Every so often, Hollywood decides that the world
needs another Superman movie. They announce that something is in the works, the
public gets a little excited, and then everyone hypes a movie they know very
little about. In the end, the result is an okay movie that doesn’t do anything
except update the originals with graphics and attempt to make Superman appeal
to the public. I am here to argue that Hollywood fails in the latter.
Let me just say that I think Superman is neat.
Depending on the era he was written in, he could fly, shoot lasers, use x-ray
vision, and ignore bullets to the face. He was pretty awesome to me when I was
younger. I loved the first two Superman movies with Christopher Reeves. Supes 3
and 4 were a tad bit unnecessary. Furthermore, I believe that Man of Steel and
Superman Returns attempted to create something new for Superman. They attempted
to some degree, but they failed to another degree. These movies did not fail
because of horrible stories, terrible acting, or bad CGI. These movies failed
because Hollywood does not understand the truth about Superman. While he is an
important addition to the DC Universe, Superman can never have a truly good
movie made about him because he is, for a lack of a better word, boring.
Superman has all of these powers, a fantastic
backstory, strong morals, and reasons to fight. But this Kryptonian is boring
for two reasons. In any Hollywood movie, you need to give the main character an
edge. This character has to be good but with some flaws. This description does
not match Superman. If you give him flaws, he ceases to be Superman, and starts
being a generic superhero. In a way this can be attributed to early writers who
wanted to make him as awesome as possible. But this character simply isn’t
appealing anymore. The other reason Supes is boring is because everybody needs
a weakness, and this weakness has to be legitimate. Some characters have
multiple weaknesses, and this is good as long as it doesn’t make their
character seem like a helpless loser. Superman has only one weakness:
Kryptonite. Unfortunately, this one weakness is used repeatedly in the same way
and turns him into a helpless loser. Think about it this way: When you take
Bruce Wayne’s money away, he can still do Batman stuff. But when you toss some
Kryptonite at Superman, he weakens. He stops being Superman. His morals mean
nothing because what use are they if you have no powers to enforce them. By
having Superman be weakened by Kryptonite and making him almost too perfect,
you make Superman into a character that no one can really root for because we
always know he wins in the end.
On the other hand, maybe this isn’t all the
writers’ fault. Perhaps the people to blame are the viewer’s themselves. I am going
to posit the belief that the reason Superman seems so boring is because we
cannot identify with him. Everyone loves Batman (as indicated by his movies),
Iron Man is pretty cool, and Spider-Man is clearly a favorite to many. What do
all of these characters have in common? They are all human. More importantly,
all of these characters are flawed humans that viewers can identify with. In the
comics, Iron Man had a drinking problem, but he still did great things. Batman
has parental issues but this does not stop him from scaring criminals.
Spider-Man let his Uncle die by accident, but he still fights the good fight. I
argue that these superheroes (and others) are favorites because they are humans
that viewers can identify with. Viewers love watching these heroes because they
represent that even though humanity has problems and flaws, they still have the
capacity for good. Viewers can’t see this in Superman movies because Superman
is too perfect. He’s a space alien with one weakness to Kryptonite. People can’t
identify with a space alien, and they will never be able to be as perfect as he
is. In the end, we find his movies boring because there is nothing that
connects us to him.
And this is why I’ll be rooting for Batman in any
Superman vs Batman movie. But this is just me. Let me know if you think I’m
wrong or super wrong.
