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Bright-Burn - James Gunn Take on Man of Steel

I'd like to get an actual Superman film so that this would-be bizzaro/shallow deconstruction movie actually meant anything.
 
comradepitrovsky said:
I think I could live without a character named "Jailbait."
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To continue my thoughts above; Squadron Supreme would also be a better property to adapt than Irredeemable and Incorruptible.

Hell, there are so many other stories with Superman pastiche characters to adapt that are better than both of Supreme Power and Irredeemable, and the list gets pretty damn long. Apollo, Blue Marvel, Icon, Martian Manhunter, Marvelman, Samaritan, Supreme, Ultiman...

The upcoming Shazam film looks good, at least. I just hope they actually call him Captain Marvel in the film itself.
 
Scots Dragon said:
The original Squadron Supreme by Mark Gruenwald was so much better, and would make for a way more interesting film than that hot garbage.

Though admittedly it'd be a tight fit and they'd have to leave a lot out. Miniseries, maybe?
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I don't think anything would make a better ore more topical movie than the US government being evil and misusing heroes in its endless campaign to fuck over the world. It's more true now than when JMS wrote it during the Bush Years. Also it's just a really fantastic story about the realities of being a "hero."

Though, it would probably be "boycotted" for "get your politics out of my media" if it was released today.
 
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comradepitrovsky said:
I think I could live without a character named "Jailbait."
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Yeah, there are some chunks of Incorruptible that are not, uh, not great. That's kind of why I'd want to see it as a movie though - it's not a huge deal and there's too much for just one movie so it would probably be actually changed from its source material for film. Jailbait would pretty easy to change to, y'know, not be that and it's a change that would be very easy to justify. I think there's a very good core story to Incorruptible, and a film could remove most of the chaff to draw it out.
 
Honestly, the only thing that makes this film look like it elevates the tired cliche of "Superman but he's evil" is that BrightBurn is a child, and seems to exist in a world where there aren't a ton of other superheroes. It's actually intriguing to see where they're going with this idea and it can have a lot of interesting twists and turns.
 
I don't really understand the title of this thread because this doesn't feel like any sort of real take on Superman, or even "evil Superman."

The shots in the trailer and the framing of both the kid and the events makes it look like a creepy child horror movie which uses a handful of visual references from Superman to set up the kid.

You know how Terminator was basically a slasher movie that used the visual language of science fiction? This feels a bit like the Ring or another creepy child horror movie but using the visual language of superheroes.

Not a direct take on Superman.
 
FBH said:
Probably because his origin story, setup and apparently powers are wholesale stolen from superman.
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That shouldn't make the movie some sort of statement about Superman given that horror lives on turning the comfortable and familiar into the terrifying.

Yes there's clearly some Superman in the DNA but I hope this movie doesn't treat itself as a "take on Man of Steel" because the trailer really doesn't frame the kid in anything like a Superman figure and it really shouldn't.

Fundamentally even evil Superman stories-the good ones anyhow-have his evil result from fundamentally human impulses because normal Superman represents us at our best and therefore evil Superman generally represents us as our worst.

Brightburn is just shown and framed to be completely off in a way that is clearly unsettling. He's not a dick or a bully or a megalomaniac in the trailer as presented, which would be an evil Superman take.

He's creepy and inhuman-
Sadako except he came from outer space instead of a haunted VHS tapes.
 
There's something distinctly uncomfortable to me in using the imagery of the perenial refugee to promote fear, terror and paranoia.
 
Nikkolas said:
I don't think anything would make a better ore more topical movie than the US government being evil and misusing heroes in its endless campaign to fuck over the world. It's more true now than when JMS wrote it during the Bush Years. Also it's just a really fantastic story about the realities of being a "hero."
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You and I obviously have very different yardsticks for what qualifies as fantastic.

Supreme Power's problems have literally nothing to do with its politics. Its problems have everything to do with the fact that it's a badly-written mess with flat, uninteresting takes on the characters, an lack of any genuine and real depth, and very little beyond the surface idea of being the darker and edgier take. And that last one is where the real problem comes in.

Squadron Supreme was already the dark and edgy take on the material. Aside from just not being very good, Supreme Power is outright redundant since the original does actually do the same job better. Supreme Power just takes many of the same basic ideas, and adds unnecessary tits and gore in order to be for more 'mature' audiences, and adds a veneer of 'realism' where that translates to all of the superheroes being gigantic gaping fucking arseholes.

Squadron Supreme is just so much better in every way.
 
Man, imagine looking at a superhero themed horror movie and complaining that someone's doing yet another grimdark take on superman.

Like, would you look at a trailer for an Aliens movie or some other movie where scary shit goes down in space and be all like "Oh great, yet another cynical movie about space travel bring bad!"
 
Reveen said:
Man, imagine looking at a superhero themed horror movie and complaining that someone's doing yet another grimdark take on superman.

Like, would you look at a trailer for an Aliens movie or some other movie where scary shit goes down in space and be all like "Oh great, yet another cynical movie about space travel bring bad!"
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To be fair, it's entirely because the thread title immediately brings Superman to mind; the thread's tone was slanted towards that discussion from the beginning. And while the trailer is ultimately about horror, the first minute or so of it is definitely a riff on the Man of Steel film between the Martha Kent analogue, Smallville-like setting, and vaguely uplifting strings music similar to Man of Steel's leitmotif for Superman. It's probably a horror movie first, but it does play upon a Superman pastiche to establish the concept, which makes the comparison inevitable.
 
Reveen said:
Man, imagine looking at a superhero themed horror movie and complaining that someone's doing yet another grimdark take on superman.

Like, would you look at a trailer for an Aliens movie or some other movie where scary shit goes down in space and be all like "Oh great, yet another cynical movie about space travel bring bad!"
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Only if the scary shit is the result of someone getting an egg shoved down their throat that bursts through their chest.

Or, you know, an alien falling from space in a pod that looks like a human and lands in farmland to be raised by humans who happens to have super powers including flight, strength, and laser eyes.

Yeah man you're right I must just be seeing things where they don't exist.
 
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