Trailer Superman Full Trailer

[brodahisou]

There's a lot I'm looking forward to in this movie, Krypto, Guy Gardner and the rest of the Justice Gang, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.

I know that there's a lot of people moaning about the suit and that he's not muscley enough, but I like it. It's a combination of the Kingdom Come and New 52 suit, which I always thought was cool.

I was not a big fan of the Snyder films. Jonathan Kent berating Clark for saving people and telling him not to save him during the tornado, and Clark not saving him, were completely out of character for both of them. Also, especially in Man of Steel, he was never Clark, just Superman. There was no dual personality or acting human, which is one of the fundamental parts of Superman's character, he's juggling two lives. And in this trailer you see him struggling with this.

Lois appears to be totally badass (just like the in comics) and not afraid to ask the tough questions. It would be awesome to see her grilling Lex in an interview.

I'm also interested in finding out what could have hurt Superman so much from the teaser trailer. I'm wondering if Lex has found a way to stop Superman processing sunlight like he normally does and that's why it appears to hurt him, or was it such a concentrated dose of sunlight that it was painful for him to process. Either way it's sparked my curiosity and I'm really stoked for this film.

 

[Ryujin]

I can't really agree with you there. I think part of what makes Superman interesting is his very human morality. His morality certainly can't be a Kryptonian superpower, because we see that Krypton kinda sucked, and we see other Kryptonians (like Zod) who are by no means "omnibenevolent".

Also, Superman voluntarily suborns himself (mostly) to human, particularly American, law. In most interpretations he's not a tool of the government, and he does reserve the right to deal with things his own way, but most of the time he obeys the laws of the land. He has seen too many people who are convinced of their own righteousness, and who do evil in the name of said righteousness, for him to want to fall into that trap, and the solution is to (mostly) abide by the law. When we have supers who decide that they know better how things should be than governments, we get the Authority or Injustice.

Superman's place of birth gave him his powers, but The Kents gave him his morality.

 

[Ryujin]

I think Clark submits to human justice (even though handcuffs and prison are generally meaningless to him) and obeys human laws because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Is his morality human? Difficult to say, but I’d say it’s infallible narratively in a way that human morality isn’t (do/did the Kents have the same narrative protection? Not necessarily, depending on the writer).

Arguably the only other comics character this applies to is Captain America (but let’s not get into a discussion right now about whether Steve is superhuman and if so whether he has superhuman cognitive abilities).

This does also bring us to the importance of the secret identity, which hasn’t had much play in recent superhero films (the best example is Peter Parker, probably, but almost* everyone else has no secret identity worth mentioning). Superman can partly ignore social disapproval because he isn’t a social character; Clark is. Being hated upsets Clark but doesn’t stop Superman from doing what he does, because some of the time he can be Clark and go buy groceries like a normal person, safe from all the worship and vitriol that Superman attracts.

(This is not something (generally) that anyone else with fame and power can do - it’s not a viable option for Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, or Elon Musk. It’s actually a huge real-life problem for billionaires and celebrities, since they can’t easily form effective relationships and social support networks, and that can be very destructive for them and everyone they affect.)

But strip away the identity and Clark/Superman is lost - he has no refuge, no safe connection to humanity, no space to regain balance and sanity. More than Kryptonite, it is his greatest weakness. I wonder how much this version of Superman will consider that.

*Yes, there’s Bruce too, of course.

There is a fundamental difference between, specifically, the characters of Superman and Batman that highlights who they are.

Clark is the person. Superman is the secret identity.

Batman is the person. Bruce Wayne is the secret identity.

 

[Morrus]

Superman's place of birth gave him his powers, but The Kents gave him his morality.

Yep. That's always been the story. I dunno where this 'superpowered morality' stuff is coming from, but it ain't from any Superman comics I've ever read! It's kinda the whole point of the character and his immigration story, and always has been--farm boy instilled with values from his adopted parents.

 

[Reynard]

There is a fundamental difference between, specifically, the characters of Superman and Batman that highlights who they are.

Clark is the person. Superman is the secret identity.

Batman is the person. Bruce Wayne is the secret identity.

And with Superman, there is a third identity in there (once he "meets" his parents) -- than of Kal El. This is the adopted kid story. The search for one's identity when "everything you thought you knew turns out to be a lie."

My kids are adopted, but they are not the same ethnicity as us and so have always known they were adopted. We know other adoptive parents who adopted kids that look just like them and they had to agonize over when to tell the kids, and then those kids had to wrestle with that new knowledge. Clark goes through that in almost all Superman origin stories, and there are also lots of time when adult Supes visits Kandor or travels to alt-Krypton or whatever and has to wrestle with the Kal El part of himself.

 

[trappedslider]

I'm also interested in finding out what could have hurt Superman so much from the teaser trailer. I'm wondering if Lex has found a way to stop Superman processing sunlight like he normally does and that's why it appears to hurt him, or was it such a concentrated dose of sunlight that it was painful for him to process. Either way it's sparked my curiosity and I'm really stoked for this film.

How fast he heals/how durable he is has always been dependent on the writer. Just look at his fight with doomsday

 

[Blue]

I'll drink from that teapot. I'm genuinely excited for this.

 

[nevin]

I'd argue that the last one was a trailer, too. But they say it's a teaser. So I proclaim this a teapot, since we're just randomly using words.

But anyway. Full Superman teapot! It’s mainly Superman being beat up by pretty much everybody. Enjoy!

The superman willing to do whatever it takes to save lives gives me hope that the old DC verse is dead. The trailer seems to be keeping the dark right in the human condition where it should be. . But I'm not getting excited till I see the movie. Gunn gives me hope. but they've screwed up everything but the first wonder woman and the first Aquaman. But here's hoping.

 

[jian]

There is a fundamental difference between, specifically, the characters of Superman and Batman that highlights who they are.

Clark is the person. Superman is the secret identity.

Batman is the person. Bruce Wayne is the secret identity.

I used to like this idea but now I’m not sure about it. It reminds me of a scene in Astro City where Samaritan (Superman expy) is having dinner with Winged Victory (Wonder Woman expy) and she says in exasperation something like, “We’re opposites - you’re a god pretending to be a man, and I’m a woman pretending to be a goddess.”

Now, Sam and WV are different characters from Clark and Diana - this scene is really about how WV has tried to use her fame to inspire other women - but there’s a grain of truth there about Clark. Clark isn’t just a nice Kansas farmboy turned reporter who’s a superhero in his spare time - he’s also literally the most powerful man in the world, the closest thing to God most people will meet. He needs to pretend to be human to be human - without the secret identity of Clark Kent, he has no connection to the rest of us and ultimately no need to be bound by any human limits, and that goes bad really fast.

(This is something I liked about What Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, the finale to the Silver Age Superman that someone mentioned earlier upthread. Spoilers for a 40 year old comic in case you haven’t read it:

Spoiler

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow is a deconstruction of Silver Age Superman (which is good because honestly half the time that guy was kind of an autocratic idiot, making decisions for his friends all the time without telling them).

It’s about removing the narrative protections that Superman has. So first, he loses his secret identity and can’t be Clark any more; then his career becomes more destructive than beneficial, as all his villains attack him and his family and friends, killing several characters; and finally, he’s forced to kill someone to save others.

Without his narrative protections, Superman doesn’t have his narrative omnibenevolence either - he can do the wrong thing, his actions can hurt people. He’s reduced to what I mentioned earlier - an unstoppable guy with all the power and none of the accountability. So he does the only narratively moral thing he can, which is permanently remove all his powers, thus removing all his responsibility.

It’s a fitting ending to any era of Superman and probably the only happy ending he can have. Ultimately, the world does just fine without him, as he had hoped.)

 

[nevin]

I used to like this idea but now I’m not sure about it. It reminds me of a scene in Astro City where Samaritan (Superman expy) is having dinner with Winged Victory (Wonder Woman expy) and she says in exasperation something like, “We’re opposites - you’re a god pretending to be a man, and I’m a woman pretending to be a goddess.”

Now, Sam and WV are different characters from Clark and Diana - this scene is really about how WV has tried to use her fame to inspire other women - but there’s a grain of truth there about Clark. Clark isn’t just a nice Kansas farmboy turned reporter who’s a superhero in his spare time - he’s also literally the most powerful man in the world, the closest thing to God most people will meet. He needs to pretend to be human to be human - without the secret identity of Clark Kent, he has no connection to the rest of us and ultimately no need to be bound by any human limits, and that goes bad really fast.

(This is something I liked about What Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, the finale to the Silver Age Superman that someone mentioned earlier upthread. Spoilers for a 40 year old comic in case you haven’t read it:

Spoiler

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow is a deconstruction of Silver Age Superman (which is good because honestly half the time that guy was kind of an autocratic idiot, making decisions for his friends all the time without telling them).

It’s about removing the narrative protections that Superman has. So first, he loses his secret identity and can’t be Clark any more; then his career becomes more destructive than beneficial, as all his villains attack him and his family and friends, killing several characters; and finally, he’s forced to kill someone to save others.

Without his narrative protections, Superman doesn’t have his narrative omnibenevolence either - he can do the wrong thing, his actions can hurt people. He’s reduced to what I mentioned earlier - an unstoppable guy with all the power and none of the accountability. So he does the only narratively moral thing he can, which is permanently remove all his powers, thus removing all his responsibility.

It’s a fitting ending to any era of Superman and probably the only happy ending he can have. Ultimately, the world does just fine without him, as he had hoped.)

Yea but I just want a superhero movie where the superhero has challenges, maybe a few ethical dilemma's and then does the right thing. All this watchmen dark, do we really need them stuff is fine for that genre not for Marvel or DC. IMO anyway.