, Nolan) or wrong (speed the origin) or, as above, contradictory. And none get to the heart of the Superman dilemma: We're interested in him because he's all-powerful but being all-powerful is dramatically uninteresting. So we need to either push toward or pull away from his power: weaken him to create a feasible drama, or keep him as is and make his all-powerfulness the drama. I'm inclined toward the latter.
Posted at 08:12 AM on Thursday October 14, 2010 in category Superheroes  
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