Superman Returns

Originally Posted by acid

Did either of you actually watch the movie?

Spoiler:

Ofcourse no one is going to go out and buy up lakelots on his shitty land. However when he manages to flood a third of the world, people are not exactly going to have a choice. They will NEED that land. Governments will have to buy land simply to keep their people alive. It's not out of choice, but necessity.

He very, very clearly stated that he will have weapons far more advanced than anything man has created. He's managed to create his own continent with a space rock. A spack rock from a civilzation thousands of years more advanced than we are. Since those same crystals (with the Fortress of Solitude) contain all the known information on Krypton (including their defense systems), he has easy access to weapons we can't even dream of. He's fully prepared to go to war with the world over this.

Spoiler:

Seriously, though, how exactly are they going to pay him? Gold? Jewelry? Because we know that currency is just about going to be as useful as shit on a plate. Those people are going to be ass-broke when they come onto his magic island, and what is he going to be buying with all the valuables?
Is he going to lord it all over the poor people and spend all day laughing at them and doing absolutely nothing with it? Seeing as to how Superman broke parts of the crystal island off when he rolled around, whatever weapons Lex would make would be pretty useless as thay would have been brittle, right? p.s. Weapons or not, you still need men. You can't be prepared to face the world with just the 4 of them.

Let me get this out of the way. I'm a DC fan and I basically follow alot of Superman. Somebody asked earlier if it was possible to just enjoy the movie for what it was, instead of arguing about continuity and plot holes: The answer is no. Why? It bugs the hell out of me because I know otherwise.

Some random thoughts here. I thought this was a great movie to showcase some great cinematography, along with a maturing of Superman's character. Surprisingly, while the potrayal of some of the characters for the movie were spot on, I was hoping for a little more maturity from the writing. The main plot was horrible. Probably an insult to Superman. Lex Luthor is supposed to be Superman's arch-enemy and what does he do? Try to get rich. That's pretty...lame for somebody who deals with galactic level threats. Now that technology has caught up to the movies, I had wished they would make a "proper" villain for him. There are many in the past that have given him a shitload of trouble. Manchester Black, Doomsday, Mongul, and General Zod are some of the names off the top of my head. In fact, sometimes the writer makes him so powerful that it's hard to create villains that can keep up with him. He spends half the comic musing about the morality and the humanity of it all. The Superman in the movies is less powerful, so I don't think a villain will be a problem for him. Maybe I'm a sucker for titanic battles, but I hope that will not be what will be missing from the Superman franchise in the future.

It seems Lex Luthor will be a recurring villain in the next movie. Great. A little backstory here: In the comics, Lex Luthor is a basically an evil Batman. Somebody who can do everything. From finance to martial artistry. He's been potrayed from a mad scientist to a xenophobic, ruthless businessman to the President of the United States. Personally, I like the businessman one, who is also a techno-futurist in the vein of Tony Stark (The Billionaire Industrialist from Marvel Comics who is also Iron Man). He owns Lexcorp which in turn makes him incredibly rich which in turn allows him to bring to bear his massive resources (Third biggest corporation in the world behind Waynetech and ahead of Sivana Industries) to make life as difficult as possible for Superman. Instead he seems to have fallen to a new low as a genius who can't even make a decent bit of money legally. He's potrayed in the movie as a bit of a bumbling fool as well, which is really a shame.

Originally Posted by acid

Spoiler:

The whole "Son of the Last Son of Krypton" thing worked out much better than I thought. I knew about it going in, and was dead set against it, but Singer handled it great. The scene where Superman gives him his father's speech was amazing.

Spoiler:

I had really hope this rumor would not be true. When I found out it was, I kept thinking of this article "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" and it really threw me off.

Yes, yes, I know that the Superman movies are supposed to be disconnected from the comic, but wouldn't it be great not to have thrown away years of character building so that Superman wouldn't have to deal with what is, in essence, simple bank robbery?

p.s. Alot of credit in this post has to go to Zergrinch for the links and some of the thoughts.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by acid

As I understood it, he was simply going to sell peices of the land off to other random countries. He won't really lord over shit. He owns the property and is simply letting other countries own a part of it for a price.

Well, for whatever reason I can see this not working out. Since he's in the middle of the ocean what would stop other countries from bombing the hell out of it? Well, I suppose "advanced kryptonian technology" would have stopped them or whatever.

Originally Posted by acid

And I'm sure that he would have problem recruiting a small army of thugs. He never has had that problem in the comics.

Problem is that the comic and the movie are totally different. Lex is a much less powerful man in the movies.

Originally Posted by acid

However you really cannot fault this movie for that. That was well established back in 78 with the Donner films. I do agree that Lex should have been more ruthless (let some of that Se7en Spacey come out to play), but I don't fault Singer for it.

I just wish they would do something about that. Not necessily to retcon the writing, but to show a progression of his character. =/

Originally Posted by acid

I'm assuming you're talking about the "eyeball" scene. If not, let me know. But I don't see why he wouldn't deal with this. It's never been above him to stop a petty crime if he sees it being committed, and it certainly has never been above him to save the lives of police officers.

No, I'm talking about Lex's scheme. I was just saying it's the equivalent of a bank robbery, just on a much larger scale. I was saying in comparison with other "more deserving" villains that Singer could have used.

There's nowhere I can't reach.