Superman Expert Says Superman Is Not ‘Broken’ and Does Not Need ‘Fixing’ [Superman]

The studio decided to make a Superman film that goes “dark to the extent that the characters allow it.” Two new Man of Steel trailers are out. Are they too dark?

Superman appeared for the first time in Action Comics in 1938. More than 70 years later, a new Superman film by director Zack-Snyder opens in 2013 starring Henry Cavill.

I think they’re great and show a young, bearded Clark Kent taking on one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: A lobster fisherman. Plus, there’s a great shot of (presumably) young Clark pretending to fly with a cape. In the end, we get a shot of Superman flying into the sky with a sonic boom.

It’s hard to judge the teasers, but we reached out to Larry Tye, the writer of the best-selling novel Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero for his thoughts on the trailers.

First, you can watch the trailers with Jor-El and Pa Kent. I put them together into one trailer since they’re pretty much the same except for the voice-overs.

Jor-El (Russell Crowe): “You’ll give the people an ideal to strive for.
They’ll race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time
they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish
wonders.”

Pa Kent (Kevin Costner): “You’re not just anyone. One day, you’re going to have to make a choice. You’re going to have to decide what kind of man you’re going to grow up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, is going to change the world.”

Here’s what Larry Tye told us.

“The three short snippets don’t give much sense of what Man of Steel will be about, and how much they’ll deviate from the way Superman has always been.” Tye said.

“Then again I have faith that Warner Bros. is smart enough not to tinker, in any ways that really matter, with a mythos that has been going so strong for 74 years and counting. It’s not like Superman is broken and needs fixing. In fact everything going on in the world today suggests this is precisely the time for a hero of light — a guy who instinctively knows right from wrong — in a way that sometimes defies darker heroes like Batman and more fraught ones like Superman.

“That is an understanding that Dick Donner got better than just about anyone when he created the first and best of Christopher Reeve’s four-set series of movies in 1978, and it’s why that film and the ones that followed worked so well. It’s what Bryan Singer understood in 2006, when he gave us Superman Returns. Donner called it verisimilitude, which simply meant staying true to the character Jerry and Joe gave us in 1938. If Warner Bros. does that, it’ll have another blockbuster on its hands.

“If not, fans will let them know where they got it wrong and, I trust, make them return to the superhero’s noble beginnings.”

He’s confident the studio will stay true to the character’s ideals. That or they’ll feel the wrath of the fans.

Larry Tye is the author of several biographies, including The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora and Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. Make sure you check out his site at LarryTye.com

Via Huffington Post

What do you think of the trailers? Do you think the character will go too dark?

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