Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Basically, SR did what the new Alien film will do for that series: take the first two films and make a sequel to them, ignoring the latter two. The film has a lot of problems with its timeline and portrayal of pretty much every character, including Superman (it outright states that he just left the planet directly after beating Zod and his cronies in Superman II, abandoning Lois Lane, who was pregnant with his kid, and letting Lex Luthor leave prison). Every actor in it was basically imitating the ones from the older films instead of trying to actually find their own portrayal. And that's just the beginning. About the only thing it had going for it was a genuine sense of optimism/hope and lack of any sort of cynicsm, it's about as far tonally from Man of Steel as you could get.

Agreed, on principle. My favorite scenes in MoS are the ones that, taken out of context, feel more like an actual Superman film: Superman talking to Lois in the interrogation room, then casually breaking his handcuffs and speaking directly through a one-way mirror being the main one.

My brothers and I joke that Man of Steel is the best Dragonball Z movie ever made.

 

In a word: Super-stalker.

 

Also Superman's kid kills a dude with a piano and it's played for laughs.

 

Actually, having just gone back to watch it, it isn't played for laughs. But I remember laughing when I saw it the first time.

 

Just remember the Arnie exchange from True Lies:

 

Of course, when Zahn tries to hint at this with Mara - some readers are having none of it:

http://jadecrusades.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/timothy-zahn.html

Interviewer: How do you think Mara has been sufficiently redeemed for what she did as the Emperor's Hand?

Zahn: How has she been redeemed? She’s been a pretty good friend to the New Republic, I think. I went into that in the “Hand of Thrawn” with the fact that she wasn't really of the Dark Side because she was serving as best she knew. Many of the people she assassinated were corrupt, and were evil in their own way. Not just enemies Palpatine was trying to get out of the way, they were actually people who - I hate to say it - deserved to die. She was actually doing justice in many cases.

 

Wait, so does that say something about that scene or about your sense of humor?

 

...Iron_lord, people don't go with that because it's a retcon symptomatic of Zahn's compulsive whitewashing of characters.

 

Same principle applies. Mara is to Zahn, as Tasker is to whoever wrote True Lies. Some authors like to portray their favourite characters as "only killing bad people".

 

Interesting choice. Isn't that the same period of time that Alien: Isolation takes place in?

 

Yup. 15 years after the original Alien to be precise.

 

Except, again, with Zahn it's backpedaling and whitewashing instead of just introducing the character like that from the start. This isn't really the place for a serious debate on the subject, but it's an apples to oranges comparison.

 

Hmmf. The new Alien movie better not undo Alien: Isolation.

 

OK. I've created a new thread for it:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...-it-how-accurate-is-that-reputation.50027801/

 

Only one problem: Different stories work by different rules and there is no consistency in perception either!

 

Backtracking slightly (blame House of Cards) but: as someone with, crucially maybe, very little romantic attachment to DC canon or Superman as a concept, all the complaints I hear about MoS read like "it was bad because they made him less boring". 100% morally pure Superman may be more true to the traditional version of the character, but the traditional version isn't interesting. If you try to do that nowadays you get SR--and even there people complain about him being a deadbeat dad. I don't even know that MoS is a good movie, but it's as good as I can imagine a modern Superman movie being.

 

Pretty much says it all. Although personally I thought that MoS was a good movie.

 

I see MoS as Superman-by-way-of-Spider-Man. The entire ending is to Clark what Uncle Ben's death is to Peter--he's not sure what to do with this power he's got, so his first time out of the gate he stumbles hard, and spends the rest of his career trying to make up for that. The only difference is that when Peter Parker ****s up, his uncle dies. When Superman ****s up a whole city dies--but that just makes him even more motivated, hence the supreme moralist he ultimately becomes. His morality doesn't just appear fully-formed because his parents were totes awesome; he earns it by making mistakes and paying the price.

 

I thought that the problem with Man of Steel was that it was boring.

 

This is why I have a hope for the story of Batman v Superman (if not otherwise re: a lot of the other creative decisions made along the way), because having Clark own up to his mistakes (and the mistakes of the previous film) makes for compelling drama. It's something that I wish movie sequels did more often, especially if the first film had flaws. Of course, it hardly guarantees that the following film will actually be any better. Focusing too much on patching up holes in the previous story means that you aren't focused on your own. Into Darkness got points from me for having Pike call Kirk out on his arrogance and sense of entitlement early on and relinquish his command of the Enterprise, and Amazing Spider-Man 2: Electric Boogaloo has a lot more humor in it than the first film did, and has Spidey trying to talk Electro down instead of just showing up and punching him. And we all know how those movies turned out.

 

I said less boring. Than, y'know, SR.

 

SR did contribute the Kevin Spacey Lex Luthor "WROOOOOONG!" meme at least, so it deserves that much credit.