The teaser for James Gunn’s Superman came out today. It’s only a teaser so I wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. Then came an article from Variety about the movie that would be an interesting discussion, but a short one. Put the two together and you have a full article.
Superman is my favorite superhero, and seeing the continued crapping on it by…pretty much everyone of this “modern age” really bugs me. It’s why I have a playlist on YouTube dedicated to finding defenders of Superman, just to remind myself I’m not alone. It’s why even while admitting Man Of Steel was a decent superhero movie, I can’t call it a Superman movie (plus nobody in the move calls him Superman and the two times someone tries they get cut off) and why I haven’t seen a proper live-action Superman in years. Superman & Lois I keep hearing is good but it lost me on the first episode because I don’t need to see Superman being a bad father to his show-only emo kid while the brother actually named for his in-comics son has no powers. Even animation, the perfect venue for Superman, seems to be losing its grip on what makes Superman so great. This cynical age continues to lose Superman, and that is not right.
Then there’s Gunn, the guy who made Scooby-Doo and Shaggy into druggies and Velma a lesbian for some reason until the studio told him no. (The latter would still happen in more recent shows and I still don’t understand it.) He did get away with making Scrappy-Doo the villain. He also already has issues keeping this continuity straight, as we try to figure out He is known for a brand of comedy that might work for the Guardians Of The Galaxy and Suicide Squad, but I don’t want to see in Superman. Superman III already overdid the comedy, and I defend the plot of that movie. Execution is another story. I’m not sure we want to go through this again.
Does James Gunn understand Superman? Does this actor, David Corenswet, who will be playing Superman, understand his character? Let’s try to answer both questions with a teaser and an article read.
It’s not the most hopeful teaser. But it’s not Man Of Steel levels of disappointing. Even the thumbnail they’re using as I write this has the muted colors of Snyder, and it’s the scene where people are throwing things at him. It even starts out with Superman fired into a snow crater and having to be brought home (presumably the Fortress Of Solitude) by his dog, though Krypto could easily carry Superman on his back. The only reason we have a Krypto is that James Gunn wanted to base him on his beloved dog. He’s not the right breed but I guess I can accept it. It’s not as off the mark as League Of Super-Pets. Yes, I’m still on that. When a show for even younger audiences and a bunch of shorts with the same idea can get Krypton, Ace, and company right, I’m going to call out the family picture for getting it wrong. At some point, you might as well be an original property. Seriously, someone in the comments for my review of that trailer got on my case for it.
Back to the colors for a minute, there are a few points where it looks brighter, but that could be the sun. (Symbol still hasn’t grown on me.) Sometimes sun does happen, but there’s still a lot of overcast. I wrote recently about Hollywood’s current issues with bright colors and sunlight, and this seems to be no different. There’s also a lot of Clark and Lois making out for a teaser, and if that dude with the bald head is supposed to be Jonathan Kent, Clark’s adoptive father and not his son, they didn’t cast him for a resemblance to the character. They went to the trouble of finally getting us a redheaded Jimmy Olsen, and they got that wrong. Odd. Maybe like Krypto he was chosen for a resemblance to someone Gunn knows? Lex Luthor is also a lot angrier looking, and why Luthorcorp instead of Lexcorp? The latter would be easier to say and match his ego more. None of this is a dealbreaker but…this is a review. I have to call this stuff out because this is how they’re trying to get us excited before dropping a real trailer in the hopes of getting us to the theater.
So do I have anything positive to say? I like that Krypto is in it. There aren’t a lot of live-action Kryptos. We see the way too many heroes that are going to be in this, but they didn’t distract too much. The full trailer might change that, but outside of Guy they do look like the characters from the comics, making Jonathan’s actor even more off and Krypto’s breed swap more obvious despite Gunn’s reasoning. At least he could get more respect than Scooby and Scrappy, and I see plushies in his future. Many, many plushies. Heck, I’d buy one if he had the cape and I know he’s the wrong breed. At least they got a really cute dog. If I spent more time on the negatives than the positives, note that I know nothing about the quality of the work because it’s only a teaser. It could be worse than I think, though right now all I see are the parts that get my attention, and the end result here is neutral.
If anything, that Variety article I mentioned got me more worried than the teaser. In it, Gunn admits we almost lost part of Superman’s outfit until David Corenswet spoke up.
“We were trying on all these different versions, and we screened tested with trunks and no trunks,” Gunn said. “And one of the things David said is that Superman wants kids to not be afraid of him. He’s an alien. He’s got these incredible powers. He shoots beams out of his eyes…He’s incredibly powerful and could be considered scary. He wants people to like him. He wants to be a symbol of hope and positivity. So he dresses like a professional wrestler. He dresses in a way that makes people unafraid of him, that shows that hope and shows that positivity. And that really clicked in for me.”
Superman has always had the trunks. It’s the boots that were added later.
The trunks originally came from a circus strongman, but I guess that would be a closer analog for most of today’s viewers. It also shows that the actor seems to understand Superman more than the director. Then again, Henry Cavill still defends his version of Superman down to the outfit, and he’s supposedly a huge fan of the character, which is why Warhammer fans may want to hold their celebration until his 40K movie comes out. Corenswet is right, though. Superman’s outfit is supposed to be about putting people’s mind at ease that he isn’t a monster, while also letting the bad guys know they’re in trouble. You don’t have to die to lose, you know. We do see a kid “praying” to Superman (which I’m not so happy about because that accidentally reinforces the “Supergod” perspective held by the haters), but he seems to be the only one outside of Lois who likes him.
“I think trying to pretend that Superman’s costume doesn’t have some frivolity to it at its base, trying to make it look serious, is silly because he is a superhero,” Gunn added. “He’s the first one, brightly colored and that’s who he is.”
Rewatch your trailer, James. He isn’t all that brightly colored. Certainly not as bright as earlier live-action depictions. The darker blues and reds started around the time of Superman Returns and hasn’t gotten back to the brighter colors of the Christopher Reeves outfit, the Lois & Clark outfit, or even the Superboy outfit. The black and white serials had a brighter costume than what you have. Also, he’s not the first one in your universe if this is early in his career and we’re seeing heroes that came later in the comics, like Mister Terrific and Hawkgirl out there. Otherwise I would agree with the statement. Why do you think so many people were so happy to finally see Hugh Jackman in the proper “yellow spandex”? Personally I preferred the brown outfit but that’s another discussion.
“It’s humorous, but it certainly is not as [comedic] as either ‘Suicide Squad’ or ‘Guardians,’” he explained. “There’s plenty of humor in it. People like Rachel [Brosnahan, who plays Lois Lane] are so funny and David is very [funny as well], so there’s humor in it, but it’s trying to create something that is grounded, but also it’s an incredibly fanciful world. It’s fantasy, it’s taking from other things like ‘Game of Thrones’ where it’s this universe where superheroes actually exist. What are they like? There’s a magic there that’s undeniable.”
Can you be grounded AND fanciful? The problem with live-action superheroes over their animated counterparts is that the unreality of animation allows you to suspend more disbelief because it so clearly is not our reality, so what looks silly even with good CG and effects is totally acceptable in a cartoon.
So with all this, I’m pretty much in the same spot I was before I watched the teaser: neutral. I’m not excited but I’m not ready to write it off. Maybe a full trailer will finally make me feel one way or the other.
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