Quote:

---

Originally posted by HKCavalier:

Our own culture's love of violence has necessitated the separation of violence into two supposedly distinct entities: "virtuous violence" that educates and communicates values, but does minimal or no harm (spankings and acts of war committed by our government spring to mind) and "evil violence" which is "senseless" and actually hurts people (you hitting your brother in the back seat of the car and acts of violence committed against our government are obvious examples).

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SergeantX:
It was the best Superman movie yet in my book.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by HKCavalier:


There's an enormous amount of denial imbedded in any superhero story

---

Quote:

---

I wonder how many peeps here have actually been hit hard enough by another to induce un-consciousness, or had a nose broken by some knuckles....?
*raises hand*
It's not the fun stuff of the movies, IMHO.

---

Quote:

---

After seeing Superman Returns last night, I think I've identified why it is that Superman has never been one of my favorites. All its faults aside, there are things about the basis of the entire story that bother me. Superman was originally written so long ago -- 1932, according to Wikipedia -- that a lot of the themes no longer work with our modern world. In the 1930s, the US was largely isolationist. The idea of the all-American superhero worked, because Americans neither knew nor cared what was going on in the rest of the world. Superman could stop all the bad things from happening in Metropolis and readers would buy it, because the readers were largely unaware of things happening anywhere else.

Obviously, this is no longer the case. It's difficult to imagine the Man of Steel flying around saving Americans in Metropolis, when there's genocide happening in Africa, a war in the Middle East, terrorist attacks in Europe, and North Korea developing nuclear weapons. It's also basically impossible for me to imagine 9/11 happening in a world with Superman.

Now I'd like to think that I judge comic book movies on two things: 1. the central angst, and 2. how well the superhero(es) fits into the world as depicted. [...] I would be totally down with a Superman movie set in the 1930s. But early in Superman Returns, we're shown a quick shot of news coverage from the Middle East. Quite jarring, and quite obviously from our real, modern world. And yet never addressed within the context of the movie.

To the first point, Superman's central angst has never really appealed to me. He's the last one surviving from his race (I think -- still haven't seen Superman 2 - 4), and his love for Lois Lane is thwarted by the fact that she can't see past his Clark Kent glasses. Get over it! How many stories have we had about Batman or Spiderman telling their sweeties who they really are? I swear, Lois and Clark are the embodiment of a level of hell -- like Lancelot and Guinevere in Dante's Inferno, never quite being able to reach each other. Just take off the damn glasses already! Show some trust in the woman, for crying out loud.

Now, compare that with XMen. The central angst in XMen is that they are mutants, ostracized from the rest of humanity simply because they were born different. This is an angst I can get on board with, and every marginalized group out there -- from the Jewish community to the homosexual community -- have claimed XMen as representing their cause. [...]

Being ostracized and threatened for being different is something which is very much a part of our real world, and each of the three movies gives us something to apply to our world. XMen 1: "I've heard these arguments before" -- we must be vigilant against the type of treatment European Jews received in the first half of the 20th century; we must not allow genocide to take place. XMen 2: the sequence where the soldiers break into the mansion late at night -- we can work towards peace, but we must be prepared to defend ourselves if the time comes; Prof. Xavier worked for peace, but he still built escape tunnels underneath the mansion. XMen 3: If good people do nothing, the government will eventually take frightening steps to eliminate a "threat"; biological weapons were used against the mutant community, by the US government, and yet where was the outcry?

[...] While none of the XMen movies have directly addressed the problems of our post 9/11 world, the world depicted in the movies makes sense within itself, and makes sense to our modern eyes.

Batman succeeds in similar ways, I think. [...] The central angst is that Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents' murders, and no matter how much money he has, no matter how much good he does, he can never fill that void. The world of Batman draws upon all that is dark and violent and wrong with our world, and so can make a great deal of sense to our modern eyes. Again, Batman Begins didn't directly reference the state of our world, but we can understand the crime, pollution, and hopelessness represented in Gotham. We can identify with Batman's cause. However, unlike Superman, the story (at least in its modern movie incarnation) never pretends that Batman can fix everything. [...]

When it comes right down to it, I much prefer XMen to Superman. Something with which I can identify, and something in which I can see our real world. It's been said that the best scifi takes the problems of our modern world and disguises them just enough to allow us to address them comfortably. While I'm not about to jump into a discussion of whether or not superhero comics are science fiction, I do have to say that I think this is where Superman fails, and XMen succeeds.

---