Man of Steel

Man of Steel.

Just saw Man of Steel. I went to see it because there has been such a polarizing response to the film among people in my extended circles on Facebook. Regardless of my take, one of the biggest complaints has been how the creators simply didn't get the character of Superman, but I'm not sure this is a fair complaint.

In today's world of $100 million+ budgets, it is very difficult to get anyone to take chances on something totally new. When the vision of a story approaches/exceeds $200 million, I think it's tough to get even an amazing track record to get that check written and perhaps for good reason. Look at the ROI of the later Nolan Batman films(Dark Knight - $530 million and Dark Knight Rises - $448 million) versus Inception($300 million). They had similar budgets but made almost double the money.

So if a creator has an incredible idea for a story, that will cost a dump truck of $ to realize, what are they to do. They try to reduce risk by putting that story in the context of an existing/proven franchise. It not only vastly improves the chances of the project getting funded, but it also improves the chance of getting a larger audience to pay attention to the idea. Now, I'm not saying this is a ideal situation, but I think it is a financial reality of these blockbuster type projects.

Zack Snyder has pretty much made a career of taking beloved source material and putting his on stamp onto it. Fast zombies, slightly altering the end of Watchmen, the rendition of the battle of Thermopylae, etc. I think he's a visually accomplished filmmaker and he's done his best to take material beloved to him and enrich it with his own touch. In some case, like Man of Steel, it's a total reboot of the story, which has driven a wedge between those who love/hate the film.

As fans(in some case die-hard fans) of classic material, we can be extremely critical of reboots that go away from the core of the original source. I am as guilty of this as anyone. For example, I pretty much despise everything created in the Space Cruiser Yamato(Starblazers) universe that post dates the original films, ending with Final Yamato. In my most elitist otaku asshole moments, I have gone so far as to question someone's understanding of the source material.

But are we doing ourselves a disservice? Can we not look at these things with fresh eyes? Should we? It's ironic, especially coming from the incestuous world of comic books where there are really no more than a handful of characters being explored by the major publishers and non-cape books are rarely even given the time of day by traditional comics fans. Has this exact process not been going on for over 30 years in that medium?

Here's where I put on my elitist asshole hat and say, with 1 or 2 exceptions, I have always found cape books to be ridiculous, heavy handed and poorly illustrated. I started reading comic books when I was 12 and never understood cape books. It wasn't till I hit my 30's that I even read Marvel books other than The Nam and Strikeforce Morituri and both of those books didn't last in rotation past issue 12-13...The Nam was handed off to another team that never connected with me and Morituri just turned into a churn.

When you get down to it, major label cape books(Marvel/DC) have always been crappy sit comms. With few exceptions, they go on forever, have basically the same set of characters, the characters rarely go through big changes because the reader doesn't want them to and rarely, if ever, has there been a lasting consequence for any action, up to and including death. Measured against Japanese manga of the 80's and 90's(my main frame of reference), where characters are killed and die forever or characters change quite a bit, often going through multiple arcs in ongoing series or, gasp, series actually having an ending. I think it was Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" that provided a definitive end to Batman's story before I ever really engaged with his character. From there I cherry picked my way through some of the classics like Killing Joke, Year One and...well that was about all the Batman I liked.

Not to hammer the point to death, my point is that it might not be the best approach to look at reboots through the eyes of the hardcore. Maybe we should give things a fresh chance. They're not all going to be good or even mediocre. For me, I will try to see how things work as stand alone pieces and not apply my baggage to them out of the gate. I'm sure I won't always succeed but as someone trying to create an original property, I will try to give creators the benefit of the doubt when I can.

That said, I still don't understand why there hasn't been a good Die Hard script in over 20 years and I will go to the grave cursing everyone involved in the live action Yamato film and subsequent series reboot -_-;