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Superman: Red Son?

incognito

incognito

Is Warner Bros. Making A Superman Red Son Movie?
Kong: Skull Island's director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and writer Mark Millar got into a conversation on social media, and in the midst of it revealed that the prospect of Millar's Red Son has come up on several occasions at Warner Bros., including a pitch from Vogt-Roberts (via Den of Geek).

Vogt-Roberts revealed that it was shot down at the time, but Millar also pointed out that two of his friends received pitches from WB for a Red Son project within the last two months. Red Son clearly wouldn't fit within the DCEU continuity but could be the first of a possible Elseworlds style series.

Red Son tells the story of a Superman who grew up in Russia as opposed to the wheat fields of Kansas, and also includes alternate takes on Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Batman.
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"Is this something they're genuinely planning? I have no idea", he told Den of Geek. "I've got pals at Warner Bros but never discussed it with them. I think they're just going through their back catalogue of big books and hoping to lure in good directors as opposed to any particular interest in developing Red Son". There's always 50 conversations for every comic book movie that gets made and as far as I know this is something that is very much just at conversation stage."
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I'm going to take a gander here: instead of landing in Russia, the film's plot will involve the "Red Son" landing in China where he'll be called Kong Kenan. The movie will all but fellatio the Chinese Communist Party, constantly portraying it as uber-competent, heroic and providing the absolute best leadership all in the hopes that Bejing will grant this film access to their cinemas, letting WB score some of that sweet, sweet overseas revenue. :D
 
Guess they have given up on portraying superman as an altruistic good guy huh?
 
I think this is just a rumor at this point, and personally i think if they were going to do Elseworld films they'd test the waters with a Gotham by Gaslight film first.
 
incognito said:
I'm going to take a gander here: instead of landing in Russia, the film's plot will involve the "Red Son" landing in China where he'll be called Kong Kenan. The movie will all but fellatio the Chinese Communist Party, constantly portraying it as uber-competent, heroic and providing the absolute best leadership all in the hopes that Bejing will grant this film access to their cinemas, letting WB score some of that sweet, sweet overseas revenue. :D
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Why the fuck would they do that?
 
There's a difference between appeasing China and making a comic into literally the opposite of what it was to appease a country completely unmentioned in the original comic.
 
Nikkolas said:
He was an altruistic good guy in RS. He simply was raised in a different culture that taught him a more efficient way of doing good.


I doubt very much this would ever happen but it be interesting.
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I dig RS

but the recent mood of superman is to darken him to the point where he is vantablack

hopefully patty jenkin's wonderwoman will change that
 
Red Son is a hit piece on superman - another in the long line of 'beware what he might do' comics. In this case, if you raise him in a Communist state, he'll become a tyrant that lobotomises people. Also without Superman around, Lex Luthor will become the greatest president ever! Capitalism is the source of all good!!!

It's a bad book with an interesting premise, and I absolutely agree that making a film based on it is just plain giving up on the character as a positive role model.
 
Does that count as cultural appropriation?

Jokes aside, this idea sounds horrible. I'm not a fan of the Soviet Union (my ancestors were them dirty burgeois that nearly got killed) and even I felt the deep sense of wrongness from reading the Red Son. It seemed wrong to me, and I didn't even like Superman at the time. Mostly, because I thought edgy heroes were cool and Liefeld was a decent artist.
 
Melancholeric said:
What made you feel wrong, if you don't mind me asking?
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The society created by the Superman, those people he "rehabilitated." You know, the neurosurgical implant thing and all. I may not have liked Superman at the time, but I knew the real one wouldn't have done something so disgusting. Maybe it's because I was influenced by my parents' views, but I have a strong hatred for things like that.
 
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Just going to point out that Red Son Luthor is explicitly as evil and self-centered as he's ever been. He challenges Superman, not because he gives a flying fuck about global sovereignty, but because he's unwilling to yield authority. Superman brings global prosperity and peace...except for the US where Luthor stubbornly holds out because he's a selfish prick. It wasn't some deluded nationalism, it was explicitly Luthor himself refusing to bend the knee out of pride and arrogance.

The world Luthor creates after ethically shaming Superman is only a good place to live because Luthor is a genius which means he understands the best world for him is the bet world for everyone else, too. Hoarding all your wealth and power just results in the proverbial pitchfork mob showing up at your door so it's simply efficient to spread it around. Also his family dynasty literally rules the human race forever.

All that taken into account. the ending also shows Superman was right all along so fuck you, capitalism.
 
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Nikkolas said:
Just going to point out that Red Son Luthor is explicitly as evil and self-centered as he's ever been. He challenges Superman, not because he gives a flying fuck about global sovereignty, but because he's unwilling to yield authority. Superman brings global prosperity and peace...except for the US where Luthor stubbornly holds out because he's a selfish prick. It wasn't some deluded nationalism, it was explicitly Luthor himself refusing to bend the knee out of pride and arrogance.

The world Luthor creates after ethically shaming Superman is only a good place to live because Luthor is a genius which means he understands the best world for him is the bet world for everyone else, too. Hoarding all your wealth and power just results in the proverbial pitchfork mob showing up at your door so it's simply efficient to spread it around. Also his family dynasty literally rules the human race forever.

All that taken into account. the ending also shows Superman was right all along so fuck you, capitalism.
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Yeah, the moral of that story is that a human douche leader - chosen by the people - is still better than an alien douche leader - who practices "rehabilitation" of political dissidents. Can I just claim that this story is plain depressing? Superman is a dick, Luthor is a dick, and both of them get away scot-free. Joy. Also, I don't think a totalitarian dictator that brainwashes political dissidents can be right in any way.
 
Nikkolas said:
He was an altruistic good guy in RS. He simply was raised in a different culture that taught him a more efficient way of doing good.


I doubt very much this would ever happen but it be interesting.
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"a more efficient way of doing good" is an amazing euphemism for "lobotomises political dissidents with eye lasers" lol

Red Son was basically a contest of wills between two gigantic arseholes, namely giga-Stalin and the platonic form of the grasping tech entrepreneur, and it ends with the planet exploding because utopian science went too far ooga booga.

It contains the germ of an interesting elevator pitch for a Superman story, and precious little else.

Mark Millar licks goats.
 
The problem as I see it is the failure to adapt the concept of Superman into an alternative ideology. Normal Superman is a paragon of Truth Justice and the American way, of our core ideals of our society. So it stands to reason that Communist Superman would be a paragon behind the ideals behind Communism, which would be an interesting and provocative way of writing a character and contrast with the reality of how Communism was implemented. Maybe point out that ideals of our Superman and the Russian Superman are win the end not so different from eachother and maybe our political differences just stem from us having different views on what's best for people rather than some fundamental difference in what we want.

Instead we just get Stalinist asshole Superman. Because it turns out that a comic written by a guy with a shallow understanding of politics is bad at grasping the difference between idealogy and the implementation of ideology.
 
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Reveen said:
The problem as I see it is the failure to adapt the concept of Superman into an alternative ideology. Normal Superman is a paragon of Truth Justice and the American way, of our core ideals of our society. So it stands to reason that Communist Superman would be a paragon behind the ideals behind Communism, which would be an interesting and provocative way of writing a character and contrast with the reality of how Communism was implemented.

Instead we just get Stalinist asshole Superman. Because it turns out that a comic written by a guy with a shallow understanding of politics is bad at grasping the difference between idealogy and the implementation of ideology.
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I would assume you are aware that there are people alive today - not many but more than a few - that absolutely believe in Marxism-Leninism? Others tag on Stalinism too.

There are people with the benefit of decades of hindsight, who aren't actually living in a totalitarian propaganda state that tells them Uncle Joe wants nothing more than to bring freedom to the world.

Trotskyists, Tankies and so-forth absolutely believe violent and force is absolutely justified. Hell, Superman wasn't even that bad really. It's noted most of the world gladly joined up with his USSR because it's just common sense. He wasn't going around conquering states which actually puts him above some of these people.

Pulling the No True Marxist Card is entirely unwarranted here. Superman is the product of the aforementioned totalitarian propaganda state that has raised him with the values of Stalin's USSR. If his understanding of Marx is shallow it's only because Stalin's understanding is shallow. (which is true but that's being realistic, not bad writing)
 
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Reveen said:
The problem as I see it is the failure to adapt the concept of Superman into an alternative ideology. Normal Superman is a paragon of Truth Justice and the American way, of our core ideals of our society. So it stands to reason that Communist Superman would be a paragon behind the ideals behind Communism, which would be an interesting and provocative way of writing a character and contrast with the reality of how Communism was implemented.

Instead we just get Stalinist asshole Superman. Because it turns out that a comic written by a guy with a shallow understanding of politics is bad at grasping the difference between idealogy and the implementation of ideology.
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To add to this, Luthor could have been cast as the avatar of Capitalism's ideals, forced to confront the realities of his ideology in his quest to make America a power in the face of a superhumanly implemented communism that itself was fraught with contradictions. Two great men, each able to bear the weight of history, each made to realise the cost of attaining their dreams when ordinary people who cannot bear that weight are fed into the grand and frequently crushing equations of nation-building, much less the inhuman logic of great power conflict.

Instead we got a few pointless setpieces, terrible renditions of Wonder Woman, the Green lanterns, and Superman in the same book, lobotomies everywhere, and billionaire plutocrat Lex Luthor as humanity's unironic saviour.

What a waste.
Ford Prefect said:
The epilogue is set many millions of years in the future, at the end of the Sun's natural life span.
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It's been a while since I've read it, but you're quite right and I misremembered. The Sun, now grown into a red giant, starts to destroy the planet with its gravity, so Jor-L sends Kal-L out into space and back in time to start the whole thing all over again. That part of my post was wrong.
 
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It's important to note exactly what happened at the end because it really highlights how bullshit the Luthor stuff was lol
 
Nikkolas said:
I'm guessing Ford meant how Luthor is explicitly the doom of mankind and Superman was our savior all along.
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Luthor doesn't doom mankind though. He lives for a thousand years, dies the beloved architect of a great and bountiful dynasty that brings prosperity to the planet, and his ancestors inhabit the planet in peace, comfort, and a state of brilliant learning well into the distant future. Superman has to "die" in order for that to happen.

The planet is destroyed by unavoidable natural disaster.
Ford Prefect said:
Yes, exactly.
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Thanks for clarifying.
 
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