Trending: What If Man of Steel Was in Color?

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

Dawn of Justice's recent trailer got me thinking about Man of Steel.  Now, I would be lying if I said that I didn't like Man of Steel: liked it, in fact, more than I ever thought that I would like a Superman movie.  The only issues that I took with the movie were purely aesthetic, and apparently I'm not alone in thinking that:

Despite being a surprisingly great movie, the one thing that always bothered me about Man of Steel was that it never once looked like a Superman movie.  It adopted a Dark Knight aesthetic that was nothing short of depressing.  A character who literally wears a symbol of hope on his chest shouldn't adopt the same color scheme as a guy who wears a symbol of fear on his.

That's why this video took me so strongly by surprise: because there actually was a gorgeous-looking movie underneath its drag, post-production color palette.  The skies were sunny, the suit was bright and you could actually see what was going on during those allegedly daytime scenes.

The difference between the two frames is absurd.  One is colorful and pleasant to look at.  The other is drearily overcast and actually wears pretty heavily on your eyes after a while.  One is a movie that I want to see, and the other is one that I'll put up with seeing.  One looks like a Superman movie while the other looks like a Batman movie.

While I have to tip my hat to Snyder's consistency in vision across these movies, I absolutely agree with the video's narrator that there's a great opportunity here to visually contrast these two heroes with their coloring.  Superman can be bright and cheerful while Batman's allowed to brood in the shadows.  Why does DC have to shoehorn its movies into a "one size fits all" tone?

That is unquestionably one of the many things that Marvel has going for it in the inevitable showdown between the two movie franchises.  Marvel allows each of its movies to adopt a tone and genre that is appropriate for what its trying to accomplish.

That's why The First Avenger is colored by misty-eyed nostalgia while The Winter Soldier is a dark, Nolan-esque spy thriller.  It's why Iron Man is a good-natured action-comedy and Guardians of the Galaxy is a manic, balls to the wall space opera.  Marvel is confident that its properties are enough to hold people's interest, while DC's wary of anything that isn't Batman.

DC just needs to accept that Superman isn't Batman.  He's Superman.  That means sunlight, blue skies and, yes, a lot of color.  I'll say this about the original Superman movies: they might not have been the best movies ever, but they looked and felt right.

So what do you think of DC's monochromatic aesthetic for its superhero movies?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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