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Why the World Needs Superman...
Jul. 1st, 2006 11:11 pmI have a weakness for superhero films. Also fantasy films and science fiction action films.
Have seen all the Superman films, including the horror show that was Superman IV, which may be the only film I walked out of, although I came close to walking out of Van Helsing (which gave me a headache) and Star Trek - The Final Frontire. Yes, some weaknesses you pay for.
In some respects Superman Returns may be the most intelligent and introspective of the films. Not to mention the most realistic. While it lacks some of the campy fun and humor of the first two, it actually does haunt you a bit several hours later - which the first two did not.
The subject heading of this post is taken directly from Lois Lane's blank computer screen where she struggles to write an article that counters the one she wins the Pulitzer for - "Why the World Does Not Need Superman".
Superman, for those who aren't up on their comic book action heros or aren't, ahem, comic book geeks, specifically action hero comic book geeks, was created in 1938 by two Jewish boys, Joe Shuster and Jerome Siegel, who "imbued him with the power of a hundred men, of a distant world, and of the full measure of their bespectacled adolescent hopefulness and desperation." (Taken from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.) Michael Chabon in his fictional novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is a novel about two Jewish boys teaming up to write comic books during World War II, writes "Though he had been conceived originally as a newspaper hero, Superman was born in the pages of a comic book, where he thrived, and after this miraculous parturition, the form finally began to emerge from its transitional funk, and to articulate a purpose for itself in the marketplace of ten-cent dreams: to express the lust for pwoer and the gaudy sartorial taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves. Comic books were Kid Stuff, pure and true, and they arrived at precisely the moment when kids of America began, after ten years of terrible hardship, to find their pockets burdened with the occassional superfluous dime."
It's no accident that Superman, our first superhero to appear in print, with his red white and blue tights and his amazing powers - and geeky, stuttering, bespeckled and anynonmous alter-ego - was created by two men who felt oppressed themselves. Lonely. Alienated. Outcast.
( spoilers for the film Superman Returns )
Have seen all the Superman films, including the horror show that was Superman IV, which may be the only film I walked out of, although I came close to walking out of Van Helsing (which gave me a headache) and Star Trek - The Final Frontire. Yes, some weaknesses you pay for.
In some respects Superman Returns may be the most intelligent and introspective of the films. Not to mention the most realistic. While it lacks some of the campy fun and humor of the first two, it actually does haunt you a bit several hours later - which the first two did not.
The subject heading of this post is taken directly from Lois Lane's blank computer screen where she struggles to write an article that counters the one she wins the Pulitzer for - "Why the World Does Not Need Superman".
Superman, for those who aren't up on their comic book action heros or aren't, ahem, comic book geeks, specifically action hero comic book geeks, was created in 1938 by two Jewish boys, Joe Shuster and Jerome Siegel, who "imbued him with the power of a hundred men, of a distant world, and of the full measure of their bespectacled adolescent hopefulness and desperation." (Taken from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.) Michael Chabon in his fictional novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is a novel about two Jewish boys teaming up to write comic books during World War II, writes "Though he had been conceived originally as a newspaper hero, Superman was born in the pages of a comic book, where he thrived, and after this miraculous parturition, the form finally began to emerge from its transitional funk, and to articulate a purpose for itself in the marketplace of ten-cent dreams: to express the lust for pwoer and the gaudy sartorial taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves. Comic books were Kid Stuff, pure and true, and they arrived at precisely the moment when kids of America began, after ten years of terrible hardship, to find their pockets burdened with the occassional superfluous dime."
It's no accident that Superman, our first superhero to appear in print, with his red white and blue tights and his amazing powers - and geeky, stuttering, bespeckled and anynonmous alter-ego - was created by two men who felt oppressed themselves. Lonely. Alienated. Outcast.
( spoilers for the film Superman Returns )
