Warner Bros Wants To Reboot Superman Again!

Fysh wrote: »

Wow, evidently my tongue was sufficiently camouflaged in my cheek that you thought I was serious.

I do find it absolutely hilarious that you'll get so bent out of shape about how someone else interprets a fictional character that you'll leap to their defence.

It's more a defense of one's self at the rather facile attempt at implying that to endorse the ideals behind Batman is to endorse the capitalist-industrialist scumbags that run the United States. I for one became an enthusiast of Batman comics after reading stuff like Miller's TDKR, TDKSB and the serial No Man's Land. In those episodes, Batman is presented as such a thoroughgoing anti-establishment figure, and there is such an implied radical critique of the US federal government, the state-endorsement of corporate misdemeanour, and so called capitalist-industrialist scumbags (like Lex Luthor) and their eventual pawns (pro-establishment figures like Superman), that I was hooked by the sheer anti-conservative tone of most of the Batman stuff.

Watching TDK itself, what made it addictive to its core was the unmitigated, radical unlawfulness of the whole thing. It's the implication that the Batman is someone the conservatives, whether they be crime-syndicate bosses running the city or the elected officials they are in bed with, or the "legitimated" criminals who run major corporations (Lau), just don't want, because he stirs up trouble and change, and because he's actually genuine. The only people who understand him are the ones who are equally genuine, like Alfred or Gordon. The fact that only a vigilante like Batman could even put a dent in an unjust situation that just should not be is itself a radical critique of the establishment ideals like law and order, which, in this reading, enable corruptness, stagnation and eventual entropic failure. The conservative upkeep of the law is the pillar on which corruption and systemic injustice is built. The reason Batman busts people is not that they are "criminals" or "small time crooks" or etc. It's because they are doing wrong. Right and Wrong are the standards that Batman has to deal with, as opposed to Legal and Illegal. This message is the sort of point that conservatives appropriate in their rhetoric, but couldn't want to avoid more in reality, because it spells the end of the free lunch.

And I just feel inclined to make a correction when someone (granted a comedian, but not without a certain amount of heartfelt conviction) considers himself to be making a point in his completely off-target political critique of Batman. For a start, I dislike that he's misrepresenting material I enjoy to make a partial, narrow-minded, near sighted political point from within the facile, facade-like political spectrum of American politics, which is nothing more than a side-show anyway.

So, no. I'm not "leaping to the defense" of Batman. I'm disputing the veracity of this guy's interpretation, and his mandate in appropriating this material erroneously in service of his simplistic understanding of politics.

But that aside, and in response to what you said, I do perceive an implied criticism of people who like Batman. The implication is that we are willingly and unwittingly consuming "conservative propaganda", or that we are conscious of it, and are "conservatives by association."

To begin with, I think terms like "conservative" and "liberal" have outgrown their usefulness. I contend that there isn't a conversation employing either term in the mainstream media, in everyday political discourse, or in political rhetoric, here or in America, that isn't massively equivocating on the multitude of meanings either word can be made to stand for. The words have so many permissible inferences associated with them that they just don't mean anything useful anymore. So I actually dispute the idea that Reginald is making a point in that video. As far as I'm concerned he's uttering nonsense, in the classically positivist sense of the word.

So as to your accusation that this is a case of "spot the fanboy." I disagree. What annoys me most about this is that people I know who aren't Batman enthusiasts but who enjoyed TDK immensely are, for that reason, "conservatives by association." And all of this on the back of an erroneous belief about the ideals behind Batman. ("Spot the fanboy"? No. The only reason that the person who's making this point is someone who knows a bit (and not a whole lot, to be honest) about Batman is that only someone so endowed would know how stupid, and unsupported a point Reg is making.) It's like the way atheists are consistently labeled fascists because it is believed (erroneously) that Hitler was an atheist. It's the most facile, idiotic sort of reasoning available, a lowest-common-denominator, factional, biased sort of guilt-by-association fallacy, which goes to the generating of a whole tribe of soundbyte-like denouncements which are confused even in the point that they are making, and serve only to mandate the frustrated, inchoate noise of the people who mechanically repeat them. Who are consequently labeled "geniuses" by even more superlative idiots.

What really pisses me off about it is how f*cking stupid it is.

And while I appreciate that you posted that link in jest, I don't mean what I've written about it to be perceived as a criticism of you, but only of that guy in the video, and of the people of whom what he said is representative.

I think superman is an awful character tbh.


I find it interesting how successful these comic book adaptations are because for me I find any comic book character aside from Spiderman and Batman very hard to relate to.

I dont think it is any coincidence that it is these characters who enjoyed the most success. Now these films always clean up at the box office but I think thats largely a result of clever marketing and hype. Ive gone to these films in the past and its only when Im sitting in the theatre I think to myself "hang on why am I here, I have no interest in what happens to a bloke who turns into a 30 foot tall green monster:D)


I dont think these films endure outside spiderman and batman because as much as they try the general public, with little interest in superpowers, just cant relate. Batman is obviously very easy to relate to and for me Spiderman is always peter parker...when you look at something like Superman I feel its the other way around i.e. Clark Kent is always Superman.

Right. I didn't forget that. I wasn't speaking about him in terms of the continuity of the story, but in terms of what the premises for his creation are, and what he represents as a superhero. Which is the "superman." He's called "superman" FCS.

indough wrote: »

im just saying to call his character unrealistic is a bit silly seeing as he is supposed to be an alien, i mean unless any of us actually know what a realistic alien is actually like

A realistic alien, if such exists, is probabilistically unlikely to instantiate the disjunction of the following qualities:

A) Indistinguishable from a large male human at peak physical fitness,
Capable of antigravitational activities by mere mentation.
C) Capable of shooting laser beams out of his visual organs (if he has them).
D) Not only capable of almost unlimited strength, but also of calling off the laws of physics in his vicinity, so that the law of the lever doesn't apply, for instance.
E) Invincible and immortal

Seeing as some of those qualities are impossible to instantiate, and others are simply highly, highly unlikely. He may, however instantiate some of the following:

1) Suspending respiratory function (if he does breathe) indefinitely.
2) Great strength
3) He may "see" using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, which may render certain opaque sorts of things (to us) transparent to him.
4) He may have a more marked rejuvenatory response to the light of a yellow sun than us.

I should add that I don't particularly mind that Superman is in many cases impossible. It's fun. I just don't think a Superman done in a strictly "realistic" style, that is, that doesn't have him instantiate any impossible qualities, would be very good. We're able to do that with Batman because we don't lose too much. Supes, however...