The early work on 'Batman Forever' was heading for a much better movie than the one we got.
I think of the Schumacher movies as a reboot of the Adam West TV show. That's how I mentally made peace with them. I simply don't put them in the same Burton-verse with the first two movies.
That's probably a much better view of them.
It's a shame, too, because they had great casts. I still think that Clooney was a fantastic Bruce Wayne, but not a great Batman. Although so much of that is wrapped up in the campiness of it all that it's difficult to say. Campy Batman isn't my thing. I loved it as a kid because I just wanted to see Batman on TV, but I don't care to revisit that (unless it's the actual Adam West show).
Whenever writers try to scratch into Superman's psyche they start hitting classical messiah stuff. He is modern Hollywood/America's rendition of ***** (whether everybody realizes it or not). They swapped out the fishing nets & dirty sandals for a flashy outfit & physical powers. He's still a demigod who gets deposited on earth to be raised by unassuming humans. Eventually in the fullness of time he must embark on his destiny to save the world with his powers.
'Man of Steel' has Clark Kent difting around the country in a flannel shirt & beard for a while. It's just like a prophet who wandered off into the desert for 40 days & nights to clear his head & figure himself out. The parallels are right there.
Oh, they don't even try to hide it in Man of Steel. It's lampshaded plenty of times. That's what Snyder was going for. In hindsight, I actually came to really enjoy his take on superheroes. In a way, it reminded me of the probably-forgotten Immortals film that Henry Cavill also did. It's literally a Caravaggio painting done as a movie. So incredibly stylized. But it wasn't "Greek LOTR" so people basically rejected it the same way audiences rejected most of the Snyderverse version of the DCEU because they wanted Marvel.
During lockdown, I went back and re-watched everything in release order, culminating with the Snyder Justice League (which had just hit streaming then). It actually held together really, really well. It was
different from Marvel, but it was still interesting and I'm bummed we won't get to see where it would've headed if WB hadn't been such a dysfunctional company.
Snyder's Batman is a
broken Batman in BvS. People got all pissy about him killing and using guns, but
that's the point. He's hit that wall and it takes meeting Superman and forming the Justice League for him to turn around. I still don't love their version of Flash, but the Snyder (not Whedon, Snyder) version of Cyborg is also excellent and really well portrayed by Ray Fisher.
So much of the reactions to Snyder's stuff seem to be about them
expecting something like what had come before (Nolan -- whose best is, frankly, Batman Begins; Marvel; etc.), instead of just taking it for what it was on its own.
All that said, I think that there are other, more interesting ways to explore Superman than "Biblical Messiah in tights."
In some of the early non-canon texts about *****, he was doing more physical super-powered stuff too. The Bible passed down more of a Commie pacifist version of ***** but that's the Roman-Empire-approved edition.
(Edit: I'm not sure why that J-word is getting blocked. It's still a common first name in some cultures, like Mr. Quintana in 'Big Lebowski'. Whatever.)
I think it's because it can also be used as a "curse." Like "Jeebus tapdancing Christmas on a pogo stick!" (But, you know, substitute the actual words.)
Yeah that's totally why Cap worked so well. He stayed so likable after getting big muscles because they established him before the transformation and made sure he never stopped being that guy from the neck up.
Several years ago some unpublished early-1980s He-Man comic artwork turned up at an auction. It was a totally different origin story (from the one in the cartoon show that became canon.) It was basically a Captain America deal. He-Man starts off as a skinny kid who gets attacked by Skeletor and left for dead. He gets pumped up huge by a hi-tech wizard trying to save his life. He adopts the name He-Man because they had bullied him with that name back when he was skinny.
Yeah, He-Man had a couple origins. The toy line used to include these mini comics that I barely remember from when I was a kid, but they were super different from the cartoon show (and also different from the movie and later series, but that's a separate thing).
Cap worked for exactly that reason. As I recall, apart from the back-in-time versions of this film, we don't actually see Barry prior to getting powers (which is fine, not every origin needs to be shown). He's just weird and awkward in all the films because...uh...that's apparently just who he is.
The thing is, you can do weird and awkward and have it be endearing, or you can do weird and awkward and have it just be, well, weird and awkward. Especially in the Whedon version of the Justice League film, they
really lean into the "no, just weird" side, but they try to play it for laughs because Whedon tried to play everything for laughs and it just doesn't work. The scene that most stands out to me is when Flash is lying on top of Wonder Woman and it's just....so....so very cringey.
My hope is that they just...uh...shift to an entirely different reality where you can say "Ok, so the actors we actually like and who resonate with audiences are the heroes and villains who cross over, and the other actors...we just drop like a bad habit and move on." But god only knows what the studio will do. Zaslav doesn't care about making films or telling stories; he cares about extracting maximum profit for shareholders and that's all. He'll do that using whatever methods are available, including making films and TV shows, and then shelving them on the taxpayers' collective dime.
Gunn has more creative control, but that doesn't matter when your boss won't let them see the light of day because a tax break is more profitable overall. And who knows what they'll do when the strike is resolved.
coffee and maybe, like, hero worships the others!? Like one of those nerds who’ll watch this! A nerd avatar!!!”
“Uhhhhh… well… I can look into-“
“Get that weird kid from the kevin problem movie! Isn’t he Harry pottter now or something. Nerds like that! Just make him weird okay?”
“D*mmit”
Yeah, that's totally plausible, especially for WB at that time. They felt perpetually reactive and like they were chasing Marvel at every turn.
It's a shame because, when you view Snyder's cinematic universe as a whole, it has a real, distinct point of view and presentation that is fundamentally different from Marvel's, but it's one that I think actually works and would've proven to be a good slow-cooked meal. Of course, Hollywood needs flash fried instant success, so that's all done now.
