Redirecting Superman’s flight path
Monday, August 18, 2008, 02:49 PM GMT [

As The Dark Knight rumbles steadily onwards towards a worldwide box-office haul of $750 million, thoughts inevitably turn to the next cinematic instalment of Batman's equally-statured DC Comics stable mate, Superman.

The Man of Steel , of course, returned to screens after a nineteen-year absence in 2006, courtesy of Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, but was regrettably not the hit that Warner Brothers were hoping for (although it's $400m worldwide haul was entirely respectable, the film's $270m price tag certainly took the sheen off the bottom line...).

While Singer fulsomely promised fans that he would go "Wrath of Khan" (i.e. more action) for the follow-up - tentatively titled The Man of Steel and due in 2010 - Returns was one of the more critically-divisive superhero movies of recent years. Over at MTV's blog devoted to comic book movies, two of the foremost names relating to Superman in the comics, Grant Morrison and Mark Waid, used their considerable expertise on all things Kryptonian to provide a blunt appraisal of Singer's effort.

Scotsman Morrison, whose vastly entertaining All-Star Superman certainly proved that he knows what makes The Man of Steel tick, felt the film squandered the character's essential appeal: "The idea was to make an American Christ figure, but what they centred on was his weakness," Morrison said. "They made him more a Lamb of God, rather than give us a real powerful Superman. They had too many scenes where he's being kicked to the floor, and that's not Superman. Superman would get up and fight."

Fellow writer Mark Waid, whose Superman: Birthright masterfully provided the character with a re-booted 21st-century origin story, was more pointed: "I so wanted that movie to work," said Waid, "but every choice they made in that movie was wrong. If you're making the movie in a vacuum, and there will be no other Superman movies ever again, go ahead and give him a son. But otherwise, that's a staggeringly awful idea. What are you going to do next? Either the kid has to be a part of his life, or get superpowers, which no one wants to see."

Both agree however, that a total reboot is the way forward. In Morrison's case, he's actually made direct overtures to the studio for the next film, as have other comic book writers Mark Millar, Geoff Johns and Brad Metzler: "I told them, it's not that bad," Morrison said. "Just treat Superman Returns as the Ang Lee Hulk." Waid concurs: "The Hulk has proven the audience will forgive you and let you redo the franchise."

Speaking as both a critic and a passionate Superman fan of 30 years, I am a staunch defender of Superman Returns, which I feel to be cruelly underrated. It's a gorgeous-looking film (if a little dark) and, although Brandon Routh's Superman had the burden of channelling the late, great Christopher Reeve, he did a fine job (If he got to play Superman less humbled and with a commanding presence akin to Reeve's, he'd be great).
Certainly, I am not immune to its various shortcomings, notably that Singer essentially remade Richard Donner's classic 1978 original, albeit with a more melancholic tone. Like Waid (and many others), I too was not a fan of Superman having a child - it's a concept better placed in the comics, where continuity is more malleable - yet, there was something admirably bold about its inclusion in the plot, providing Superman with an emotional conundrum that could not be overcome with great displays of superpowers. (Speaking of that: I defy anyone to tell me that the film's centrepiece action sequence in which Superman rescues the burning 747 wasn't the most vigorously-exciting, pulse-pounding and truly breathtaking action sequence of the last decade.)

The film’s poor financial performance was less to do with the its quality and far more to do with the political climate around the time of its release: a character who is classically referred to as “Defender of Truth, Justice and The American Way” would have been a harder-than-usual sell to an America then confronting the deep contradictions of its own self-image and to foreign markets who were daily being presented with the latest misdemeanours of the Bush administration’s blunt foreign policy, which appeared to be anchored on the phrase “Y’all kin go f*** yerselves...” – hardly a Superman-esque rhetoric.

(In an interesting contrast, The Dark Knight, aside from the fact that it’s a damned good Batman movie and the Ledger curiosity factor, is a film that gains much from post-9/11 considerations of terrorism – strikingly so, in fact.)

Yet Morrison and Waid are quite correct: a reboot is necessary. It’s not just down to the narrative millstone of the kid, which would have to be dealt with in a sequel – it’d be too strange not to. More importantly, this screen iteration of Superman deserves to have an identity of its own, rather than be shackled to Donner’s decades-old version, as daring and effectively nostalgic as that was.

Whatever The Man of Steel ends up as, I fervently hope that the producers fully embrace perhaps the most potent and enduring element of the character: Superman is unabashedly about hope and while many assume that this doesn’t play well in our cynical times, this is precisely what people like about Superman and why he has lasted seventy years with very little change to his creators original design. You can make the film as action-packed as you like, but an angsty Superman will never play as well as one who is a straight-ahead paragon of hope. These days, that’s more appealing than you’d think.

Ultimately, it’s worth remembering the sage observation of another esteemed comic writer, Neil Gaiman, regarding superhero movies: “The closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is.” Gaiman feels that this is “something that Warners tends singularly to miss, and Marvel tends singularly to get right.”

Christopher Nolan’s superb Batman films suggest that Warners have wised up. Let’s hope so, because with the superhero movie genre in such vigorous health right now, it deserves to have a truly great film about the greatest superhero of all.

Just one thing: Superman’s costume features red, not maroon.