DC Universe

[EricJ]

There were about a dozen surviving Kryptonians in the print comics whenever they needed an "equal" villain for Superman, so I can see Krypton having war, refugees, and STILL blowing up. Like they said, pretty minor.

[ShyViolet]

Good article in the NYT:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/mo ... again.html

[Randall]

Pretty decent article, which provides me some further hope for the film. However, saying that Superman "hasn't been as suuccessful on the big screen as Batman" is misleading--- there's only been one Supes film in the past 25 years, and it was actually pretty successful commercially (even if it was considered a disappointment to the studio). There's just a lot of us who hated it.

This part struck me:

Though Mr. Goyer grew up admiring the Norman Rockwell-esque charm of the 1978 “Superman” movie, directed by Richard Donner and starring Christopher Reeve, he never felt much connection to its hero.

“I used to imagine that I was Batman,” Mr. Goyer said, “but not Superman.”

I would argue that this says at least as much about the viewer as the character. I always identified more with Superman.

[Ben]

When I was young I had a Batman costume and a Superman costume. The Batman costume was cool because you got to wear the cowl, but whenever a friend came over to play he would get the Batman costume because I wanted to be Superman.

The powers didn't matter: we could both "fly" (sticking to the comics, or not!) but Batman was all about vengeance, while Superman was all about hope. Being a positive person, I think I latched on to that pretty early on, which is why I've remained such a fan of the character.

I appreciate Batman and can enjoy the various depictions, but Superman is always Superman, whoever is playing the role or whoever is directing. They can be great incarnations, like Reeve/Donner's 1978 movie, and they can be heaps of crap, like the aforementioned Returns, but Superman is (almost) always there.

I'm finding with this new one, for all the changes (and I'm not really buying Zod at this point), that Superman at least seems to be being respected. However the movie turns out, I think Supes will be there again come June 14.

[ShyViolet]

Cool, I had a Batman Returns Catwoman mask!

Anyway, like I said before I have a good feeling about this one...from the trailers it really seems like they are trying to respet the "grandeur" of the mythos (unlike SR which despite being pigeonholed as "too sincere" tore it down, again and again, in every scene. )

[ShyViolet]

John Williams on MoS:

http://m.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a48 ... sweet.html

[Ben]

Surely he said "goodbye" to Chris Reeve with the last movie? And that one did use his music...maybe he heard how bad it was and declined to see it?

[EricJ]

Surely he said "goodbye" to Chris Reeve with the last movie? And that one did use his music...maybe he heard how bad it was and declined to see it?

John Williams was only contracted for the back-to-back Superman I+II; Ken Thorne used "themes" for the Richard Pryor Superman III, and...Golan/Globus on Superman IV? Yyyyeah, right. (Alexander Courage was available, though.)
So it's not like Williams has "suddenly" been put out to pasture, think Star Wars was the only franchise he ever went past three films on. (And still hopes to be involved with Disney's VII.)

[Ben]

Wait...is Eric trying to educate *me* on Williams' association with Superman scoring!? Ah, bless...

Williams wrote the music for The Movie only, and declined to return, as did Brando and Hackman, when Donner was fired from II. Lester then brought in his own musical composer Thorne who was told to adapt Williams because the Salkinds knew how important Williams' themes were to the success of the films.

On III, Thorne wrote a bit of his own stuff but, was still required to use Williams' themes. Williams continued a friendship with Reeve and so it can be assumed he eventually saw those films. Due to that friendship, Reeve asked Williams to come back on IV, which was intended to be a return to form.

We all know how that turned out, but Williams did actually provide new themes for IV, hence his music credit ("by", not "based on"). Scheduling meant he couldn't supervise the music himself but he personally asked Courage to step in for him (this was before the budget was cut and the score wasn't performed by the LSO).

Williams was asked to come on to Returns but obviously felt a dose of what crud Singer was developing as he declined. Perhaps this was where saying "goodbye" to Reeve would prove most stessful: after his accident Williams fully endorsed the Superman theme as stage music for Reeve's charity endeavors and so it probably became more a Chris Reeve theme to him than a Superman one.

To have written Returns using that music after his friend's death must have been impossible but it was the right choice. I think Ottman screwed up the music even more than he did the lazy, sloppy editing.

It's a bit of a shame the Williams score isn't being used for MOS but the new intention is clear. I think that's the right choice too, even if it does sound like any other Zimmer-influenced modern day blockbuster grouping of notes. Rather tuneless, the synthesized orchestra approach sounds not far off a typically bombastic episode of Smallville to me.

Ho-hum...that spirit seems to be there, and I think Cavill is shaping up to be a terrific Supes (even if we don't see Clark Kent until the end, setting things up for MOS 2).

That S is a symbol of hope, after all...



(Oh...and of course Indiana Jones made it to four instalments.)

[Vernadyn]

Nice to see that I'm not the only one who thought Ottman's score to Superman Returns was dire. He's done some decent stuff I guess, but superhero scores are definitely not his forte. Though, after hearing the samples and the released track for Man of Steel, the score for Superman Returns suddenly isn't looking quite as bad....

I am cautiously interested in the film itself, despite my not liking the two Snyder films I've seen (Sucker Punch and Watchmen, and I greatly enjoyed the original graphic novel of the latter).

[Dacey]

At the risk of being banned from this forum, I actually thought the score for Returns was alright. Especially the love them for Superman and Lois.

And I loved Sucker Punch...except for the ending, which killed all the crazy fun that had come before.

[Ben]

I didn't mind Ottman's *new* stuff for Returns, but hated how he hamfisted the orchestrations of the Williams themes. That said, the Lois theme didn't match Williams...it was "alright" modern scoring but didn't really fit into the rest of the score.

I think, essentially, Ottman stretched himself too thin in editing and composing that one. I think as he was editing he was thinking of cues and "cutting" to that, but when he came to write the score he'd forgotten why he'd cut things the way he did and the tempo (or lack of it) to his cuts.

I've only seen the middle of Sucker Punch - not the way to see it (or any movie) I know, but it was on and I missed the start. I left it on in the background and what I caught looked pretty cool, but then I had to go out and miss the end. I would have "taped" it but it didn't turn back up on the movie channels we had for the Oscars period (we add the movie channels to our line up for the Oscars and record what we can to the drive for later viewing).

[Ben]

Pretty fun...

http://metropolismayhem.manofsteel.com/

[ShyViolet]

Kevin Smith on MoS, comics and film:

Warning: lots of ads, plus the usual KS profanity:

http://www.geek.com/news/interview-kevi ... s-1556719/

[ShyViolet]

Very good early buzz:

http://www.slashfilm.com/early-buzz-man ... reat-time/

*Profanity in comments*