Regarding Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Trailer

Not overly happy with Man of Steel's redesign of Superman's outfit, I did my own. 

I went into Man of Steel with very low expectations. Snyder had never done anything that gave me any sense he had anything of substance as a director. Dawn of the Dead was mean-spirited with none of the joy of the original. 300 was a cartoon. Watchmen was a boring cartoon. And while Nolan's Batman trilogy made Warner Bros. a serious amount of money, I doubted his ability to continue a grounded super-hero vision with Superman. Pile on top of that that Man of Steel was an origin story, and the suit looked terrible, I had little hope that Man of Steel would be any good. I wasn't really interested in seeing it, I had wanted to see the movie they were going to make after Man of Steel. Now, I'm not so sure I do. 

That being said, it’s Superman. How could I not see it? After all, Snyder said all the things he needed to say with regards to his inspiration. All-Star Superman, Byrne's Man of Steel, Superman for All Seasons. But I didn't see any of that in the final product. In fact, what I saw was grim, brutal and humorless. Which says to me he may have read those books, but didn’t take anything away from them. 

I'm about to make a generalization. I find the people who complain that Superman is boring aren't people who read comics, have only a passing understanding of who Clark Kent is, and why he matters. Why he chooses to do the right thing, when he could instead pretty much do anything he wanted. It's that choice that makes Superman interesting, not his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. In his JLA run, Grant Morrison addresses the fact that Clark has trouble living up to the ideal that's expected of him. He has doubt. The weight of that pressure is crushing. And he doesn't always make the right or moral choice, which makes him human. 

When DC relaunched their universe with the New 52, they handed Morrison the reigns to Action Comics, and asked him to reimagine Superman for the 21st century. And holy crap, did he deliver. His run on Action examined a young man who looked at the world, at its injustice and corruption, and decided to make a difference. Because he could. He returned Superman to his origin, which says a lot to how little has truly changed in politics, greed and malice sine the Great Depression. Clark was flawed, arrogant, and so certain of his moral high-ground and his invulnerability that he threw himself into situations that he couldn’t possibly control. Morrison reinvented Clark as a modern investigative journalist, forgoing print and going straight to web, to show that a man could do as much good with his words as his fists. 

Morrison returned Lex Luthor to his roots as well, making him a sociopathic inventor, consulting the military on the existence of this alien. He established kryptonite as the radioactive fuel for the rocket that brought Clark to Earth. He laid the groundwork for Brainiac, Metallo, and even Mxyzptlyk. And it worked, beautifully. Morrison essentially handed Warner Bros. a template for reinventing Superman, making him relevant again, taking the weird corners of the mythology and making them connect. Warner Bros., instead, said, “No, thank you,” and went about to make the Man of Steel with Snyder, Goyer, and Nolan, and make it, you know, cool and ‘realistic.’  

Superman isn’t supposed to be cool. He’s supposed to be fun. He has innumerable abilities. He fights creatures of immeasurable power with ridiculous names. He wears a bright red cape. He’s not supposed to be realistic. He’s supposed to be fantasy. 

At a panel at ComicCon, Morrison postulated that Superman has always been a reflection of who we want ourselves to be. In his origin, he fought corrupt politicians and slum lords and stood up of the everyman because they couldn’t. He continued as a symbol for America's (self-perceieved, at least) indomitable-spirit during WW2. The Silver Age was full of happy-go-lucky spacey adventures with no real sense of danger. The eighties, his chief villain was reimagined to represent selfish, heartless corporate greed. In the 90s, he had a mullet for some reason. Morrison speculated that the reason we got a dark vision of a man who was supposed to be the symbol of hope is that it's what we are. We got violent destruction on a grand scale, and we cheered it, because that’s the hero we deserve. 

To my surprise, I didn't hate it. It was far more entertaining than I expected. The non-linear nature of the origin story made that tolerable. That, it was refreshing to see Superman take on a challenge on screen that wasn’t Luthor and kryptonite. And after Superman Returns And Bores The Audience To Death, it was refreshing to see a man who’s creation was in a book called Action Comics have some actual action. I really don't want to hammer the point of Zod's death at Clark's hands, but I will. Just in case there's some prize for being the one billionth nerd to do so. It felt less like a creative choice and more like a 'fuck you' to the character. 

Most of what we’ve seen from the sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice looks like it comes straight out of Dark Knight Returns. And as revered as the book is (and it absolutely deserves it’s place in comic book history), it has not aged well. It’s been copied and aped so many times that’s it’s lost it’s impact. Its politics are horribly dated. Its vision of Batman is myopic, and not one I really enjoy. I prefer Batman as the smartest man in the room, a man who knowingly uses fear as a weapon, rather than the obsessed psychopath who likes beating criminals up because he can. Worse, Miller’s vision of Superman is mocking. It portrays Superman as nothing more than a puppet, and the complexities of the character are thrown out the window in favor of cheap shots at the 'boy scout.’ Miller not only doesn’t get Superman, he openly dislikes him. Superman sacrificing his freedom in to save his friends is somehow a thing to be ridiculed. And this is not the source material on which I want a Superman story made. And bringing Miller in as a consultant does not fill me with confidence. 

To make Batman the nemesis for Superman’s sequel speaks to Warner Bros. lack of faith in the character. It speaks to their inability to trust the decades of mythology built around the him. It speaks to their jealousy of Marvel and wanting to bums-rush into Justice League for a cash grab without earning it in the same way that Avengers did. It speaks to their fundamental misunderstanding of not just Clark, but the entire DC Universe. Stories have recently emerged about hiring multiple writers to tackle the Wonder Woman script based on an ever-changing treatment. That’s not vision. That’s design by committee.

The sad thing is, in this age of blockbusters, quality doesn’t really matter. The movie will make Warner Bros. a metric f-ton of money whether it’s any good or not based purely on the franchise name. As a writer, that saddens me greatly. The general population wants to see Batman beat up Superman, because they somehow think that a billionaire-inventor-master-stunt-driver-world’s-greatest-martial-artist-computer-programer-acrobat-detective is somehow way more realistic than an alien.

However, I’ve been wrong before, and I guess I'm willing slap down my money to find out.