On Superman Returns Vs. The Man Of Steel

Now for something completely irrelevant to anyone and anything. One of my best film teachers always said "No Disclaimers" before screening our work, but I'm disclaiming here: I found myself musing on the whole Superman reboot thing and starting writing this... and forgot about it for awhile, and then remembered it and so here it is. Enjoy! Ignore! Avoid the Green Lantern at all costs!

With the cast of  Zack Snyder's Superman reboot (now officially titled Man of Steel, and while we're on the subject, don't miss this highly entertaining account of Michael Shannon's casting as General Zod) officially in place, it's tempting to completely forget Bryan Singer's initial attempt at rebooting Superman for our generation. It's even more tempting to dismiss Singer's Superman Returns as a terrible film. I'm here to argue that, in the wake of the chilly reception of Snyder's Sucker Punch, we movie freaks might find ourselves wishing we'd stuck with Singer's vision. Let's explore why.

Bryan Singer is a great director. Let's just get that out of the way. His second feature The Usual Suspects, which launched the second major wave of Witty Crime Flicks (after Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), won Kevin Spacey and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie their first Oscars and became (and remains) the benchmark for modern-day, Rashomon-esque mysteries.

After following that film with his underrated Stephen King adaptation Apt Pupil, Singer invented the modern comic book tentpole movie (for better or mostly worse) with X-Men. That film, along with its even-better sequel, X-Men United, has directly influenced every major comic book film made since. If you doubt that (and if you're reading this at all, I'm guessing you probably won't), watch Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and note the similarities: both took a grounded approach to the world of the comic book superhero. As Roger Ebert noted, Nolan's film is not realistic, but it thinks it is. So does Singer's X-Men, which parallels the prejudice and hostility those mutants face with primary villain Magento's experience during the Holocaust.

This is the major break with comic book movies of the past, the "gritty" approach.  Even after the wild success of Richard Donner's Superman: The Motion Picture in 1980, Hollywood remained skeptical about the future of comic book flicks. Studio executives - flighty by nature, since they know they're about to fired any day for helping run the company off a cliff - remained unwilling to delve into that strangely fascinating alternate reality comic books presented. This was a world of amazing powers and larger-than-life personalities, of storylines that wouldn't work nearly as well in a novel or short story... these are colorful, violent, wondrous Thrilling Wonder Tales, best suited for a visual medium. Is any wonder that they adapted Superman for television in the 1950's or first tried Batman for the screen in the 40's?

Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's involvement seem to promise a "grittier" Superman. I know the approach worked for Batman, but Superman has always been a much more colorful and upbeat hero, which the world of his comics generally reflects. Richard Donner's original film kept that color palette firmly in mind, and while Richard Lester's inane follow-up (let's just forget about Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, okay? I mean, watch it if you want, but even when I saw it at age 10, I though it sucked), over-played the candy-colored thing, Superman's universe should be a little bright and other-worldly.

Still, if Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan have balls, they'll color Supes with the Americana shades of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which has Superman ordered by the U.S. President to take out his pal Batman for good. Superman bows to the man, illuminating the blindly obedient dark side to a life committed to Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Further still, I may be completely wrong. After watching the Green Lantern flick with Ryan Reynolds (read my review on The Film Stage), I have to say maybe Nolan's approach to Superman will be the best way to do things, after all. Green Lantern was preposterous, (as is all comic book-related stories) and uneven, clearly fragmented from all the different script revisions this potential franchise was forced through.

The lesson of all this (for those of you still with me), is that these types of movies benefit from the focus of a singular vision. Christopher Nolan once said that as a director he's more of a human lens, focusing the hard work of hundreds of people into a unified whole (paraphrased). We can all argue that any fucking movie benefits from a unified vision, but Nolan's and Singer's films are successful because the studios footing the bill trusted the intelligence and confidence of these filmmakers and trusted their vision. Can Zack Snyder match that? Visually, he's got a dynamic style - but after seeing Sucker Punch, which is the first of his films he's written, I'll say he needs a goddam writer. Either way, I'll still see Man of Steel because the hope for a good, escapist popcorn flick is never a waste of time. I think.

Don't Go To Film School

Seriously. Don't bother. I'm so far in debt from student loans that it's ridiculous to even think about. I was 27, and literally doing nothing with my life. I'd spent my 20's in a drug-fueled personal odyssey of utter bullshit, thinking that by emulating my literary heroes (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Kesey, etc.), I'd have something to write about.

What I didn't understand is this: you cannot and should not try to live someone else's life. I tried that for too long and woke up one morning stinking of gasoline with the cops at my door. I was living in my grandmother's house, wasting my time with losers who I thought were my friends, got stinking drunk on Wild Turkey and set someone's car on fire. After two months in jail and then a year of doing odd jobs without any notion of what to do with myself, I signed a student loan deal and moved to LA.

I was from a small town and Los Angeles overwhelmed me. The school I chose was not UCLA or USC or even Loyola Marymount - it was a jack-of-all-trades school which offered no Master's degrees and has probably lost its accreditation.

I was desperate to get the fuck out of my town and I wanted to make movies somehow, so I jumped on the first wagon I could find. That was a mistake, and even if James Joyce did say "A man of genius makes no mistakes," it was still a fucking mistake because I'm no genius. If I was, I'd probably have stayed in my hometown and learned to make movies on my own and then moved to LA on my own terms.

I learned a lot in film school - the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, the basics on navigating the oceanic mass of Los Angeles - but my advice for anyone planning on taking out a massive debt for the rest of your lives based on a hope and dream: stop and think it through. Like I didn't.

There are a whole mess of books about filmmaking I wish I'd read before taking that leap. The best are IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE by Walter Murch, REBEL WITHOUT A CREW by Robert Rodriguez, and SHOT BY SHOT, by Steven D. Katz. Read these, my hypothetical neophyte filmmaker. Get your hands on any kind of camera and shoot something. Anything. Find something to edit on - most Macs come with iMovie and there are ways to get Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere that aren't strictly legal, but they work. Work on scoring your little film. Screen it somewhere, even if it's just your parents' living room. Get it seen. Get some feedback. Then do it again... and again and again... when you're ready, find some kind of on-set or in-office film job, learn the hands on mechanics of how it works. Keep making movies. Write a few scripts. THEN go to Los Angeles.

Learn from my bonehead mistakes. I moved back to Northern California with my tail between my legs, and now I regret it. I should've stayed. I'm going back, though. I'm 32 now and I'll have to start from scratch, but I've learned that wasting away in a cubicle is no way to live, not when what you really want to do is make movies.