Why is it apparently so hard to make a good Superman movie?

Superman is just not that interesting of a character and I think that's a struggle for any writer. The circumstances he's placed into can be interesting but what can you say about the character itself? He's not exactly a deep well of possibilities.

He's essentially invincible aside from a few contrivances and he has next to no character flaws as a person... or alien, I guess. He's an ideal and an exemplar. And that is not very interesting for telling more than a small handful of stories unless you're going to deconstruct his character and then you'll maybe get a couple more before that gets old. And if you deviate from his boy scout character, it's not really Superman anymore. It's a pinch to be sure.

I did like the animated DC film Superman Vs. The Elite which was practically a meta-narrative challenge to Superman's old-fashioned ways but even that I think you can only do that once before it gets tired. I just don't think you can do a lot with the guy.

People love an underdog, he's the complete opposite of that. Who wants to roots for someone that's pretty much invincible? His "arch nemesis" is some bald dude Superman could snap like a twig if he really wanted to. Batman on the other hand is just a regular human being, he could die easily doing what he does, so you have more reason to root for him, there's more tension and suspense.

bartlesby



Yeah, that's what I think makes him better than the vast majority of super hero's.



But Coca-Cola sure tastes great as that along with Mountain Dew are hands down my Top 2 pops to drink (Dr. Pepper would be pretty much my #3 and then things drop off quickly after that)

but yeah, I get your basic point.

Whether good or bad the Superman character, given flaws, is one of the more interesting characters in comics. Characters like Superman Prime who had a god complex for the longest time or Cyborg Superman and his struggles to maintain his humanity...or even a character like the Plutonian, who’s not DC but is basically a Superman type that got fed up with mankind’s meddling and thankless nature.

They all just feel more complex than Superman. I do think there’s still entertainment in the Superman character. It’s just harder to nail than many other archetypes.

Because I think they keep trying to do Superman from a different angle than the Reeves films did, and it doesn't work (IMO). The Reeves' films weren't afraid to make Clark a bit campy as the naive farm boy in the big city.I agree with the above post that Superman as a cynic doesn't work. He carries the naivety he has as Clark into Superman's faith that humanity is mostly good, and there are just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. Maybe the world in general is just too cynical to appreciate Superman now.

I don't think I saw that one. What was biggest problem with that film in your opinion?

There’s this comic book I remember reading years and years ago (no idea what it was called) in which Superman turns his attention towards solving all the world’s ills: poverty, hunger, disease, etc. There was this beautiful panel of him standing in front of Congress (or the U.N.?), if I remember correctly. He’s basically trying to save the world from itself, to make a heaven on earth (which harkens back to the liberal humanitarianism with which the character has always been imbued).

And he finds, as all who try to make heaven on earth have found, that it’s impossible: his efforts succeed for a little while, but then people go right back to the way they always have been. He gets incredibly disheartened and cannot figure it out; he made the world so close to paradise. Then there’s this flashback where he talks to his dad (Kent, not Jor-El) and remembers that he is, at his core, just a human—albeit an incredible human—but not a god. He can’t save the world from itself, and he can’t remake Eden—and, when he has realized that, it enables him to go on helping mankind person-by-person, rather than in the abstract, and he gets out of the slump.

It’s really just a superb comic, and what a lesson. But my point is, that’s what you do with Superman. That’s how you tell a story with him (and what the original Superman, as well as Superman Returns, did so well, and Superman II in part). The moment you start thinking he is a nigh-literal god, that the alien from Krypton stuff is the important part of the character, that’s when you lose him. He’s human, fully and particularly human; he’s not an “El,” he’s a Kent.

And therefore he isn’t invulnerable, really, because he’s plagued by the same fears, desires, hates, needs, etc., as the rest of us. When you do that, he isn’t boring; he’s fascinating. There’s that moment in the original when he flies up to the heavens in rage after Lois dies and is torn between being god and man, between Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. That’s the stuff of Greek and Biblical tragedy. This is not a boring character; to the contrary.

Similarly, there was this cartoon TV show Justice League that did a surprisingly grown-up look at these characters and told some clever stories to boot, and the pilot-episode has Superman ridding the world of nuclear weapons (probably based on Superman IV)—which ends up being the first step in aliens’ evil scheme or something silly like that. It’s not as thought-provoking as the comic book above because the threat is external rather than inherent in man, but the writers understood taking a piece of the character (again, liberal humanitarianism) and using it for the foundation of a story.

So, no, like politicidal I can’t agree that Supes is too perfect or simplistic. The whole point of the character is that he could be a wrathful Jehovah, judging the sins of man, or that he could “…snap [his nemesis] like a twig if he really wanted to”—but that he chooses not to. Isn’t that interesting?

That’d be cool to see on film but it’s likely to never happen. For the next decade or so anyway. It’s downright embarrassing how much WB mishandled the character in the DCEU. I liked Cavill better than most but I cannot deny his portrayal has been shortchanged severely from fulfilling its full potential post-MoS.