Superman has changed over the years a great deal, and many haven't been kind. Also, like several comic-book characters, he's reached the point where his non-comic existence has largely eclipsed him comic one. The old TV shows, the movies, cartoons, toys. That's Superman, not the Electric versions or Mullet-guy or even…

@avclub-5bc6960dad8ab0694bb4d6ff884b0c1e:disqus Hancock's main problem was it was two very different stories Frankensteined together. You had the "hero past caring" stuff and then the entire him-her immortal backstory, which never meshed.

I dunno. Giant robots has nigh-infinite shittiness potential, but in theory a good film is totally possible. It comes down to whether the story has any meat on it, or instead just a wink-wink bullshit genre piece, like Battleship. At the very least it'll probably be good to look at. For all the problems with, say,…

Initiative. That is, doing things because he thinks they should be done, rather than reacting to things other people do or selecting from specific choices other people present. Its absence is a common problem with blander protagonists as somehow taking charge implies elitism or risks viewer disapproval.

Yeah, it's like when they say the value of a human body is $1.50 or whatever as components, but if it's fresh and the organs are good, it's usually way more than that.

Well, based on dispersion pattern of kryptonite, Krypton was probably about 10% of the total mass of the galaxy anyway, so there was probably quintillions of people there to start with.

It could bounce off and kill an innocent bystander!

You'd be surprised how often a need for that comes up, you really would.

Well, theory and practice. In theory, it should be possible to make good Superman stories, just like it would be possible to make uplifting tales of teenage Jesus. But they way no one ever seems to succeed implies that the theory, however seemingly-coherent, may be unsound.

What about cannibal dogs, or how weirdly brutal his beatdown of Supes at the end was. It was like on any particular day they couldn't decide between grim-and-gritty, silver age adventure, or homage to the Donner movies. So they just went with whatever they felt like that day.

At least Prometheus has the (off-screen) image of Idris Elba and Charleze Theron gettin' it on, 'cause that's pretty sexy.

Eh, comics are full of characters that should, by all rights, be essentially godlike. Supes was much, much less silly way back in the day, but 80 years of power creep means de-powering him seems like a cynical stunt. It's fantasy; essentially magic - the logic is internal.

It's fine as a no-depth, comics-as-spectacle spectacle. There's just nothing under the hood, the logic never holds up and the ending is flat-out asinine. But it did have a sense of fun and was spirited, and sometimes those alone can get you a long way.

Sounds better. Aside from the weird tonal shift, Returns' real offense was that it was just dull.

Nerd communities tend to be angered and confused by characterization, agency and depth, and instead like silly bloodless fistfights, sci-fi scenery porn, shameless callbacks and more boom and zazz. It's always more important that the story hews to canon than that the hero resonates as a person.

"No, mom, it's not what it looks like. I'm pollinating the crops because the bees don't come. Wait, I said that wrong…"

Nightmares?

Are you anywhere near Old Jersey?

She's a Derek?

Because of her, when your life ends, you don't die anymore; you Di. It's beautiful.