What is the appeal of a grim and realistic Superman?

[RedDeadFred]

What's the appeal of the "happy-go-lucky" Marvel movies?

Variety. If everyone was doing the same style of superhero movies, I'd get bored fast. I'm glad DC and Marvel are doing two very different styles. How successfully they each pull them off is another story.

 

[zarguhl]

Superman isn't a goodhearted, positive character. Superman is a badly written character.

I think there is room in the market for ONE flawless character frankly.

What I'd really like to see though, is a good character who does bad things for whatever reason, but then DOESN'T become all whiny and emo over it. Like you have a traditional Superman character, who gets really pissed off at a bad guy and murders his entire crew. Then, instead of going on a guilt trip and whining for a whole movie trying to find himself or whatever, he just goes "Ah well, shit happens" and gets back on with his life of being an awesome, good hero.

 

[Flammablezeus]

I want to add that I think it's strange that people think of Superman in Man of Steel as being dark. Did we watch the same movie? This guy was saving people left, right and center and was going on about hope and being accepted and a good person. By the end he sees the best of humanity too, so it's not just Superman himself who wasn't dark. I think people got too bogged down in small details that made the world more realistic and applied the term "dark" just because it wasn't all puppies and sunshine.

Heck, I don't even think of the Dark Knight movies as being dark, just overly gritty to the point that it seemed like none of the characters had anything in common with their comic counterparts. Still, with a new Batman around the corner, hopefully that'll make things right. I still think MoS hit a very good balance of realism and staying true to what makes the Superman universe what it is.

 

[Vausch]

Simply put: Superman is too perfect. As a result, he ends up being extremely boring and unrelatable.

Trying to make him grim and "realistic" means to add flaws to him, and therefore make him a little more likeable.

I agree, I can't stand good people! So annoying when people do good things and get things right and help people and stuff. I only like crazy people and murderers, they my homies! It sets a bad example to show a decent person, as if such a thing exists! What we need really is to show the full extent of human degradation and misery in all movies. My motto is, "If there isn't rape, murder and genocide, you don't have a story!"

I hate how Superman never kills children too. I mean that's just lame.

So you're implying there's no middle ground? We either have a character so perfect and invincible it's absolutely boring, or the usual archetype of the dark and gritty antihero?

There is a HUGE difference between a good person, a character who is good at heart and does good things... and then a character like Superman, who isn't just a good person - he's perfect and invincible, so perfect he might as well be a robot.

Compare, I don't know, Kevin Sorbo's Hercules. Here's an all-powerful character who is extremely sweet, always helps people, never does a wrong thing, etc. etc.
Yet he is likeable, unlike Superman. You can see he has human flaws like all of us, and he is not 100% undefeatable.


Superman isn't a goodhearted, positive character. Superman is a badly written character.

Question: How many Superman comics have you actually read? Cuz that is the exact thing everybody says that only knows the general idea of Superman and hasn't read anything like, say, New Krypton where despite his best efforts thousands of people still died.

 

[zarguhl]

Uuuh.... that's not a flawless character, however. That's a bastard.

Why? Since when is guilt a virtue? Why is it that a person who does good 90% of their lives, should feel shame the one time they screw up?

Imagine an ordinary human who had the kind of power superman did. One tiny mistake and someone is dead. The average person would probably kill a dozen people, get all emo about it and probably end up killing themselves, because they are irresponsible and weak willed.

I'd like to see a character who is fundamentally good and tries to do good things, but when they make mistakes, they just get on with life like nothing happened. If you are so powerful and good that you save a thousand lives a day, you have the right to lose your temper once and kill a few asses without "due process".

I'd like to see a person with enough integrity, that when they make a mistake, they just don't care.

 

[Vausch]

Uuuh.... that's not a flawless character, however. That's a bastard.

Why? Since when is guilt a virtue? Why is it that a person who does good 90% of their lives, should feel shame the one time they screw up?

Imagine an ordinary human who had the kind of power superman did. One tiny mistake and someone is dead. The average person would probably kill a dozen people, get all emo about it and probably end up killing themselves, because they are irresponsible and weak willed.

I'd like to see a character who is fundamentally good and tries to do good things, but when they make mistakes, they just get on with life like nothing happened. If you are so powerful and good that you save a thousand lives a day, you have the right to lose your temper once and kill a few asses without "due process".

I'd like to see a person with enough integrity, that when they make a mistake, they just don't care.

That's not really integrity. Integrity is owning up to a mistake and seeing it as a way to improve yourself, al-la Spider-Man when he lost his Spider-sense and put on one of the ugliest costumes ever with some new tech to compensate. Brushing off making a mistake you made that directly caused people to get killed is sociopathic.

 

[zarguhl]

Brushing off making a mistake you made that directly caused people to get killed is sociopathic.

Why? If you ARE a good person and know you are, and then one time you make a mistake, why change? You're not likely to never make a mistake again no matter what. So just keep doing what you're doing!

And for someone with real power, accidentally killing a few people is as big a mistake as a normal person tripping over. So why feel guilty about it?

Just take responsibility for your own actions. Yep, I lost my temper and killed a bunch of people. Should have just taken them into custody. Oh well. Next.

I think one of the reasons successful people often cave themselves in, is that they have so much more influence than ordinary people that when they do stuff something up, instead of just being a little thing no one notices, it's a big thing that affects a lot of people. And they dwell on it and start taking drugs to "deal with it" and so forth. if they just went "Ooops, oh well, moving right along" they'd go on being fine.

A properly good, strong person knows right from wrong and tries to do the right thing, and learns from their mistakes. But should NOT dwell of past failures. The idea that guilt is a good thing is just spread by weak people who want everyone to be too afraid to actually get stuff done.

 

[Vausch]

Brushing off making a mistake you made that directly caused people to get killed is sociopathic.

Why? If you ARE a good person and know you are, and then one time you make a mistake, why change? You're not likely to never make a mistake again no matter what. So just keep doing what you're doing!

And for someone with real power, accidentally killing a few people is as big a mistake as a normal person tripping over. So why feel guilty about it?

Just take responsibility for your own actions. Yep, I lost my temper and killed a bunch of people. Should have just taken them into custody. Oh well. Next.

I think one of the reasons successful people often cave themselves in, is that they have so much more influence than ordinary people that when they do stuff something up, instead of just being a little thing no one notices, it's a big thing that affects a lot of people. And they dwell on it and start taking drugs to "deal with it" and so forth. if they just went "Ooops, oh well, moving right along" they'd go on being fine.

A properly good, strong person knows right from wrong and tries to do the right thing, and learns from their mistakes. But should NOT dwell of past failures. The idea that guilt is a good thing is just spread by weak people who want everyone to be too afraid to actually get stuff done.

Because maybe something you did wrong there can be learned from and you can try to not let people die in the same manner next time? Or maybe because of something called empathy?

Except that isn't how Superman works and he values all life. This is a guy that saved a cat from being hit by a car on his way to saving people at a chemical plant explosion. It really isn't the same at all, that's like saying that being rich means you shouldn't care about people that struggle to eat.

Again, that is not how Superman acts and that is not only an illegal action but it's an abuse of power.

That's pretty much what I said. Acknowledge you did wrong and learn from it rather than be destructive about it.

Sociopath.

 

[L. Declis]

He can get close to no-one, because who knows what might happen. He is mocked, feared and hated in equal measure. Like a man who could do ANYTHING would be. He is hunted by the government. Like he WOULD be.

Because they raised him, and sheltered him, and looked after him.

I'm having a really hard time reconciling these two quotes. Is there context in the movie that demonstrates humanity at large looked after him, or would it have made just as much sense for him to spirit Ma Kent off somewhere safe and leave the rest of humanity to fend for itself?

Hmm... They don't seem to reconcile well at first reading, do they? Woops. I basically meant that there are a lot of humans who want him dead or captured or would have turned him over. There are also a lot of humans who have helped him and looked after him or even just been kind to him.

So, yeah. It would have made just as much sense for him to just look after Ma Kent and team up with his kind if he had chosen to "fuck the majority of humans, they hate me anyway", but he chose to follow Russell Crowe's idea to be a symbol and look after them.

Which is something I like in stories. People being forced to make a choice. We only think the save humans option is obvious because we're humans. If we were Krytonians, we'd probably think Superman was a stupid idiot for not restoring us.

 

[Akiraking]

I think people forget that Superman has gone dark before and those stories were just as interesting. I do not mean dark as in he wore a Black suit and got a Mullet (though that was a fun story) I mean as in his storyline in the first season of Young Justice where he cannot see the good in superboy because he can only see the potential for evil because of Super Boy's creator. This is not done in some wishy washy I don't know how to be a dad to this kid it is presented really well having his black and white world view clash against the grey world he lives in. When Batman has to tel him what to do you know he has problems.

Also it is interesting to see Superman break in one way or the other. I know people just think Man of Steel is a dark and gritty bad film but I like the style. The world feels heavy in the sense that the final fight really does mean something as that city is not going to be fixed tomorrow.

So yeah overall I think it is not the idea of a grim and realistic superman but it is seeing him deal with issues that people describe as dark. Man of steel showed Clark living in a world after being raised to fear it if he was ever to reveal himself. Also why would you leave the film sad, it was uplifting at the end. He made a big decision in taking a life but that did not stop him. He finally was able to show himself to the world and his new life awaits. Also the music in that movie was great.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

All I learned in Man Of Steel is that Superman is fine with killing hundreds/thousands of people and causing untold amounts of damage in the process of fighting his enemy...because he's holding himself back to avoid accidentally killing his enemy.

Yeah, talk about epic contradiction.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

It's a difference of taste. I don't enjoy unironically goody-two-shoes Superman. I didn't enjoy Man of Steel for a great deal of reasons related to military fetishism, unrelatable characters, cliches in scene and dialogue, unneeded characters, and many other things, but I'm sure there's a dark, gritty Superman that I would like. However he'll never be quite as good as plenty of other superheroes because he has no personality, an uninterestingly large and standard array of powers, and his weaknesses are the arbitrary kryptonite and the generally boring love interest. Basically the only reason that it hasn't been appealing to me is that it was done very poorly. To conclude, I'd like to ask what the appeal of the typical unambiguously good Superman is.

 

[Zombie Badger]

I AM GENIUS!

The logical next move is to make a really happy, cheerful Batman movie! Like Batman is a cool, casual, nice guy who has a family, with kids and stuff. But then the evil Grinch comes to steal Christmas and Batman fights him off in a rap battle of compliments!

They did. It was called Batman: The Movie and it was hilarious.

 

[theNater]

So, yeah. It would have made just as much sense for him to just look after Ma Kent and team up with his kind if he had chosen to "fuck the majority of humans, they hate me anyway", but he chose to follow Russell Crowe's idea to be a symbol and look after them.

From what I gather, the movie doesn't demonstrate a good reason for choosing the way he does.

I think that's the problem with a lot of "grim and gritty" adaptations. They're so busy showing us humanity's fear and anger that they forget to show us the kindness and quiet courage that makes humanity worth saving. It doesn't take much; Avengers did a huge chunk of it with one old man in Germany who wasn't willing to put up with Loki's crap.

 

[tmande2nd]

Because some people need their daily intake of grimdark or they will die.

Just like people who post long insane rants over the Tau cause they RUINED 40K for ever!

 

[Rikun]

It's a difference of taste. I don't enjoy unironically goody-two-shoes Superman. I didn't enjoy Man of Steel for a great deal of reasons related to military fetishism, unrelatable characters, cliches in scene and dialogue, unneeded characters, and many other things, but I'm sure there's a dark, gritty Superman that I would like. However he'll never be quite as good as plenty of other superheroes because he has no personality, an uninterestingly large and standard array of powers, and his weaknesses are the arbitrary kryptonite and the generally boring love interest. Basically the only reason that it hasn't been appealing to me is that it was done very poorly. To conclude, I'd like to ask what the appeal of the typical unambiguously good Superman is.

If you ask me, the appeal of an umambiguously good Superman is comparable to the appeal of Captain America in an age where everything has to be "darker and grittier" because realism. I've had this discussion before with others who thought of Cap as another boring goody-two-shoes while evil is so great that it almost takes an anti-hero to fight the bad guys. I would argue in cases like this this is EXACTLY why we need the heroes that are bright, optimistic, and unambiguously good. I'm actually certain we went over this in the 90s where all the bloody anti-heroes started popping up and racking up the body count because killing people was extreme and cool.

If you need a more direct Superman example as to what on earth his appeal could be, look no further than "Superman vs. The Elite" or the comic miniseries it was based on. To make a long story short, Superman meets a team of metahumans that not only fight crime, but are willing to kill the bad guys while all Superman does is just send them to jail. Most would think the Elite are doing the right thing since it's a more immediate and effective solution than goody-two-shoes in blue, but then you start seeing that because this team believes humans to be fundamentally assholes, the only real way to keep them in line is to strike the fear of GOD in them, even if it means slaughtering the leaders of war-torn countries to ensure peace.

"But wait!" you may say, "These guys are WAY more interesting than boring good guy Superman! AND they're more effective!" Well then, howabout you show a Superman who's willing to go that far to put the animals down? Notice how scary he becomes? And then notice how no matter how tempting it would be to do so, Superman would never let himself stoop that low? If you ask me, THIS is what makes Superman's "good guy" act a compelling character, especially when juxtaposed with a much more cynical modern world. As the world gets darker and grayer due to its harsh realities, you really need a hero who can be that beacon of light that will always appeal to our better nature.

As far as I'm concerned, you don't need a hero to become dark and gritty to become interesting, even if there are those who say, "but dark and gritty is more realistic and Superman has to be realistic!" As cornball as the big blue is, the reason he's endured for all these years is because he gives the audience something to look up to and something to strive for. He might seem hokey and antiquated, but I honestly don't think being a "good guy" ever goes out of style.

And before you bring in Batman to this argument, Bruce himself had to deal with this when Azrael took over the mantle for him. Here was a Bat who didn't have the moral inhibitions that the original Batman did and would have no problem slaughtering and/or brutalizing anyone who'd stand in his way. From what I remember, this storyline was created as a response to readers wanting more "dark and gritty", and hooboy did they get it.

Maybe there's a way to strike a balance between realism and optimism. Last I checked, nobody wants to have every hero become the Punisher.

 

[Parasondox]

I think the reason why people want that kind of Superman from Man of Steel cause in the past, he was always seen as a goody two shoes who can do no wrong, who is also "perfect" and is like Jesus Christ. Many people and fans kind of gotten sick of that and the whole "no death rule " that DC has created themselves with, makes it seems that he can and should not have any flaws either. So when that final scene happened with Zod, many hardcore comic book fans were anger saying "Superman doesn't kill", while mainstream audience and other comic book fans were fine with what happened. People are sick of seeing flawless and perfect heroes and want more of them to be shown as if they were living in our world.

Now if you want the studio answer, the is mostly WB/DC's tone. Create through the Dark Knight trilogy, many fans liked the idea and the studios made a lot of money from it. What ever Christopher Nolan touched was seen as perfect by many. So when marketing for Man of Steel came out, we saw Christopher Nolan's name shown more than Zack Snyder. Many fell for it by even saying "This is a Christopher Nolan movie. It will be great." Forgetting the fact that he was only the producer. So when those who didn't like the movie expressed there anger, it weren't "Well Nolan sucks, his fault blah blah..", it was actually more of the lines of, "Zack Snyder ruined Superman, it was his fault", and somehow, Nolan was all but forgotten.