The Easter Egg they Didn't Need.

So on September 26^th Entertainment Weekly ran a quick blurb online about a Batman v Superman Easter Egg almost nobody noticed.  The question got raise, apparently, as to why Superman didn’t use his x-ray vision to see the kryptonite in Batman’s canisters.  Inspection of Batman’s prep work shows the canisters are marked with “Pb”, which is the elemental symbol for “lead”.  Most folks know that Superman can’t see through lead.  A neat little nod to explain the “why”.  Except it actually makes things a little more convoluted than that.

Namely, how would Batman know that Superman can’t see through lead?  On screen we don’t see Superman use his x-ray vision that much.  To my knowledge he doesn’t use it at all in Dawn of Justice, and he used it twice in Man of Steel, once as a kid, once after he turned himself over to the army.  In neither of those instances did it show Superman discovering his lead weakness.  Presumably there aren’t a lot of actual interviews where Superman divulges his weaknesses in this world.  Yes, Christopher Reeve’s Superman spilled the beans to a woman he’d known approximately 1 week, knowing she was going to publish literally everything he said, which shows a tremendous lapse in judgement on his part.  But that’s not the movie we’re talking about here.

No, in this one there is literally nothing in the context of the films we see that indicate that anyone knows he can’t see through lead, or if that weakness even made it into the films at all.  So there is no reason for Batman to use lead canisters to hold kryptonite.

Furthermore, Superman has no idea what kryptonite is.  He doesn’t encounter it until Batman gases him with it early in the fight.  Let’s say the canisters weren’t lead lined and he did look into them.  He would see a glowing green substance and that’s it.  He’d have no idea that this is the one thing that can totally wreck him.

EVEN FURTHER more, in the context of the fight itself it would be MORE beneficial for Batman to not have lead lined canisters, as lead negates kryptonite’s effect on Superman and if it was in, say, a leather pouch, literally anytime Superman got near him he would be physically weakened.

Now it’s entirely likely that Batman had the lead lined canisters not because of Superman’s weakness against lead, but because kryptonite is RADIOACTIVE, meaning that prolonged exposure to it will physically affect Batman himself and he doesn’t want to suffer radiation poisoning while fighting a living titan.

Basically there is a very good reason for Batman to use lead canisters, but it’s not the one everyone is apparently leaping to.

The Sword of Superman: A Retrospective from someone who was THERE!

Oh the Pre-Crisis era.  For those of you who don’t know, the Pre-Crisis era refers to any event that happened before “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the first and arguably best revamping of the DC comic book universe.  It was an unprecedented event whose sole purpose was to cut the wheat from the chaff, as it were, and clean up the history of the shared universe that had characters doing all matter of crazy things, sometimes in two places at once.  Basically, continuity was Swiss cheese at the time and nearly impossible to follow.

During the pre-crisis era, Superman had a wealth of wonky powers, some of which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  One element however sticks out in my mind from way back in the ancient days of 1984.

Growing up in Portland, Texas, a sleepy little town on the Gulf Coast, just north of Corpus Christi, comics were not in great supply.  I was five, and if I wanted comics, I had to hitch a ride with my parents whenever they happened to go to Feudos, a neat little market in one of the quiet shopping centers in town.  Feudos had them all…at least to a five year old’s perspective.  Spider-Man and Superman are the ones that stick out in my head.  One specific comic stands out in my memory of this time, and if you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad.  It became part of the chaff that was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It is, of course, the Sword of Superman, ala “Superman Annual 10”.

Now during the pre-crisis era, you would get several explanations for one single event, and the most famously confused event ever was “Why the ‘S’ shield logo?”

Well NOW we all know that it was the family crest for the House of El on Krypton, but back then it apparently had a more significant meaning.

According to the issue, during the Big Bang some primordial matter and energy came together and formed itself into something like an English broadsword.  Because reasons. 

 

This sword, bearing the “S” shield just existed in history since the dawn of time and when Ma Kent was making Superboy’s first costume, the sword reached out to him telepathically to place the “S” emblem on his suit, apparently because the sword knew he would be important one day.

Later Superman would come into contact with the sword and it would turn him, basically into a god.  I mean more so than he already was.  He became an all knowing, all seeing protector of good, truth, and righteousness.  Think the Infinity Gauntlet, but for good guys.

But there was a price that came with all this power.  The populace he was sworn to protect feared him.  Granted he’s wielding a sword, something that’s generally identified with cutting and stabbing, not something you want to associate with the defender of life.  That’d be like giving Superman a gun…

Yep, that happened too, but that's for a different blog.

So Superman rejected the sword in a sequence of panels that was so weird it may have permanently scarred my young psyche.  Not enough to make me stop reading the comic. I read it till it fell apart, not unlike what happens to the sword!

                       

 

Spoiler alert, don’t let a pre-teen handle comics without educating him on how to properly care for them in the even they are worth money one day.

So Superman rejected the sword’s power, and it seemed pretty cool with it.  It wasn’t mad at all as it left back into the cosmos and, a year later, was seemingly wiped from history.

But why?  With all the stuff that has trickled through the veil of time over the years, why has Superman’s Sword remained off limits?  Well, at the time it was written out of existence we had Superman and Supergirl, and a slew of super-pets.  That limited who could wield the sword to exactly two people.  Its not like the Infinity Gauntlet or the Cosmic Cube, who could potentially be wielded by anyone.  Its tied directly to two characters and pretty much halts the story all together.  If writers thought it was hard to write around Superman’s powers before, giving him the potential to have infinite power makes it very difficult.

Then there was the growing cast of Team Superman, involving Steel, Superboy, Supergirl, the return of Krypto, and so forth.  Now you could bring in the Sword and let it have some options on which to present that power to, but then how do you get rid of it to let the characters have normal stories again?  It’s been around literally since the dawn of time.  It’s not getting destroyed.  You could put it in the Fortress under lock and key, but then, how can you have cataclysmic events when you could just pull out the sword and fix everything?  How do you justify the Death of Superman if the Sword could have taken care of Doomsday in short order?

I think, personally, from both a nostalgic point of view and from a story telling point of view, you could justify bringing the sword back into continuity.  Tweak it’s origin just a bit, where it became the symbol of Hope on Krypton and later was adopted as the crest for the House of El, and leave it “out there” waiting for Superman to prove himself again.

Just a thought.

Thanks for reading

 

 

Justice Leage: We are....Family?

Today I want to take a second or two to talk about a theory I recently saw on Nerdist on YouTube.  Specifically that Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Flash from the DC cinematic universe may actually be Kryptonians, or perhaps descendants of ancient Kryptonians.

The principle of the theory is that it would be easier to explain their amazing abilities by chalking them up to Kryptonian heritage, adding that they would be less affected or completely immune to Kryptonite because they had that weakness bred out over time.  The idea stems from two places.  The first is from Man of Steel where Jor-El, explaining the history of Krypton, talks about ancient Kryptonian colonies, citing why there was a Kryptonian scout ship located on Earth, buried under ice for thousands of years.  Okay, that’s our jumping off point which actually leads into the second place, Wonder Woman’s sword.

Nerdist pointed out in their video that there is some writing on the blade that is decidedly not ancient Greek and theorized that the writing isn’t simply decorative, since the production company spends a lot of time with attention to details.  Here’s what I could find as far as the blade was concerned.

 

They’re right, that’s not simply ancient Greek.  It actually looks like a conglomeration of several writing styles from the ancient world.  So here is it: It’s possible that the ancient Kryptonians who came to Earth in the scout ship over 5000 years ago encountered ancient humans and were considered gods due to their amazing powers.  Wonder Woman is, by accounts in the film, a daughter of Zeus, who could be the leader of the ancient Kryptonians, and probably figures as the chief god of any polytheistic religion.  Her amazing abilities stem from this heritage.  Atlantis, founded by an offshoot of these Kryptonians and Aquaman, again possibly the son of Poseidon, also half Kryptonian.  Barry Allen could be of the blood line of Kryptonians and only had his powers activated by a bolt of lightning due to them lying dormant for generations.

Sounds pretty straight forward, but there are a few hiccups in the theory.  Namely the writing style established for Kryptonians by Man of Steel

 

None of these symbols looks like anything on the sword for Wonder Woman.  Something should cross over but none of these symbols even come close to matching up.  If Kryptonians founded the writing style for Ancient Greece, you’d think at least a few of their symbols would have surfaced, but they are completely different.

The second major problem comes from a story telling aspect.  This theory, while straight forward is also incredibly lazy.  Part of what makes the Justice League such a great story telling platform is that you have a group of characters from a very diverse background.  Everyone brings something very different to the table and if you tie in three of your major characters, characters who historically have very unique back stories and make them all cousins, you start turning the JLA into the superhero equivalent of the mafia.  It just feels out of place and I hope they don’t do it.  I would hate for them to explain the extraordinary away in one hand wave as “They’re all basically Kryptonians.”

Hulk vs Superman (or) Keep Your Logic out of My Fandom!

So earlier in the week I posted two polls.  One was to the DC Comics fan page, the other to the Marvel Comics fan page, both via Google +.

The polls were pretty straight forward.  I detailed that, ignoring the decades of comic book continuity and factoring in only their current cinematic incarnations, who would win a fight between Man of Steel's Superman and Avengers: Age of Ultron's Hulk.

By the time I stopped counting votes it came out to 663, with 343 for the Hulk and 320 for Superman.  When you are considering internet numbers, that's pretty close, but a definitive win for the Hulk.  Yes, on the DC Page Superman won, and in the Marvel the Hulk won, but the real question is why, when all the votes were taken into account, did the Hulk win?

Is it because the fans believe him to be stronger?  Not necessarily.  Is it a complete lack of understanding of basic physics and biology?  Probably not, most of the folks who voted seemed to have a good grasp on high school level science.

It seems that fans gravitated towards the hero they could identify with more.  Superman has god-like powers, he's from another planet.  Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, is a home town boy.  He grew up on Earth, he had a mother and father from the same general background as many of the voters.  He has emotional issues like many Americans today.  He has demons we can all relate to.  Very few of us can relate to being shipped away as our home was destroyed, only to land in a location where we found ourselves with fantastic powers but still ostracized by our new communities.  That doesn't happen...that often.

I could wax intellectual about how the characters physical abilities would decide this fight, but I don't know that we've seen the upper end of their powers yet.  In Avengers, Hulk took down a leviathan with one punch, but in Age of Ultron Iron-Man defeated him with a newer armor.  In Man of Steel Superman can fly in space, and destroyed a world engine by himself, but its not known if that's the upper end of his physical abilities, or is he just getting started, but it looks like Superman has more power, pound for pound, than the Hulk...at this time.

So yeah, I guess until writers can get into the head of Superman and find a way to make him relatable, tortured characters are just going to be more popular because they are more relatable to the target audience...us.

Thanks for reading

Why So Down on Superman?

                I’ve noticed a strong thread in comic book communities that are very pro-Batman, anti-Superman.  Some of this is tongue firmly in cheek good natured ribbing; some of it is down-right hateful.  So I got to thinking, why?  Why are so many people so willing to fly the flag of the Bat and stomp on the S-shield?

I suppose it comes down to a handful of factors:

1)      Superman is easier to pick apart.  Not only is he generally accepted as the first superhero, he is implausibility incarnate.  You can try to science your way around his powers, but when you step back and look at them, they are a ridiculous combination of plot conveniences smashed together and wrapped in blue tights. 

 

Batman, on the other hand, has no powers, and we are psychologically predisposed to relate to him because he’s “human”.  He is stupid rich, has an unlimited supply of improbable technology, a massive underground lair full of the craziest stuff you could put together, but it rolls back to him being human.  We may never be ludicrously wealthy, have a fleet of jet black vehicles and our own personal football stadium to park them in, but we can dream, and just being human we are part of the way there.

 

2)      Batman is the bad-boy.  I’ve heard it said, Batman is the one girls want to date, Superman is who women want to marry.  This stems from Batman’s tortured past and dark persona.  Girls tend to lean towards men they can mold, shape into someone better.  Superman is that better person.  He’s honest, kind, noble, heroic, and never sticks around for praise.  Batman is menacing, brooding, and more likely to beat the crap out of the guy who gooses you in a bar. Superman represents a level of stability that’s appealing to women looking to set down roots but still want the occasional adventure.  Batman, on the other hand, will globe trot at the drop of a hat and his life is constantly popping. 

 

3)      We want to be better than Superman.  Ever noticed how everyone can come up with a thousand ways Batman can beat Superman.  Some folks can rattle them off the top of their head.  Some of these are severely sinister plots that require hours of intense thought.  This stems from our “mortal” insecurity.  We want to think that if push came to shove, we could bring down the Man of Steel because he makes us feel inadequate.  “Because I’m Batman…” isn’t just a clever punchline, it’s a catch all to make us all feel better than Superman.  What makes matters worse, at least for John Q. Human, is that Superman never boasts about his powers.  He’s calm and quietly awesome without effort.  Batman has to “work” for everything.

 

What is kind of sad is when you try to counter the argument of “Batman can beat Superman…” by saying “But Superman can…” “NO, Batman already won.” “Yeah, but if Superman just…” “BATMAN’S AWESOME SUPERMAN SUCKS!!!” (Actual conversation)  Some refuse to believe that Superman could be anything more than Batman’s bitch.  (By the way, hurricane force super breath invalidates like 99% of what Batman can do.)

 

What the whole debate actually boils down to: who is writing the story?  Guys like Frank Miller will always have Batman win because Batman.  Other writers will side with Superman and the fight will be over before it gets started.  Looking at Dawn of Justice trailer, I was thinking

“Do you bleed?  You w…” and Superman blows Batman into the next county with just a quick puff of breath.

But I may just be saying that because I love Superman.

Later!

Does Clark Kent Work?

The debate has raged on since the character was introduced in 1938, is Clark Kent an effective disguise for Superman?  Another question that has been broached is “Does Superman even need Clark Kent?”  Over the years different writers have had different takes on the relationship between the two personas, each with their unique spin on the personas.  Some have suggested that Superman’s portrayal of Clark Kent is his ultimate, if unintentional indictment of the human race.  Clark is portrayed as bumbling and weak, suggesting that is how Superman sees the everyman.

Others treat Clark as the true man, whereas Superman is a symbol rather than a persona.  Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman had a very good line in one episode when Clark was explaining to Lois the dichotomy between the two: “Superman is what I can do, Clark Kent is who I am.”

The Christopher Reeve portrayal, I think, came the closest to getting it right by approaching Superman as three personas.  There is, of course, Superman, then there is the closed off, bumbling, humble Clark Kent, then there was the man between, the true man, Clark as he is without his glasses and without his cape, just the man who grew up a farmer’s son in Smallville.

However, does it serve as an effective disguise?  A lot of people claim it’s just a pair of glasses, but could it be a lot more than that?  First there is the way he presents himself.  Generally Clark is portrayed as slouched, not making eye contact, quiet and reclusive.  He isn’t in the middle of water cooler conversations and doesn’t do anything terribly memorable.

“But Clark Kent is a Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist!” you say?  So is Eric Lipton.  He works for the New York Times and won the prize in 2015: “For reporting that showed how the influence of lobbyists can sway congressional leaders and state attorneys general, slanting justice toward the wealthy and connected.” http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Investigative-Reporting

Here is his picture:  http://www.c-span.org/person/?ericlipton

Would you recognize this man on the street?  Would you think “Why if that man took his glasses off and dressed in blue spandex, he’d look like a top notch superhero!”  No, you wouldn’t.  It would be unlikely that you’d pick him out of a crowd.  That, folks, is a news paper reporter.

“But Superman is a public figure!  Everyone knows what he looks like!”  Well, yes they do and no they don’t.  See, Superman is a busy…man.  He flies at super speed, tosses buildings around and crosses paths with villains on a regular basis.  That’s a lot of movement, a lot of action, and as we saw in Man of Steel, a lot of people running away from where he’s at.  When we see Superman on the screen, we see what the director wants us to see, which is a nice tight shot of Superman.

But people actually involved in the incident see

 

Very difficult to link that to this guy

“But in Dawn of Justice, there’s a huge statue of Superman!”

Here again is something addressed in the comics.  Lex Luther, arguably one of the smartest men in the DCU, built a computer to determine Superman’s alter ego.  The computer came up with Clark Kent, even did a split screen shot of the two men, with the only difference being the glasses.  Lex called bollox on the results, stating that there was no way Superman would disguise himself as such a lowly person.  It calls out a very big question, why would Superman need a secret identity?

I mean, he is, after all, Superman.  The general population of the DCU, the rank and file man-running-in-terror on the street probably never entertains the thought that Superman would ever need a secret identity.  Take a look at what Superman allows the public to know about his biography: Super powers, alien from a dead planet.  That’s it.  What about that says “I occasionally like to dress like a nerd and walk among you.”?

We now start to see a clearer picture of how Clark can support his secret identity, but why would he want to?

No police officer, solider, firefighter, doctor, EMS worker, or public servant is ever really off duty, but we, and I speak from experience, do take off the uniform from time to time.  You have to have down time, you have to reconnect with the reasons why you do what you do.  That is why Superman needs Clark.  We see it a few times in the comics, but notably in Kingdom Come where Superman closed himself off from humanity and that distance created a disconnect.  He wasn’t a hero anymore, he was a dictator, causing more harm than good.  If any of the professions I mentioned above start to do that, their work suffers and the public suffers.  We need to be connected to humanity to remind ourselves that humanity is worth saving.

It sets up an argument that Superman is actually more human than Batman.

Check in next time.  Thanks for reading.

Suspension of Disbelief

Sometimes I feel the need to justify why I talk about certain topics.  Well, today is another day.  You may have noticed that I've spoken frequently about a lot of television and movies, but not so much about the average novel.  That's because I'm addressing popular, mass consumed media.  People, I'm noticing, don't have much time for books anymore.  This is depressing, mainly because one day I hope to publish a novel of my own, but I also completely understand why.  After becoming a parent I found myself with precious little time to read anything that didn't have hard-cardboard pages or wasn't a book made entirely out of fabric.  I sincerely don't think anyone wants me giving a critique on "Hop on Pop" any time soon.  If you do, you may want to re-evaluate your priorities.

As it is, the times when I do have an opportunity to read, well, anything, is when I am out of town for a work trip, which admittedly isn't that often.  So, I watch a lot more than I read, and I've watched a lot.  A lot of television, a lot of web reviews, a lot of short comedy videos and a lot of major studio movies.

In doing so, I've also nitpicked a lot of little issues.  I've watched procedural cop shows like "Blue Bloods", "CSI", and "Castle".  Working in law enforcement I've openly balked at how little procedure is followed in procedural cop shows.  Either they've gotten so out of the realm of possibility with their forensic science that it might as well be science fiction, or their procedures are so poorly adhered to that they should have a conviction rate of approximately 0%.  These issues, however, can fall under the category "creative license", or as I've come to understand it "rushed research".

Three factors plague the cop show.  1) Studio expectations:  The studio needs the production company to bang out a product in as short as time possible.  That said, writers can't spend a lot of their time looking up laws and studying criminal justice text books to get every aspect right.  "Law and Order" has had to take short cuts and they are considered the high mark of the procedural show.  "CSI" in it's various incarnations has to talk about forensic science, but the writers aren't forensic scientists themselves.  They are paid writers and as such have to focus on telling a good story without bogging the audience down in the science.  Which leads to the next problem:

2) Assumed education level of the audience: The writers can't know if the person watching their show at home has an associates in criminal law, heck most people working the rank and file of civilian jobs in law enforcement don't have an associates in criminal law.  They need to write to the lowest common denominator, and so throw in some techno jargon, flash some stuff over a computer screen, call it science and move on with their story.  The science is a tool within the story, but not the story itself.  They can't let the science or the procedure out shine the story and tone of the work.  This brings us to:

3) The tone of the piece:  I don't think anyone looking is looking to "Castle" for hard hitting crime drama, that's not the tone of the show.  The show is lighter, happier, and more hopeful than say "Law and Order".  Actions don't necessarily have consequences that carry over into the next episode.  Much like Kenny from the early days of "South Park", next episode we will be back to status quo.  In that regards, the show feels more like a cartoon than anything else.  The line "We'll send it to tech for clean up..." sounds a lot more fun than "That's the best resolution we can get because of the pixel ratio and the software that powers the camera itself."

Having reality interrupt your escapist fiction is jarring, especially if it doesn't fit in the tone of the piece.  You watch the news or documentaries for reality, everything else is to escape from that reality, with varying levels of departure.

Its no secret, I love Superman.  My sister professes that I've loved the character since before I was born, which is entirely possible I guess.  Some years ago, around the time "Superman Returns" came around, the History Channel presented a piece called "The Science of Superman".  I watched it, and I kept coming back around to one simple response to every complaint they had about Superman's impossible powers..."Its not suppose to be real.  Its a comic book."  They were trying to invade Superman's world with reality, and there's really no place for it.  It doesn't fit, and no amount of hammering will make it fit.

However, as I said earlier, there are various levels of departure from reality.  A good measuring stick for this would be the Batman film franchise.  In Tim Burton's "Batman" from 1989, it clearly took place in it's own world, like it was lifted from the pages of a 1940's comic book.  Stepping into that world, you could believe everything they told you, because nothing stood out as weird.  As the movies progressed, the world got weirder and weirder, and regardless of how you actually felt about the movies themselves, you can honestly say that each Batman belonged in that world.  Then you move to Christopher Nolan's Batman.

Nolan and his team sought to ground Batman in something resembling reality.  The world was gritty, but not overly so.  There was both hope and hopelessness and our hero stumbled and fell along his journey as we all do.  Yet nothing about Batman himself stood out in "Batman Begins".  He fit into his reality, and we weren't prone to question it since that reality felt a lot like our own.  "The Dark Knight" came around and, again, it felt close enough to our world that we didn't waste any part of the movie questioning it.  But "The Dark Knight Rises" had the dubious task of upping the ante and bringing the overall story full circle.  The problem is that reality doesn't up the ante, so much as it just pushes on and we react accordingly.  The world of Nolan's Batman felt so close to ours that our suspension of disbelief wasn't really being used, so when Batman travels halfway around the world into a no-mans land without any conceivable means of conveyance, and accomplished this journey in what seems like a day, we are suddenly jarred.  Then he seemingly survives a nuclear blast.  Suddenly we have to suspend a lot of disbelief, the distance between our world and the fantasy world has grown to huge lengths with no time to adjust.

That's like having a transformer show up in a Tyler Perry movie.  It has no place and our brains aren't ready for it.

The only thing I can think of that Nolan and his team could have used as a bench mark to justify this is a line from an interview with Stephen Speilberg when he was talking about "Jaws".  Spoiler alert if you haven't seen this classic.  At the climax of the film, the main character shoots an air tank lodged in the shark's mouth and it explodes half the shark.  Speilberg knew this wasn't accurate, and his team knew it.  When they talked to him about it he addressed the suspension of disbelief as such "If I've had them for this long, at this point in the movie, they'll believe anything I tell them."

This, isn't wrong.  But if that was the bench mark, then Nolan and company forgot that prior to the shark blowing up, we were treated to other physical improbabilities, like a giant great white shark, said shark being strong enough to drag barrels below the surface, its ability to pull a very large boat, and destroy a bigger boat with it's shear bodily force.  Physics took a back seat to story and that's fine, because it all fit together.  We didn't have to suddenly suspend our disbelief for the air tank because it was already suspended for the rest of the movie.

The Nolan-Batman films, however threw us super-speed Batman who can walk on water while sauntering away from a nuclear explosion without giving us anything to build on.  Yeah, its a billionaire who dresses as a bat, but they worked so hard to make it make sense.  They put it all in context and then threw it out the window.

Now, when I say I don't read a lot, it doesn't mean "I don't read."  I do.  I'm currently reading a book by my best friend, "Under the Undead Moon" by William Dilbeck.  As you may have guessed, I can be very critical, especially when I believe people could do better.  That said, there is some police procedure that my friend gets wrong, but I honestly let it slide, because its a supernatural horror story.  I can't really nit pick that someone's Miranda warning wasn't read when they were fighting zombies a few pages earlier.  Actually I could, but I won't because it doesn't violate the tone of the book.  It wouldn't be fair because when you put it into context, its not wrong.

We can be hyper critical, but if there has been one thing I have learned from my kids, its that you will never enjoy a story if you spend all your time standing outside it picking at it.

At the same time, a suspension of disbelief, or as I said in "Batman Begins" a lack there of, can sometimes hinder further story ideas.

Some time ago, I was discussing with a college about the idea of a "Justice League" story, ala Marvel "The Avengers" film franchise, where they could tie it into the Christopher Nolan Batman films.  Looking at it now, I can say it would not have worked.  You could not have connected "Superman Returns" to "Batman Begins" to "Green Lantern", because all three worlds felt so different in the films.  Regardless of what you say about Marvel's franchise, they balance out comic book silly with epic film making.  "Superman Returns" could have connected to "Green Lantern", but they could not link up with the final installment of the Batman trilogy because of one character, Bane.

Bane, in the comics, is a super villain who takes a super steroid called "Venom" to grow massive and become super strong.  In the film "The Dark Knight Rises", he's a man in exceptional shape who's body is so wracked with injuries he needs a mask constantly pumping anesthetic into his system to stave off crippling agony.  His presence in the franchise serves as a blockade of disbelief.  If you have a universe where Superman and Green Lantern exist, then why can't Bane use his venom drug?

Now, for me at least, all of these movies work on their own.  I can enjoy "Superman Returns" and "The Dark Knight Rises" equally, but that's because their set up requires a unique suspension of disbelief, I don't have to ask a bunch of questions to make it make sense.  Put them together, and you open a lot of plot holes.  The reason you spot plot holes after repeated viewings sis because you are initially immersed in that world.  Its not until  your second or third time in that "pool" that you start to notice it.

That's why I'm actually grateful for the new stories coming out with "Man of Steel" and "Batman v. Superman" (though the latter sounds like a court case) leading into their Justice League story...they are establishing a new world where possibilities are open for story telling.  Will I nit pick?  Probably, but at least I will do it later rather than during the films.

Remember, when it comes to your escapist fiction: Go big, or go home.

Later.

Follow up to Man of Steel Blog

So, did you ever spout some exposition about science that turned out to be completely wrong?  I did, and I'm man enough to admit it.  When one looks at the Fortress of Solitude, one sees a crystal construct built in the middle of the Artic Circle, and one naturally assumes it has to be insanely cold.  Well, probably not.

Take a look at this article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/crystal-giants/shea-text.  The gist of it is that a location encased in crystals is actually pretty dang hot.  Insanely hot.  Causes heat stroke in the causal visitor hot.  Which, if you put two and two together, makes you realize that the Arctic Circle is one of the few locations on the planet where a crystal fortress would make sense.  Given the meeting of these two extremes, you would have a residence that's probably a pretty comfortable temperature, shrouded in a thick layer of fog.

Superman bringing Lois there with no winter clothing makes sense since the close proximity of crystals that large would keep her warm, while the intense cold of the out doors would prevent the crystals from becoming a natural oven.  The process of the heat escaping into the cold would create a large cloud around the building.

If anything, Lex Luthor and his cronies in Superman Returns should have had to strip off their heavy coats upon entering otherwise they would succumb to heat stroke.

So what does that mean to the previous blog?  Well, General Zod, now made human (shattered hand and all) probably wouldn't have died of hypothermia.  Given that he fell down a crevice, who's foundation and walls are made of closely placed crystals, would have probably died of heat stroke.  We're never given an idea of how deep these crevices are, only that their deep enough for a prolonged, echoing scream as the Man of Steel's helpless victims plummet to their ultimate demise.  Either they broke their necks and/or back on impact, or they were rendered unconscious upon impact and were slowly broiled alive.

Or, since Superman Returns portrays Superman leaving Earth shortly after having relations with Lois Lane (since her relationship with Richard White came close enough that she affords some ambiguity about her child's paternity) and Superman stayed away from Earth for five or six years, if Zod and crew did survive their fall, Zod at least starved to death, unable to climb out with a broken hand.

Would that be a deleted scene from Superman Returns, having Non and Ursa climb out of their respective crevices, pull Zod out, only to have the three die in the frozen tundra as the Fortress was shut down and abandoned.

I'm not saying that Superman is a horrible character, or that Superman 1, 2, and Returns are horrible movies.  Quite the contrary, I love them, flaws and all.  My stance is that we tend to hold Superman to a standard that has never actually been set, either by his publishers, his writers, or his creators.  Superman has generally held to the ideal that death is the last possible option, but in other instances has willfully taken a life, and not always to the benefit of the story.  Each instance was decided upon by a team of people and came from trying to tell the best possible story.  If anything, the death of General Zod in Man of Steel was one of the most justifiable instances in all of Superman's history.

Thanks for reading.

Man of Steel: Superman's Kill Count

Superman killed General Zod in Man of Steel.  That fact is irrefutable, I have the DVD, I’ve seen it multiple times.  This is, apparently, a big deal because Superman doesn’t kill…

Except when he does.  In the comics.  A lot.

But those are the comics, surely Superman doesn’t kill in the live action adaptations.

Except when he does.  In the 1950’s TV series, Superman (played by George Reeves) takes a pair of thieves who have deduced his identity to the top of a mountain and lets them climb down.  Being a pair of street thieves from the big city, they of course have all the mountain climbing skills of your average fish and promptly plummet to a gruesome demise.

Okay, but he didn’t technically kill him, that was negligent homicide.

It’s still homicide though.  But let’s not count that one.  In the more recent media, Superman doesn’t kill, except that time in Smallville where Clark killed a phantom zone criminal.  After he had beaten him.  After.  That’s an important distinction by the way.

A lot of this “Superman doesn’t kill” mojo seems to stem from those of us with very fond memories of the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the late 70’s and into the 80’s.  That Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American way and certainly didn’t resort to killing his enemies.

Except in Superman 2.  In that film he sent three de-powered villains (essentially humans) plummeting to their icy deaths, one of which had been thrown twenty feet across a room after having his hand shattered.  No, the official record shows Lois killing one, one accidentally jumping to death, and our colorful hero smirking as he murders a crippled man.

To be fair, there is a deleted scene from the film showing authorities picking up the criminals outside the Fortress of Solitude, but the thing to remember about deleted scenes is they are not canon.  They are removed elements of the story.

A dark moment, sure, but later movies don’t have him killing anyone…until Superman 4 The Quest for Peace.  Here, he shuts off Nuclear Man’s power source (this time rendering him as threatening as a coma patient) and then dumps his body into a nuclear reactor.  He had broken of Lex Luther’s programing at this point, he was an individual.  Maybe they could have rehabilitated him.  Nope, better to wait until he’s defenseless and have Metropolis cannibalize his body.

And for those of you who still want to cry “deleted scenes make it all better” he kills the original Nuclear Man (ie Bizarro) earlier in the film. 

At least he didn’t shove a bomb down someone’s crotch.  I’m looking at you Batman Returns.

So, when we go back to Man of Steel, did he have that many options?  When you get down to brass tacks, Superman’s options are painfully limited.  He had been struggling in his fight with Zod and just now got the upper hand, mainly because Clark has spent literally his whole life avoiding physical confrontation.  Never learned how to fight because 1) He’s been invulnerable to physical harm his entire life, and 2) One punch would destroy any human opponent.  Now he’s faced with a guy who has powers that match his own and has the skills to pay the bills in a knock down drag out fight.  Zod was genetically engineered as a warrior.  Clark grew up on a farm.  He’s not going to win this one in a straight on brawl, and was lucky to get the upper hand when he did.

We’re going to look at options on what he could have done and how, unfortunately, they couldn’t work.

1)      Clark could have put his hand over Zod’s eyes:  And then what?  Hold his head indefinitely?   Who’s to say his Zod’s heat vision wouldn’t have charbroiled Superman’s hand?  We know from the comics that Kryptonians can adjust the intensity of the heat vision, and Zod looked like he was going full blast.

2)      Clark could have delivered a coordinated strike to the base of Zod’s skull and knocked him out:  How?  When would Clark have had cause to learn that bit of information?  When would that have made sense to his character?  Again, grew up on a farm, spent most of his adult life looking for answers about where he came from, working odd jobs.  Further, lets say, for argument’s sake, that he did pick up that bit of info on his travels.  The split second he moved one of his hands to deliver this strike, Zod would break the hold and the fight would have been on again.

3)      He could have captured him:  And put him where?  The Phantom Zone generator was destroyed with the ship.  Even if it was intact, and Clark has the super smarts to fix it he would still need time.  Where do you put him in the mean time?  What holding facility on the planet is adequate to hold Zod?  The only reason the military “captured” Superman is because Superman turned himself in and willingly stayed. 

The fact is, the writers painted Superman in a corner.  I can appreciate the choice to kill Zod because he was a clear and immediate threat to the public at large and there were literally no other immediate and adequate options available.  Further, at least this time Superman killed someone and showed some level of remorse over the issue.

Thanks for reading.