Man of Steel. Nolan Superman Reboot.

Well, I disagree with you there, but whatever.

Given all the people in charge, all signs point to a really serious movie. Which wouldn't make a great Superman film, I hope they do it more lighthearted.

Eh, Superman can be serious. What it shouldn't be is *grim*.

As for Spider-man, if anything, it suffered from too little humor. Or rather, from dropping the number 1 most important source of humor: Spidey's constant quipping.

If I were the filmmakers, I'd be aiming for slightly less serious than Superman Returns (which I liked).

I weep that the Silver Banshee is considered a standby in the pantheon of Superman rogues.

Who's Silver Banshee?

[1]◊ [2]

She was in JLU and Smallville

edited 6th Apr '11 9:11:48 AM by Anaheyla

Oh, her. I saw her in JLU and the various movies. I dropped Smallville after the first season.

The whole concept of Silver Banshee bugs me. She doesn't know that Superman is Clark Kent, so she can't kill him, supposedly. But surely his true name is Kal-El? Or is that not how true names work?

True names work however whoever is writing it wants it to work.

It could be the first name given, some special name given as a rite of passage, or even the person's name from their own lips.

In Superman's case, he is Superman, and Clark Kent, and Kal-El of Krypton.

Makes him hard to pin down.

Well, besides Mxy, Silver Banshee is probably Superman's biggest magic based villain. Why he doesn't have more is beyond me. It's one of his biggest weaknesses.

Probably because almost nobody wants to actually take the magic weakness seriously. Over and over again, the magic weakness ends up being "weakness only versus attacks that still can't seriously threaten me," with magic used by actual seriously threatening foes somehow not doing anything more to him than non-magic abilities of the same variety.

Or, bluntly, if a demon lord shows up in Metropolis, Superman should get his ass kicked until he can either call in help, destroy some MacGuffin, or otherwise do something other than charge at the guy who can bounce his attacks and turn him into a toad by blinking.

It's a bit outside of the expected genre. People just aren't interested in mixing magic and Superman as a rule. That, and they want him to win.

Speaking of Demon Lords, I totally forgot about Blaze and Satanus.

There are times I think they should just drop the magic weakness entirely. Its a relic from the days when his invulnerability was essentially absolute, so you needed ways to get past it. These days, with actual ( vaguely ) defined power levels, and the concept "sufficient force can hurt you", its mostly unnecessary.

In fact, I think that was a broad flaw in the early golden age superheroes. Powers tended to be treated as categorical, rather than quantitative, often resulting in near omnipotence. Thus, characters like the Specter or Dr Fate, who could do anything; and characters like Superman, who couldn't do *anything* ( sometimes ), but anything that could be described as a feat of strength or invulnerability, they could do, period. The idea of power hierarchies beyond "pulp hero with minor abilities" and "god" only really arrived with the silver age. The *Marvel* silver age.

( *cough* And even if they did get rid of the magic weakness, taking Mjolnir dead to the face should still leave Superman on the floor for most of the scene :p )

I disagree. Superman having specific weaknesses is, I think, one reason why he's not written as a Mary Sue too often.

Chalk me up as another who worries about making a grim Superman movie. I loved the Large Hams in the 70s movies. I mean, come on, Gene Hackman as Luthor and Terance Stamp as Zod (Come to me, son of Jor-El, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!) make those movies watchable even to this day. Whatever villian they go with, there needs to be some ham.

That's basically the way it works now. Supes isn't specifically weak to magic, he's just not invulnerable to it - so magic will be just as dangerously effective against him as it is against the average joe.

Taking that away would involve giving him an extra resistance to magic rather than removing a weakness.

edited 6th Apr '11 7:01:26 PM by KnownUnknown

Need someone used to playing monstrous characters for Darkseid like Ron Pearlman or Clancy Brown.

edited 6th Apr '11 6:57:43 PM by Nonapod

Came to post that.

The thing is, that makes the whole idea of even mentioning it pointless. If he's only as durable against magic as he'd be against anything else, then. . . he doesn't have a weakness to magic. He just doesn't have any special defenses against magic, other than whatever attribute would normally defend against it ( whether physical toughness, willpower, etc ).

Returning to the development of the film, it's a good thing Hans Zimmer isn't doing the score. And hopefully his people at Remote Control stay away from the film.

Call me silly, but I would love it if Alan Silvestri did the score.

Had Robert Zemeckis accepted the job, Silvestri would have definitely scored the film. However, he probably won't do it since he's doing Captain America.

Some possible guesses on who will do the score:

• Tyler Bates (Snyder's usual composer)
• David Julyan (Nolan's other regular composer)
• David Hirschfelder (did Snyder's Legend of the Guardians)
• James Newton Howard (worked with Nolan on the Batman films, works with Zimmer)
• John Powell (another Zimmer guy, was the first choice for Captain America)
• Michael Giacchino (second choice on Captain America, Bruce Broughton was the third choice on it before Silvestri accepted)

My personal choice would be Hirschfelder. He's a two-time Academy Award nominee and Legend of the Guardians proved he can do a film of such epic scale like this one.

Ugghh. Please not Taylor Bates. I couldn't stand listening to the scores of 300 and Watchmen. I mean, if I really had to describe the score of Watchmen, it would be bad 80s movies synthesisers. The soundtrack saved the film.

I wouldn't mind James Horner doing it, though if we're ever shown Kryptons Destruction, we'd probably hear people crying in the background. Like in Avatar.

EDIT: Bah fuck! Just read the imdb page and saw who was doing the score. Tyler Bates. God, he better not mess this up.

edited 6th Apr '11 10:43:45 PM by AtomJames