The Last Time I Talk Snyder Superman? Please?

I’m only doing it to myself, so unless he says something monumentally stupid, this is it.

Zack Snyder seems to be losing his mind more and more. His Rebel Moon movies for Netflix were designed with a Director’s Cut in mind so he can make more money. However, every review I hear is very negative and nobody is surprised that even DisneyFilm wouldn’t approve it as an official Star Wars movie. His defense is “if you don’t support this movie you’re supporting movies by committee”, and yet he’s making a committee look like the better option. Sometimes you need people to tell you where you’re getting things wrong.

Meanwhile Snyder is STILL trying to defend his take on Superman, and making me less and less interested about Man Of Steel, a movie I’ve called a decent superhero movie but a terrible Superman movie. With every terrible defense I end up with less of an opinion than I did before. Superman is my favorite superhero, and Snyder’s destruction is losing the only defense I had about it because he makes it look worse rather than better.

Now we have a GQ YouTube video coming out of his “seen by more people than the Barbie movie” Rebel Moon, and he tries to explain why his Superman is so much better. It isn’t. It really isn’t.

So then we went over to the house, and we sat and talked about, you know, “Superman” through the years and kind of what this “Man of Steel” movie could be to make him the nostalgia,”and kind of what this “Man of Steel” movie could be to make him the nostalgia, the importance of what he represented to generations.And that that importance cannot be diminished. He’s an immigrant, you know? It’s an immigrant story in a lot of ways. And that was the thing I really felt strongly about. You know, that he was an outsider, that he was looking to be accepted, all that stuff that is really at the core of who he is.

What…the hell…are you talking about?

Superman is not an outsider, at least not when he’s Superman. Growing up he might have been, though not to the level Zack Snyder made him out to be. When Smallville understood this better you’re doing something wrong. Check out the “Superman Family Album” segments from the Ruby-Spears Superman, any other story with young Clark as far back as when Superboy was “the adventures of Superman when he was a boy”. Clark had friends. He might have gotten bullied, he couldn’t participate in football because his powers gave him an unfair advantage, and he had to hide his powers, but “outsider” isn’t the “core of who he is”. I know that because it’s sadly the core of who I am. I think I can tell the difference better than some director that people keep falling over to praise.

I’m also sick of this “Superman is an immigrant” nonsense. Superman came here as a baby. I don’t know what changed in the New 52 origin but post-Crisis he was even in a “birthing matrix” as a fetus and was legally born on Earth. Immigrants are not the only outsiders anymore than queer people are. Again, I’m a white American male and I was an outsider my whole school life. I didn’t even have an alien origin or cool superpowers to hide from the rest of the world. I was the geeky kid with low self-esteem, perpetual shyness, a temper Bruce Banner would envy, an overactive imagination, a weak stomach, and I would someday learn an overly sensitive pallet. I was more of an outsider than Clark was. I didn’t want to relate to Superman. I wanted to BE Superman. Heck, I wanted to be Clark Kent because he has friends and a successful career. The best I got was glasses.

The conversation is exactly what he says to Lois. He says, “I let my father die to protect the idea that my father was trying to protect, the idea that like, I wasn’t ready to be like outed to the world because I wasn’t Superman.” I’m just, I was like a teenager that kind of like, I could have made a mess of it. I have the power to do it, but like, had I ever used my powers in those way? Did I know exactly how to do it? No, I wanna save my dad, but I also trusted him that his vision for what I could be was bigger than him or I, or, you know, this little incident in Kansas was not the thing that was going to sort of expose me to the world. And ’cause on the moment I’m exposed to the world, I have to be at the peaks of my powers because the world is not gonna sit around and rejoice my existence. You know, that’s probably not what’s gonna happen. And I think that’s what Jonathan’s point of view was.

No, that’s what you’re character calling himself Jonathan Kent’s point of view was. The actual Jonathan Kent was supportive of his son, helping him learn to control his powers, supported his decision to become Superman, or Superboy, and while he would have sacrificed himself to save his son, didn’t try to stop him from becoming a good man who used his powers for the betterment of mankind. In fact, Jonathan and Martha ARE THE REASON SUPERMAN DOESN’T KILL, BECAUSE THEY TAUGHT HIM TO RESPECT LIFE AND NOT USE HIS POWERS TO DOMINATE AND DESTROY! Literally from his second appearance in comics.

This is the closest we get to Snyder’s version, who would let a bus load of kids drown (“maybe”) to protect Clark’s secret. Man Of Steel does everything it can to keep Clark from becoming Superman until Zod forces the issue. Whatever my issues are with the Donner movie, it and every other incarnation I grew up with has him come to Metropolis and start his “career” as Superman almost immediately, and sometimes before, he gets his reporter job.

By the way, Superman usually is praised once his existence comes to light. When he breaks into the governor’s mansion to stop the wrong person from being sent to Ol’ Sparky for a crime she didn’t commit, the governor tells his people that he’s glad Superman is on our side. When he saves Lois, she’s immediately smitten. When he saves people, they’re actually grateful. Why should it be any different here? Because Zack “if you think superheroes wouldn’t kill you live in a fantasy world and I’ll ignore the fact that making fantasy worlds is literally my job” Snyder has a cynical view of humanity that served him well with Watchmen but is the opposite of everything that made the DC Universe so beloved until Dan DiDio ruined everything. He doesn’t believe people would accept Superman. I don’t know, and I don’t care. What’s “realistic” about people in tights flying around punching each other? Even professional wrestling isn’t “realistic”.

The world is gonna be afraid of you and the world is gonna, like, there’s a really good chance that you are gonna become the enemy because you make us feel too insignificant. And when we feel that way, we get afraid.

Again, never been Superman’s story, because Superman is the guy who lifts us up.

Again, THAT’S Superman!

It’s not Superman’s powers that make him better than “us”, it’s what he does with those powers. Superman’s powers are not special in superhero universes anymore because so many heroes in other comics and cartoons have emulated them. Even in the DC universe there are people with some or all of the same powers. It’s what he does with those powers, the compassion and desire to help others, that make him what he is. He is not above us even when he’s flying overhead. He’s the biggest human fanboy in the universe and wants to see us be good, and he does so by example. We will never have his powers, mostly because most of them are scientifically impossible, but we can do with our normal human abilities what he does with his superhuman abilities–help others, whether he’s saving their lives or talking someone off a ledge. And he won’t give up so long as lives are in danger and people need him. That’s the core of Superman, not being an “outsider”. Even this…

…as dumb and anti-American as it comes off (written by one of the Man Of Steel screenwriters by the way, David S. Goyer), was about Superman making a sacrifice of his connection to his home country because the US government was getting flack from other countries so they could use him as a PR move against the United States. It was really Goyer trying to make Superman more “open” to the rest of the world (see also why “the American Way” was replaced by Superman’s son with “a better tomorrow”) because Hollywood is obsessed with making China happy even more than whatever the current activist cause du jour is. Hence black people removed from movie posters and gay kissing removed from movies put there to make the activists happy even when they won’t spend money to see it. It’s also why we have a Chinese “Super-Man” in the DC universe right now, a comic character that no fan asked for.

That’s the game. There’s no like, and they’re like, “But why would you put Superman in that position?” I’m like, “Well, if Superman can’t handle that position, then he’s fake, then he’s not. You gotta like, he’s got to address the scenarios that come to him. He can’t pick and choose as you can’t pick and choose.”

That’s bullcrap. YOU can pick and choose because you’re telling the story. You specifically wanted to put Superman in a position where he had no choice but to kill because you wanted to see Superman kill. He brings up the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek, the “no win scenario”. Except Cadet Kirk didn’t believe in the “no win scenario” and cheated to avoid it, just as he did in the same movie the idea was introduced in. Then J.J Abrams had him be an arrogant jackass about it, but that’s another conversation. Had Superman practiced his powers more, had he become the “Superman at the peak of his powers” and control of those powers and able to fight and able to figure out ways around this, he could have. You as the writer could have a mirror or other reflective surface nearby. You could have Superman try to block Zod’s heat vision, which soldier or not he shouldn’t have mastered in the time it takes to make popcorn, or smash a hole in the ground for them to fall into, or knock him unconscious, or ANYTHING!

What’s really galling is that the next scene isn’t Clark coming to terms with what he felt he had to do at that moment, questioning if he has the right to use his powers to protect the world. It’s some gag about dropping a multi-billion dollar satellite near the moving vehicle of the general using it to track Superman’s movements. We don’t see the aftermath. In the comics, when Superman was forced to kill Zod and his underlings from a pocket dimension because it was the only way to stop them as the Phantom Zone didn’t exist anymore in continuity because of the post-Crisis reboot, he went on a “walkabout” through space to come to terms with what he had to do. Here? A large scream and cut to falling satellite, a mood whiplash that’s worse than anything in the Weadon Justice League cut.

I’m not going to get into his Batman, or his urge to remake the Batman versus Superman scene from The Dark Knight Returns or really anything else. I’ve got a Jake & Leon in mind with Rebel Moon, but as far as Snyder’s take on the DC Universe, I’m done. Unless I find out he said something so asinine I have to comment I’m going to ignore any further retaric out of his mouth before I end up hating Man Of Steel, which I already don’t plan to watch again unless I do a Video Review of it or something. Every time he tries to tell me this is a “better” or “more realistic” version of my favorite superhero, the one who most inspired me as a kid and a would-be storyteller, the more foolish he sounds. He doesn’t know Superman because doesn’t believe in everything that makes Superman a hero, but it got THIS outsider through a bad spot in life. Superman is awesome when written correctly. Snyder and his writers cannot write him correctly because they don’t believe in heroes, don’t believe in bright colors, don’t believe in either the American Way or a Better Tomorrow, and don’t believe in hope. In short, they don’t believe in anything that makes Clark Kent…Superman!