August
18 Superman Status Update

honestly, i thought superman, with his cape and big 's', was a bit dorky way back when i was a kid. and lex luthor is too 'take over the world' for a bad guy today. singer's movie had all those things -- it was a 70's-style movie with a conservative contemporary edge. they need to rebuild superman from the ground up.

i'm not even sure if i would bother to see another movie like singer's on dvd

Yes, I agree...I see SR movie like a Donner's tribute (a fan's tribute), but like a begining too, and only I hope that MOS could it be the developement of this. MOS could it be like X-Men2, TDK...I think that Singer can make this perfectly

If you want to save SUPERMAN... make it more darker and not commerciallize... just like THE DARK KNIGHT the writer and the director make some risk to the movie and look what happen?? its HUGE because fans and non fans of the franchise was curious of what did they do... i hope if you want to save SUPERMAN make it more darker...

I think the talented team of Singer, Routh and Spacey can all break the bits of limbo created in the last film and move forward in the proposed Man of Steel. There's no need for a reboot. The elements are all there, the groundwork has already been laid out - it's time for the franchise to pick up where Returns left off and make Superman the fun thrill-ride of a movie that it can be. The character is dark and isolated enough; the picture doesn't have to be. What this needs is a green light from WB and DC.

Superman Returns was fantastic as a first movie. (A lot of people liked it). greenlight MOS already WB/DC. The theme for Returns was dark and realistic. The only thing MOS needs is action (fighting) and we've been promised this by Singer and Routh. Re-booting is a horrible idea.
Re-booting will be just like slapping the people who liked 'SR' in the face, that's a lot of people.

MOS should be greenlight and some non spoilerish info should be released on the internet, to attract fans and movie viewers .

Greenlight this and I'm already interested .

Good job Anne.

Finally someone who is more well known and respected has heard the same thing I was told (and reported) more than a year ago which led to the creation of SaveSuperman.com.

Now the question is, how long will it take for the supposed "insiders" on various boards to call you a liar and a fraud like they have been doing to everyone else recently.

This division amongst fans really needs to end. Superman should have been started over just as Batman was. Superman Returns can be viewed as closure for the Donner universe. Now is time to start fresh and start BIG. Bring in someone like Zach Snyder or James Cameron or Peter Jackson to helm a new franchise. Span the globe to find someone truly fitting to play Superman as he is in the comics. Not some twig in a muscle suit.

I just wish they could have a Superman movie with someone besides Lex Luthor. I know he is Superman's archenemy, but why not have someone like Brainiac, or Darkseid. I would say Zod, but that was done in 2.

On a side note, if they reboot do they get rid of Jason, because if that is the case I am all for a reboot.

Maybe it didn't meet projections, but the movie was hardly a box office failure. It had an estimated budget of $270,000,000, and grossed $391,081,192 worldwide, with $200,069,408 in the USA. It had an overall 77% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 73% from the "Cream of the Crop." The movie also generated nearly $13 million at the rental counter in it's first weekend, one of the highest debuts all year. The total rental revenue was $53.78 million thru February 18, 2007.

Batman Begins grossed $205,343,774 in the USA, with $371,853,783 worldwide. The big difference was that Batman Begins estimated budget was $150,000,000. Oh, and the budget number for Superman Returns reportedly includes $40 million from over a decade of false starts.

Superman was not initially a dark comic. Batman was. Trying to duplicate the success of Batman would be a BIG mistake. That's usually how Hollywood screws things up.

Did Superman Returns have enough action given the budget? Probably not, but that's an opinion. Was it a failure at the box office? Absolutely not. I'm not saying there aren't some issues that need to be addressed (WB's marketing, for one), but I think Singer and Routh are perfectly capable of doing so in the sequel. If they don't, then start over.

Superman needs to be re-booted, why? The introduction of Jason. The writers of SR have wrote themselves into a narrative dead-end. Not a smart choice to give the titular character a kid at the beginning of a new franchise, even writers like Mark Waid said it was a big mistake.

I want to see a big-budget 2-D animated Superman movie, in the style of the old four-color comics, with the kind of technical detail that we see in high-tech anime like Gundam and Patlabor. Superman should be DRAWN, not acted. (Check out some of the 1940s Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers to get a hint of what I mean.)

If you're going to do a "dark" big-budget superhero movie, go back to the novel, "Gladiator," by Philip Wylie, the work that originally inspired the teenage creators of Superman, and adapt that.

The recently released "Superman: Doomsday" was a great example of combining a dark premise (the Death of Superman), with a ton of action and great story telling. So a live action version probably would not do it justice. But for the next movie, it truely needs to be "the planet at stake - not a land development" piece. Lobo would be great, but Darkseid and Brainic would be excellent.

To reboot superman would have the same effect as what happened with the hulk earlier this summer. The latter hulk, which I can't judge the quality since I haven't seen either, performed roughly the same as Ang Lee's, showing all that work merely confused the public since the two movies were only a few years apart.

Regardless with how you liked superman returns, countless super hero movies have proven themselves by producing a sequel that outdoes the original (spider-man, hellboy, the dark knight, and x-men... which Bryan Singer also directed). Give it another chance.

Okay, what's wrong with this picture: not once does this article mention Jason. THAT's the reason I want a reboot. I might stand alone on my own two feet, but aside from that whole thing, the movie was at least PASSABLE. Oh, it's an overrated, confused, @$$-kissing fodder-for-the-mill fest, but it's the whole, "look, he's gone for five years! Look, Lois has moved on and has a kid! Look, he's the real father!" plot that made me wince.

Superman could have worked. Superman as continuation of older films could have worked if they made better choices on what to change and what to keep the same. Why make everything else look like in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, but not his costume? And they should have looked at the comics for inspiration. "Oh, well, we have this huge stockpile of stories to chose from, including the best selling comic ever [the death] so let's just give 'em an original story that's banal and wrong for the character."

As for the next one "outdoing" this one, forget it! The fact that they went in this direction means that they've dug themselves in a hole they can't get out of.

It's something Superman would never do, and it makes him a complete idiot. I don't look at him the way I would in some other vehicle.

"Oh, if they reboot it, it'll have the same effect as it had on THE INCREDIBLE HULK," which was, what exactly? It didn't make back its money, but it wouldn't have if it was a sequel either.

Y' wanna know why the Hulk movies do so poorly?

THE HULK LOOKS FAKE!!!

One more thing: the fact that a better sequel to a film doesn't mean the first film "proved itself," except--sadly--that means that all these films are just pilots for ongoing series' (or, as the hipster-dofus crowd likes to call them, "franchises" *rolls eyes*) which pretty much means, "hey, let's make a mediocre film, and the next one will be better." Geeze, maybe they should... just make the next film and not bother with the first one.

Sadly, all that would mean for Superman is that there's this movie where he suddenly has this kid due to reasons that are COMPLETELY out of character. Why does he have a kid he's not taking care of? Why did Lois think her son belonged to another man? Why are we even going into this territory with a SUPERMAN MOVIE!?!

Bryan Singer is a hack. Some of his earlier films might have been good, but this was just an attempt to get the usual freaks n' geeks to fawn over him like they did with the X-Men films. He learned all too well on those films what the audience will forgive and the ingredients that are supposed to make for a film they like. Too bad he could no longer cook them properly and he served them with a side of bad ideas.

For those of us who grew up with the original Superman movies, the bottom line is this: Superman Returns was a very, very average movie...neither great or awful. I like where Singer was trying to go, and keeping the original music was a good choice of course...but the story was simply uneventful and lifeless. Routh and Spacey (who I always thought was overrated) simply cannot compare to Reeve or Hackman in the original roles.

Routh seems like he is trying to copy Reeve's original performance, but he's not charismatic or skilled enough to carry it out.

Lois Lane's role is mishandled....

With all that said, I don't think the series should be "rebooted", Singer should keep the reigns, just with a better script and better actors.....and more action to complement better characterization.

I have no doubt Warner Bros will bypass Singer on any future Superman movies. I think they have to be smart enough to realize that the property needs a modern spin. NO more Lex Luthor. Create a movie with real fear as its backdrop and center the story on 9/11 type terrorism like Chris Nolan's Batman movies did. The Dark Knight has hit a real nerve because of that. Sadly Brandon Routh who was a solid man of Steel will be the odd man out simply because Singer didn't have the vision needed with Superman Returns. I liked that film for what it was but it wasn't what movie fans wanted in this day and age!

"hommage"???

Mark Millar is writing a superman script! If anyone deserves a crack at rebooting Big Blue then it should be this great writer. Read Marvel's Ultimates 1 and 2, the Fantastic Four for a sample of his work.

He has a knack for finding a compelling story and great action sequences. And I think it's about time superman hit something, and not just lifting a big rock into space.

We Really Need A SUPERMAN - "BEGINS"

"Fans have been clamoring all over the web--and on this blog--for a complete reboot"...
Please!!!
By all due respect, has it ever occured to you that it's not those who were sufficiently entertained by this movie who sit down and post their troubled feelings about it? I stumbled over your article by coincidence and fail to understand why Singers first attempt should be widely regarded as a failure. It wasn't around here (Austria) amon those who went to the theaters and dvd-stores. Singer was the main reason this movie got out of development hell. And despite it is far from perfect...how many movies are? I believed again a man could fly. Give the man some credit and the get-go, he will do what is necessary.

The problems with "Superman Begins" stem primarily from the central issue with most Hollywood productions of comic-book mythology -- the writers don't understand the central tenets of the mythos and churn out junk that doesn't reflect why the character resonates with the human condition.

Here's what Hollyweird decision-makers miss: Superman was the brainchild of two poor Jewish immigrants barely out of their teens who were reacting to the negatives of urban America ca. 1938. Siegel and Shuster felt alien, disenfranchised, and powerless, so they created a god-like being that was equally as alien, but could empower the downtrodden and was supremely powerful. And it's no surprise that Luthor was also created by Siegel and Shuster, because Lex is the perfect antithesis to Supes. Luthor represents those who disenfranchise; he's protector of the status quo, a "native-born American" according to the terminology of early 20th-century, who wants the alien to go away and leave things as they "should be."

Recently, DC and Warner Bros. retconned Lex Luthor as a brilliant and powerful businessman who is convinced that the alien Superman represents a threat to the world -- really, Lex's world, but to the megalomaniac it's all the same. Lex believes that, on Earth, power belongs to a gifted, hard-working human paragon, and that the alien Superman is an interloper whose presence interferes with the natural order of human progression. Superman keeps Lex from his rightful place as the most powerful human on Earth. Lex believes that destroying Superman is a moral imperative: Superman is the greatest threat to humanity because his natural gifts far exceed what any human can hope to gain either by exercising their own gifts or through hard work. To Lex, it's obvious that Superman threatens the core of what it means to be human.

Those are the characters that need to appear in the next Superman movie -- the unique, singular, lonely alien who uses his immense power to defend those in his adopted home that need him the most, and the crusading, immensely intelligent, ruthless human businessman who truly believes the alien is a threat to humanity.

And it's clear that today's moviegoer can relate to every social theme that influenced Siegel and Shuster to create Supes and Lex. For example, in the '30s, the perceived economic threat to native-born Americans was the influx of immigrants competing with perceived limited resources and opportunities; today the discussion is about the economic threat posed by illegal immigrants. Obviously today we continue to worry about the actions of those in power and their effects on those without; economic disorder and abuses of political power make the front page every day. The world environment also is similar; in 1938 the war in Europe was imminent, and in 2008 the US is at war in two Middle Eastern countries. We may believe that American audiences today are "too mature" for a hope-inspiring Superman, but we live in dark times quite similar to those that spawned him.

The next writers, directors, and actors who take a stab at revitalizing Superman on the big screen should take notes from "Hancock," especially Smith's monologue before he went to jail: "Life here can be difficult for me. I am the only one of my kind." That's a great thematic locus.

Questioning Routh's choices to coninue playing gay characters isn't "homophobic" unless you're one of these dolts who merely sees the word "gay" and runs for the "PC" police. The site posed a legitimate question about him doing so while he still (allegedley) carries the mantle of being the film Superman. Especially in light of all the "Is Routh Gay?" paranoia that was going around back in 2006. No where on the site are there any "homophobic" comments.
Perhaps people who make assumptions about things and generalize content because they only see a few hot-button words are the ones that dont deserve to be heard?

April 11, 2034

Variety reports that Warner Bros. is planning its fifteenth reboot of the "Superman" franchise.

WB studios spokesman Jerry Thunderkunt reports that studio execs are greenlighting another reboot of the ancient and enervated superhero franchise. "We've learned from the last fourteen critically panned flops which failed to recoup their initial budget," said Thunderkunt. "Clearly, audiences did not respond to the characterization of Lois Lane as a whored-up Jezebel attempting to seduce a bisexual autistic Man of Steel."

According to Thunderkunt, the WB Studio's nearly $320 billion combined loss on the past fourteen "Superman" trainwrecks has done nothing but steel studio executives' resolve to "buckle down, lay off the coke for fifteen minutes, and attempt to wring another dime from a bloodless and lifeless franchise."

"Clearly, having Superman undergo sexual transgendered reversal at the hands of Brainiac, travel back in time, impregnate himself, and then give birth to his own son who was--in fact---himself, confused audiences and accounted for the Burbank WB studios being firebombed by Underoo-wearing fanboys."

The Superman reboot saga goes back to the first decade of the century when forgotten director Bryan "Coxsman" Singer produced "Superman Returns" on a budget of over $200 million. The massively budgeted movie featured miniature train sets being destroyed by a home crystal-growing set, a super-powered bastard child, a seventeen-year-old Lois Lane, and a Superman on loan from the "Man-Hole" corner bar in San Francisco's Castro district. Years after the debacle, Singer remarked, "I was attempting to pull the greatest subversive act in the history of cinema: to slip right under the noses of unsuspecting straight Americans a totally gay superhero with virtually no interesting qualities, conflicts, or action. In the end, I simply made an unwatchable movie that sucked almighty balls."

Don't reboot this franchise, but they do have to bring things back to where things were. Superman's kid and Lois' husband get killed. The tragedy is part of what drives the larger plot. Sort of like the way Rachel Dawes' murder drove the motivations for much of what happened in the second half of The Dark Knight.

One thing about Lois and Superman that WAS profound in Supes 1 and 2 but lost completely in Returns is this: Superman loves Lois IN SPITE OF her vanity and other flaws. That is a very important element that needs to, uh, Return. Superman is NOT a Peeping Tom. Superman is NOT a bumbling sadsack (even Clark is not - he is a clumsy, bumbling optimist but never a sadsack). Superman is a God who wants to be Human. For not understanding these basic concepts, Bryan Singer needs to be booted off the property. He cannot be trusted with the franchise.

If you keep rebooting Superman you'll lose the audience's trust. After a while, nothing means anything and people get confused. Anyway, look at The Incredible Hulk. People keep calling that a reboot, but that wasn't exactly what they did. They changed some things, but they moved on in a somewhat different direction from what Ang Lee did. That's pretty much what has to happen here.

A reboot is a fine idea (though there were many parts of Superman Returns I liked) but they've got to stay true to Superman. They can't go and try to get all dark on us. Superman isn't Batman. He needs his own uplifting style...Truth, Justice, the American Way....all that jazz. Some might call it corny but there's a reason he's called a Boy Scout.