The Future of Comic Book Movies

[Nowhere Man]

Originally Posted by Kalyx triaD I actually recalled this point in one of the 'News...' threads concerning a Batman/Superman movie (using Nolan's Batman). The appeal of Bruce and Clark is the clashing of vengeful anger and hopeful optimism. While Clark is berating Bruce for his heavy handed tactics, Bruce could blast back about the arrogance of questioning his actions after the events of TDK. While Clark was putting cartoonish evil land owners in jail, Bruce had to stand over charred rubble where his love died in. He watched a good man go insane and had to sacrifice what little good standing he had to protect his name. And all that while a crazy clown pretty much won the whole ordeal. Bruce's endings aren't happy, they don't have him smiling at the camera before the credits. I think this is a gold mine of character interaction, and the stronger points of putting Bruce and Clark together in the first place.

That's the thing, though; there's no fucking way someone as idealistic and nigh-omnipotent as Superman would just sit back and let the events of TDK happen in the first place. All of the previous Superman movies have established that Clark is every bit at home stopping petty street crime as he is fighting would-be world conquerors, and SR showed him doing just that on a worldwide scale. If there was a whole city being besieged by a psychotic terrorist or an evil ninja cult, a mere ten-second flight away from Metropolis, then why the hell would Clark not do anything about it? If Superman existed in the Nolan-verse, then TDK would have ended about two minutes into the opening bank robbery scene.

The only way that it works in my eyes is if the first two Batman movies took place during the five-year period where Superman was off-planet before SR (which I know is no longer part of the continuity they're creating, but whatever). Otherwise, he comes off as totally ineffectual, and it just smacks of taking the Frank Miller approach of re-writing Superman's personality completely in order to make him look like a naive idiot compared to Batman.

[Kalyx triaD]

Originally Posted by Nowhere Man That's the thing, though; there's no fucking way someone as idealistic and nigh-omnipotent as Superman would just sit back and let the events of TDK happen in the first place. All of the previous Superman movies have established that Clark is every bit at home stopping petty street crime as he is fighting would-be world conquerors, and SR showed him doing just that on a worldwide scale. If there was a whole city being besieged by a psychotic terrorist or an evil ninja cult, a mere ten-second flight away from Metropolis, then why the hell would Clark not do anything about it? If Superman existed in the Nolan-verse, then TDK would have ended about two minutes into the opening bank robbery scene.

All this you can apply to the general concept of crossovers, though. How do you feel about crime running rampant in Gotham with a whole universe of heroes existing in the comics? If we got passed that in the books we could accept it on screen. I have no answer for what you're pointing out, it makes sense, but it's something me and many others got over already.

[Nowhere Man]

Mainly because I'm way more of a Superman fan than a Batman one, and there's no way to pull off a crossover movie like that without making Superman look bad. Either he's so totally inept at being the world's protector that he can't even deal with stuff that's happening in the next city over, or he just doesn't give a shit about Gotham. Either way it makes him look like crap just to reinforce the idea that Batman is cool, which is hardly something that needs reminding since he's a far more popular character anyway.

In the comics, it's slightly more understandable since A) Batman is smart enough and has enough high-tech gadgets to hang with the rest of the Justice League, whereas in the movie he gets all his gear from whatever Morgan Freeman has lying around, and B) there's enough crazy shit going on all over the world on a regular basis that Superman and the others would have their hands full. Not to mention Batman has like a dozen sidekicks helping him out in the comics, so it's not like he's doing it all by himself. It's still hard to swallow that a place as nasty as Gotham can still exist with the rest of the DCU (which is honestly why I feel Batman is a really poor place to start when getting into DC), but it does make a tad more sense as to why the other capes don't meddle with Bruce's turf unless it's something big.