Throwback Thursday: Why I'm Still Concerned About Dawn of Justice

In which I revisit old articles from Filmquisition and Unreality.

The big news this week was the new Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer: our first substantive look at

DC’s follow-up to Man of Steel and that company’s answer to Captain America: Civil War.

Ever since details about the movie started coming out during production, I’ve harbored some

severely mixed feelings on the subject, best summed up as “hopeful, but cautiously pessimistic.”

When it comes down to it, I’m actually a huge fan of Man of Steel.  I enjoyed it far more than I thought that I would ever enjoy a Superman movie.  It managed to turn DC’s omnipotent boy scout into a genuinely sympathetic and engaging character.  What’s more is that it did so while delivering one of the most riveting action climaxes that I’ve seen from any movie this side of The Avengers.  Say what you will about ol’ Supes leveling Metropolis, but it was needlessly entertaining to watch him do it.

Despite everything that Man of Steel got right, though, it never once felt like a Superman movie.  It employed an overcast, grim-looking, Dark Knight aesthetic that was completely out of place for this particular franchise.  Zack Snyder filtered out nearly all of the color from the original cut of the movie until everything looked drab and washed out.  So although it had an entertaining twist on a traditionally stuffy character, we had to sit through footage that made it look like you needed to adjust the contrast settings on your TV.

From what we’ve been able to glean from the trailer, Snyder’s not simply maintained this grimdark status quo, but exploded it to absurdly darker levels.  With the exception of a single shot of Superman against a washed-out sun (and maybe a shot of him dead-lifting what appears to be a satellite), every last second of the trailer takes place at night.

That’s fine for a Batman movie.  Darkness is his whole shtick and he wears it well.  But what works for Batman doesn’t inherently work for Superman.  He’s Batman’s daytime foil: a fact that you couldn’t possibly get from Superman stalking around at night posturing like some kind of super-powered SS agent.

Seriously, I honestly thought that this was building this up to be an adaptation of Injustice in its final moments.  Everything was so absurdly over the top, from the Atlas-styled statue of Superman defaced with “False God” to the whispering voice-overs saying things like “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “Devils don’t come from Hell beneath us, they come from the sky.”  There was even a shot of armed men kneeling before him.  Exactly what part of any of this screams “Superman?”

The way it stands now, I’m afraid of what Justice League‘s actual plot is going to be.  Is it going to be the League in full joining forces to take down Darkseid (or an equally stakes-raising villain), or is it going to be Batman rallying the world’s other heroes against a rogue Superman who’s more than happy to dispense his personal brand of justice from on high?  I simply don’t see how we can possibly get from this version of Superman to the status quo between now and 2017.

The more that I think about it, the more inherently wrong having a Batman vs Superman movie this soon into the fledgling DC Cinematic Universe feels.  The thing about The Dark Knight Returns (from which this film draws most of its inspiration) is that it was set decades after these characters first met.  They had fought and worked alongside one another for year before their moral and political ideologies came to blows.

That fight meant something, not because it was two amped up dudes in tights duking it out in the streets, but because it was Batman and Superman: two characters that we had known and watched develop into the people that they were for years on end.  This is the first time that we’ll see this version of Batman.  This is the first time that these two characters will have met one another.  How can we possibly invest ourselves in a showdown when we simply don’t know these versions of these characters (and especially when this version of Superman is so far off base)?

Now, everything Batman about this trailer absolutely works.  Ben Affleck has the grim, brooding look of a haunted man trying (and failing) nightly to somehow undo his parents fate.  Jeremy Irons’ voice over as Alfred comes off as the perfect cross between Gotham‘s Sean Pertwee and Michael’s Caine’s “some men want to watch the world burn” speech from The Dark Knight.  This may very well be the best version of the Batman costume ever put to film, and that’s not even touching on how awesome-looking the robotic version is.

This trailer makes me stoked about The Suicide Squad.  It makes me stoked about another Batman movie.  It makes me stoked about Nightwing or Batgirl or any other Bat-based spin off Warner Bros comes up with.  It does not, however, make me any more excited about Dawn of Justice.

Understand, I’m still planning on watching this movie the second that it comes out.  I’m still

hoping to like it (and just being as good as Man of Steel will be enough for me).  I just can’t

bring myself to get my hopes up when I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s actually Superman

flying around in the sky.

So what do you think about Dawn of Justice at this point in its production?  Are you more excited than trepidatious about it?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Lady's Choice: Favorite Superhero Movies!

Guess who's taking over!

Hello, everyone! If you don't know who it could possibly be, then you might want to go back and read a few of Brian's posts. I'm Becky, and I am taking over....well every now and again. Brian will still be doing articles on my behalf, but since I'm done with school for the summer, I'll do a few. This series is basically about whatever I want. And with Avengers: Age of Ultron out for about a month now, I though I'd start off with some of my favorite superhero movies!

Now, some full disclosure is probably needed. I am a Marvel fangirl for the most part. I do love some DC; however, when compared to how much a like, Marvel wins. That's a topic for another day. I am going to do a "Top 10 List" with no actually ranking. I'm including animated and live action, newer and older. But these are all incredible watches.

Let's start this off with some honorable mentions (a.k.a. Top 22)

• Batman Forever (1995)
• X-Men: First Class(2011)
• Thor (2011)
• Man of Steel (2013)
• Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
• Green Lantern (2011)
• Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox (2013)
• Batman Begins (2005)
• The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014)
• Megamind (2010)
• X-Men (200)

Now on to the top ten! (Reminder: They are not ranked.)

The Incredibles (2004)

If you haven't read any previous posts involving me, then it be known that I am a huge Disney and Pixar fan. Sometimes The Incredibles is forgotten by people for Finding Nemo or Toy Story, which is sad. This movie is more than just about a super family. It is about being comfortable in your own skin and with the world around you. Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) is a grown man becoming more comfortable with who he was and who he has become with being a husband and father. Helen Parr (Elastigirl) has to come to terms with being a superhero and a mother. All three of the kids, Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack, are having to learn to embrace the balance of being super and having a secret identity, though Jack-Jack not so much. The supporting cast is also incredible from the family's best bud Fro-Zone to the world famous fashion designer to the superheroes Edna Mode.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

When it comes to passions aside from movies, history is probably top of the list. This is probably one of the reason I went ga-ga over the first Captain America movie (and yes it is not real history). It also helps that it is treated as a historical drama before it is a superhero movie. All of the actors are also on point, from Tommy Lee Jones to our main man himself Chris Evans. Chris was not a new comer to superhero movies when he took up the iconic shield. However, from start to end I only saw him as Captain America, not the Human Torch (Fantastic Four - 2005). Brian has already reviewed this movie if you want his point of view. I love so much about this movie from Steve's progression from a simple boy from Brooklyn to the hero who defeats Hydra and being willing to sacrifice everything in order to do so. As usual with Marvel movies, the dialogue is just as good as the action sequences. There was a love interest but it didn't dominate the movie. As with a lot of other superhero origin stories, Steve has to deal with the fact that he is no longer a "normal" person, that he has responsibility. Visually it is also stunning. The attention to detail is great. Combine everything, the visuals, the script, the acting, the special effects, and it makes for one of the best superhero movies. 

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Yes, another Marvel movie. I promise that not all the movies are Marvel based. Thor: The Dark World is more along the lines of a "fallout" movie. We see what the god of thunder has been up to since returning to Asgard with Loki. We see how his interactions with Asgardians and other worlds has matured and become less like those of a spoiled boy and more like that of a leader. He and Jane just can't be kept apart. She's put in danger while looking for Thor, so Thor does his best to try and protect her. We also see a different side of Loki. Now I was never a Loki fan when it came to the comics. However, from the first Thor movie through this one, my love of this Loki has grown. A good part of that is how well Tom Hiddleston portrays Thor's half brother. The other part has to be all of the changes that Loki goes through from movie to movie, particularly the humanizing emotions portrayed in Dark World. The main villain was wasted, but that did not make a huge difference to me. 

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Uga-Chaka. Uga-Chaka. Guardians of the Galaxy is that movie that I can watch over and over and over again. In the long run it fits in with all of the Earth based movie, but I think a huge part of its draw is just how different it is from all of the other Marvel movies and franchises. Guardians has an amazing soundtrack with both Starlord's mix tape and the score for the movie. Between the talking tree and raccoon duo (neither of which I could tell who was doing the voice work for them ) to the wrestler turned big-screen actor portraying Drax, the cast of characters was completely left field. I honestly think the script was written kind of like the Captain America script with it being a superhero movie second. This time though the dialogue lends me to think that it was written as a comedy first. The visuals are breathtaking and work well with the story. Overall, this was one of my favorite movies of 2014. 

The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

What can I say about this movie that Brian hasn't already. It was amazing. I loved the inclusion of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Vision. The best part of this movie wasn't the action sequences. The interactions between the Avengers themselves as well as the other character. The party scene towards the beginning of the movie is one of Marvel's best so far. I laughed so hard the entire time including during Stan Lee's cameo and the competition to left Thor's hammer. Ultron was cool and definitely a threat, but I felt like this movie was more about good friends learning more about each other and where they would go from here. Hawkeye also played a much bigger part which made me extremely happy. Overall, it's an extremely good movie but I'm already looking forward to Ant-Man later this summer.

Batman: Assault on Arkham (2014)

And DC makes its first appearance on my top 10. I will definitely give DC this: its animated movies are spectacular. Assault on Arkham was the first one to grab my attention. I am a huge Harley Quinn fan. I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series on TV and loved her and the Joker. When I saw this at the video rental store, I grabbed it off the shelf so fast that Brian knew we'd be watching it the moment we got home. In fact, Brian reviewed this movie that week as one of his Diamond in the Rough posts. This movie is wonderfully drawn and voice acted and it excels where DC tends to: the villains. This rag-tag group known as the Suicide Squad shows the variety of villains that are present in the DC universes. Though out the movie, you only really know Deadshot's true motives and come to questions everyone else's motives. Batman doesn't actually make an appearance until a good way into the movie, making it more of a Suicide Squad movie rather than a Batman movie.

The Avengers (2012)

This is movie is where I started to see a trend in Marvel movies: it isn't all about the action. Yes, the action sequences are done really well, but the strength of the movie lies in the overall story and the characters themselves. While all of the actors give really good performances, Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson are probably the two that stand out. Hiddleston/Loki found a huge fangirl following after this movie that wasn't really present after Thor. Gregg/Coulson had been present in most of the previous movies leading to this superhero team up. He was Captain's biggest fan and became the uniting force behind the team. The dialogue in the movie has some extremely memorable moments. A personal favorite of mine is when Iron Man and Thor are fighting over Loki in the woods. Iron Man: "Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?" There is a reason that it resonated so well with audiences worldwide.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

Technically this is a Marvel property, but I'm classifying it as a Disney movie since it was made by Disney. Big Hero 6 is somewhat about a team becoming superheroes. Mostly it is a story about Hiro Hamada and dealing with the loss of his brother Tadashi. Baymax's role in the whole movie is to be Hiro caretaker. He becomes a superhero to help Hiro's emotional state but ends up becoming his best friend. This movie was about family and striving to be more than you currently are. Big Hero 6 follows its Marvel roots with being about Hiro and his friends' journey first and being superheroes second. All the members of the team become superheroes to help Hiro then stay to help others. While I am hesitant for a sequel to Big Hero 6, I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it either.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Batman Begins made my honorable mentions list, and The Dark Knight has made it here onto my top 10 list. This movie is dark and pushes Batman to the point of breaking. Performances were all good with the best being Heather Ledger as the Joker and Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon. As I have said before, I'm a huge fan of DC villains, and Harley Quinn and Joker are my favorite Batman villains. Harley doesn't make an appearance in this movie, but the Joker lives up to his reputation of being Batman's #1 villain. Ledger put everything into what ended up being his last performance. He puts this edge on Joker that made him all that more compelling, especially with having others make the choices of who will live and who will die. My only hope is that the Joker in the Suicide Squad can live up to this high standard.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

To round out the list, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This was Brian's #1 of Phase 2 (not including Ant-Man which isn't out yet). Above everything else, this movie feels like a natural progression for Steve Rogers. He's been S.H.I.E.L.D.'s go to guy for awhile, but remember that Steve's a soldier not a spy. His actions lead to bringing down what S.H.I.E.L.D. has become, but he doesn't do it alone. Every person within this movie has to make the same choice that Rogers has to make: who am I and where do I stand? Again, Marvel made this a superhero movie with great dialogue, great visuals, great costumes, great sound, etc. I think they also threw in a bit of a spy movie. Rogers and Black Widow being tracked down reminds me of chase scenes that I have seen in the Bourne movies or the Bond series. I am doing the impatience dance to see what comes next for the Cap' in the upcoming movies. 

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Trending: JL8

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

Every now and again I get sucked into really specific obsessions.  Lately that obsession has been webcomics, all thanks to stumbling upon JL8: a webcomic that reimagines DC's expansive cast of characters as eight-year-olds.  It's adorable, hilarious and endlessly addictive.

As of this article, the series is 200 comics of concentrated awesomeness.  After coming across it one night after a closing shift, I stayed up until after three in the morning: reading them all in a single sitting.  I told myself when I started to hear the birds rousing outside that I was going to go to bed after just one more strip, but that clearly didn't happen.

The thing about JL8 is that it is hopelessly earnest.  It's a heartfelt slice-of-life comic with strong silver-age sensibilities and a true understanding about what makes each of its characters tick.

Bruce and Clark are friends, even if they don't see eye to eye on most things.  Barry and Hal are the immature pranksters, even if one's more of a clown and the other's basically Benny from The Lego Movie.  Diana is a princess who hates the idea of being some kind of damsel in distress, while Karen wants nothing less than to live inside of a fairy tale.  J'onn is the icing on the cake: an exchange student from Mars who plays the straight man to everybody else's increasingly zany antics.

While the strip does wax from adorable to joke-of-the-day, the focus generally on larger story arcs, most of which clock in at around 50 strips.  The first narrative arc has the boys incredibly self-conscious after a local newspaper refers to them as kids (exacerbated by the 4th grade bullies - Toy Maker, Bane, Poison Ivy, Cheetah, Lex Luthor, Captain Cold and Joker - picking on them).  Their solution?  Get super serious by changing into their New 52 costumes, a change that doesn't sit well with Clark.

The second - and my personal favorite - takes place in the days leading up to Wonder Woman's birthday party.  Antics include Bruce giving Clark advice on how to pick up women (specifically Diana), Diana trying to set Karen up with Clark, Barry eating all of the snacks and Bruce's crippling fear of clowns.

The most recent arc - concluded just before the comic went on hiatus in May - has Hal going on a camping trip with his boy scouts-themed Green Lantern friends.  Barry and J'onn tag along to go Bigfoot hunting and win a bet against Bruce.

The comic is short enough to read in just one setting (or several smaller ones if you don't have a single stretch to read them in) and well worth the time you invest into it.  Casual fans of DC comics will still find a lot to enjoy in this Peanuts-styled comic strip about adorable children finding their way in the world.  More dedicated fans, however, will find tons of in-jokes and on-point references that greatly enhance the surface-level narrative.

Although currently on hold, new strips should start cropping up sometime in the next couple of weeks.  Feel free to check them out here.

So what are your favorite versions of DC's heroes and villains?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Throwback Thursday: Why I'm Still Worried About Batman vs Superman

In which I revisit old articles from Filmquisition and Unreality.

The big news this week was the new Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer: our first substantive look at DC’s follow up to Man of Steel and that company’s answer to Captain America: Civil War.  Ever since details about the movie started coming out during production, I’ve harbored some severely mixed feelings on the subject, best summed up as “hopeful, but cautiously pessimistic.”

When it comes down to it, I’m actually a huge fan of Man of Steel.  I enjoyed it far more than I thought that I would ever enjoy a Superman movie.  It managed to turn DC’s omnipotent boy scout into a genuinely sympathetic and engaging character.  What’s more is that it did so while delivering one of the most riveting action climaxes that I’ve seen from any movie this side of The Avengers.  Say what you will about ol’ Supes leveling Metropolis, but it was needlessly entertaining to watch him do it.

Despite everything that Man of Steel got right, though, it never once felt like a Superman movie.  It employed an overcast, grim-looking, Dark Knight aesthetic that was completely out of place for this particular franchise.  Zack Snyder filtered out nearly all of the color from the original cut of the movie until everything looked drab and washed out.  So although it had an entertaining twist on a traditionally stuffy character, we had to sit through footage that made it look like you needed to adjust the contrast settings on your TV.

From what we’ve been able to glean from the trailer, Snyder’s not simply maintained this grimdark status quo, but exploded it to absurdly darker levels.  With the exception of a single shot of Superman against a washed-out sun (and maybe a shot of him dead-lifting what appears to be a satellite), every last second of the trailer takes place at night.

That’s fine for a Batman movie.  Darkness is his whole shtick and he wears it well.  But what works for Batman doesn’t inherently work for Superman.  He’s Batman’s daytime foil: a fact that you couldn’t possibly get from Superman stalking around at night posturing like some kind of super-powered SS agent.

Seriously, I honestly thought that this was building this up to be an adaptation of Injustice in its final moments.  Everything was so absurdly over the top, from the Atlas-styled statue of Superman defaced with “False God” to the whispering voice-overs saying things like “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “Devils don’t come from Hell beneath us, they come from the sky.”  There was even a shot of armed men kneeling before him.  Exactly what part of any of this screams “Superman?

The way it stands now, I’m afraid of what Justice League‘s actual plot is going to be.  Is it going to be the League in full joining forces to take down Darkseid (or an equally stakes-raising villain), or is it going to be Batman rallying the world’s other heroes against a rogue Superman who’s more than happy to dispense his personal brand of justice from on high?  I simply don’t see how we can possibly get from this version of Superman to the status quo between now and 2017.

The more that I think about it, the more inherently wrong having a Batman vs Superman movie this soon into the fledgling DC Cinematic Universe feels.  The thing about The Dark Knight Returns (from which this film draws most of its inspiration) is that it was set decades after these characters first met.  They had fought and worked alongside one another for year before their moral and political ideologies came to blows.

That fight meant something, not because it was two amped up dudes in tights duking it out in the streets, but because it was Batman and Superman: two characters who we had known and watched develop into the people that they were for years on end.  This is the first time that we’ll see this version of Batman.  This is the first time that these two characters will have met one another.  How can we possibly invest ourselves in a showdown when we simply don’t know these versions of these characters (and especially when this version of Superman is so far off base)?

Now, everything Batman about this trailer absolutely works.  Ben Affleck has the grim, brooding look of a haunted man trying (and failing) nightly to somehow undo his parents’ fate.  Jeremy Irons’ voice over as Alfred comes off as the perfect cross between Gotham‘s Sean Pertwee and Michael’s Caine’s “some men want to watch the world burn” speech from The Dark Knight.  This may very well be the best version of the Batman costume ever put to film, and that’s not even touching on how awesome-looking the robotic version is.

This trailer makes me stoked about The Suicide Squad.  It makes me stoked about another Batman movie.  It makes me stoked about Nightwing or Batgirl or any other Bat-based spin off Warner Bros comes up with.  It does not, however, make me any more excited about Dawn of Justice.

Understand, I’m still planning on watching this movie the second that it comes out.  I’m still hoping to like it (and just being as good as Man of Steel will be enough for me).  I just can’t bring myself to get my hopes up when I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s actually Superman flying around in the sky.

So are you excited about the upcoming Dawn of Justice, or are your expectations a bit more tempered?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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From the Vault: Man of Steel

In which I review a movie from my collection.

With all of this Dawn of Justice talk in the air, I figured that it was high time to revisit a movie that I never actually thought that I would like going into it: Man of Steel.  I've never been a big Superman fan; he's basically always struck me as an infinitely less interesting Captain America: a boyscout with no discernible personality other than being a decidedly good guy.  The first movie with Christopher Reeve was solid, but the series quickly spiraled into stupidity from there.  Man of Steel was DC's first real crack at the character in years, and they had a lot to prove given the competition.

In the last days of Krypton, Jor El and his wife Lara commit treason by giving birth to a son: Kal, who is sent to Earth where he will live on as the last son of Krypton.  When General Zod's opportunistic coup is put down, however, he swears vengeance on the Kal, vowing to track him down to the ends of the universe for what his parents did to him.  But a greater destiny awaited him on Earth: to become the hero that the planet desperately deserved.

I will readily admit that I never expected to enjoy a Superman movie this much going into it.  There was actually more to this version of the character than "a genuinely good guy masquerading as a buffoon."  He's a troubled young man desperately trying to find his place in a world that he knows he doesn't belong to.  After discovering where it is that he really came from, however, he steps up to become a beacon of hope to his adopted people and save them from a decidedly Kryptonian threat.

Besides that, the movie featured some incredibly top-notch action sequences.  In particular, the final fight between Zod and Superman was some of the best stuff that I've seen in superhero movies to date.  While it's not quite "Battle of New York" good, it's a savage smack down that's everything I ever wanted to see from what essentially amounts to a battle of gods.

That being said, though, the movie is really flawed in a few fundamental ways.  As I've already enumerated on, Man of Steel neither looks nor feels like a Superman movie.  That's not to say that I miss the comic-looking Reeve movies, just that a Superman movie aught to look like, well, a Superman movie.  It needlessly adopted a gritty, Dark Knight aesthetic that was completely wrong for the franchise because that's what Warner Bros figured would sell.

While I do appreciate the new direction that they took with the character - trying to actually make him dynamic and interesting - they didn't fully succeed at that task.  He definitely has a Hell of a lot more to work with than Supermen of the past, but it all came off as more than a little heavy handed and vaguely adolescent.  And while there's always been a religious aspect to the character (basically having Moses' childhood and Jesus' adulthood, only with more punching), the ways in which the movie manifests this subtext is far too blatant and overbearing.

Zod is an incredibly one-note villain, given life through an absurdly over-the-top performance.  While I really liked the literal twist of his life's purpose - that he was raised to protect Krypton specifically and nothing less than an actual, factual Krypton would do - that comes up so far into the movie, and preceded by so much over-the-top screen time, that it's pretty much a case of too little, too late.

I also never cared for its needlessly non-linear story-telling on the Earth side of things.  Now, I love Memento and The Imitation Game as much as the next guy, but those movies worked precisely because they demanded that kind of non-traditional editing.  Man of Steel is a big budget action movie where aliens punch each other until the world around them is leveled into dust.  The arrangement of the film is both unnecessary and distracting to the actual story that it's trying to tell, and I can't help but feel like it was utilized at least partly to hide a substandard coming of age narrative under its superheroic dressing

Upon rewatching the movie, I was surprised at how little Clark's soul searching quest held up in retrospect.  Sure, none of it's bad, but it's never quite interesting enough to really care about.  On top of that, Jonathon Kent is probably the worst father in the history of cinema: telling his godly son that he should have let his entire class die because saving them might draw a bit of unwanted (and decidedly local) attention to himself.  I agree that his altruism should be tempered with caution, but what he was talking about was standing by and watching dozens of innocent children die for the most thinly justified of reasons.

And for as awesome as the first half hour is on Krypton - seriously, at one point we watch Jor-El fly a dragon through an alien apocalypse - the terrestrial half never quite held up to that opening sequence's promise.  It had a good cast, good director and a bloated budget, but never quite came together into the Superman movie that it was trying to be.

If this is the best that we can expect from DC, they should quickly prove to be no competition for Marvel cinematically.  I can only hope that from here on out, they'll make Superman feel like Superman, Batman feel like Batman and have everybody else fall somewhere in between the two.  That's not to say that Man of Steel is a bad movie, just that it's it's a reasonably solid one that simply fails to hold up as well as it should on repeated viewings.

Rating:  7.5/10

Buy on BluRay:  If you can look past its glaring flaws, there's a pretty solid movie there.

So what did you think of Man of Steel?  Does it make you excited for the nascent DC Cinematic Universe's future outings?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trailer Park: CBS' Supergirl Takes Flight

In which I discuss the latest movie trailers.

It's been a long time in coming, but our first, substantive look at CBS' new Supergirl series is finally here.  And, truth be told, I'm not 100% sure what to think about it.  In some ways, I'm glad that it's an upgrade from the Smallville clone that I feared it could be, but the final product seems a lot... sitcommier than I would have pegged it as.  Check it out for yourself here:

It basically looks like what would happen if Kara Zor-El worked for Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.  That's not a judgment, mind you, just the general impression that this extended trailer leaves.  I actually liked the movie and CBS seems to have nailed the franchise's tone perfectly: light, sunny and generally upbeat.  This is something that her cousin could benefit from on the big screen.

What I found especially interesting about this particular series is that it seems to desperately want to be a part of the nascent DCCU.  Aside from actually being in color, it takes most of its visual cues from Snyder's movies.  Kara's modern costume and dark coloration seems to be right out of Man of Steel.  Additionally, the visuals of Krypton, snippets of Jesus "Superman" Christ and the emphasis of her costume's "S" as her family's crest all hit the exact same notes as Warner Brothers' movies.

The internet, however, doesn't seem to share my cautious optimism.  Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy has seemingly set the golden standard for what people should expect from DC adaptations.  Arrow kept things dark and somber.  Man of Steel bullheadedly adopted a gritty, Batman aesthetic and Dawn of Justice looks like it's going to be more of the same.

People can't seem to get over the fact that Supergirl feels like, well, Supergirl.  It's bright and cheery and optimistic.  It's fun and girly and more of a romantic comedy with a little bit of action thrown in than a somber, action-heavy drama.

This isn't Batman and isn't trying to be.  And you know what?  That's okay.  That's what Supergirl is.  That's what Marvel's long since come to terms with: every franchise should be allowed to be its own thing.  If it wants to be a romantic comedy about Superman's younger cousin, then that's exactly what CBS should let it be, "grim 'n' gritty" be damned.

I'm actually pretty excited about this series and am going to be tuning into it just as soon as I'm able to.  Hopefully this series' success will show Warner Bros that not everything has to be so God damned bleak all off the time.  Things can be light and funny and still be awesome.

So what are your thoughts about the new Supergirl series?  Will you be tuning its premiere episode?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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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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