Boy Scout Blues

I've never been a big fan of Superman.  I enjoyed the Christopher Reeve films as a kid, but beyond that, I found the more-or-less omnipotent boy scout thing dull, especially next to more complex superheroes like Spider-Man and Batman.

The problem is, Superman was a character of his time, and although he evolved significantly from his conceptual beginnings, and enjoyed something of a reboot with the Richard Donner film, his relevancy dropped off a cliff shortly after Superman II, and has never really recovered, as evidenced by DC's repeated and increasingly desperate attempts to recapture people's imagination:



I bring this up because, Bob Chipman - aka MovieBob - just released an insightful little piece on why the aforementioned Richard Donner film worked, and why it (mostly) holds up to this day:



Now I don't entirely agree - certainly not on the point of how well it holds up today (taken out of the context of its time, I find it slow, clunky, cheesy and a bit silly-looking) - but he does make a particularly good point on how a character like Superman needs to be adapted for the screen, highlighting why recent interpretations since that whole mess in the 90s - not just in terms of the Zack Snyder films, but from DC in general - have failed:

"People are bored of him because he's invincible, so we'll kill him."
"Kids like Rambo-esque action heroes, so we'll give him a mullet and guns."
"People miss the old Superman, so we'll do the old Superman."
"Oh, people don't like the old Superman, so we'll put him in jeans and a t-shirt."
"Batman's still popular, so we'll also make Superman brooding and gritty."
"Okay, we've no idea what people want...so we'll make Superman lost and clueless too!"

While Donner and crew were focused on presenting Superman as everyone needed and expected to see him, both DC's comic-book and cinematic arms have since tried to present him as they think the audience thinks they want to see him.  The result being...



Personally, I think Superman has had his day.  There's still a place for him, but I don't believe that place is as a protagonist in his own stories.

Superman is an ideal: incorruptible, indestructible and insurmountable.  Even amongst his fellow superheroes, he's a higher presence; there for the rest to aspire to.  He long ago reached a point where, to have him flying around punching bad-guys in the face - how ever powerful those bad-guys might be - was to undermine the character.

Better now to either make a genuine martyr of him - without the usual resurrection cop-out - or to have him acknowledge his own status and remove himself from the day-to-day goings on, only to return when the stakes become universal.