If there’s one thing that puts me in a worse mood than politics, it’s Hollywood, which never fails to disappoint in its stupidity and its arrogance.
I watched the new preview for “Superman” from director James Gunn. As you may know, I’m not a huge James Gunn fan. His work on “Guardians of the Galaxy” is fine, when he engages in ridiculous, gonzo humor. But elsewhere?
Back in the day, Gunn’s old jokey and ugly tweets were resurfaced. Based on those old tweets, he was actually fired by Marvel. I publicly supported the idea that he should be rehired because people shouldn’t be canceled based on jokes they made back when Twitter was a jokier platform.
But now he’s directing the new “Superman” movie and the preview sucks. It’s bad. It’s terrible.
In the preview, Superman is wounded and lying on the snow, then whistles for Krypto, the Superdog, who arrives and then proceeds to beat the living hell out of him for over a minute. He’s screaming in pain as Krypto jumps on him and continues to fight him.
I don’t see the purpose of this; it’s not dramatic. It’s just silly and ridiculous.
WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show
Finally, Krypto figures out that he needs to take Superman back to the Fortress of Solitude. Every James Gunn joke is a Monty Python gag that lasts three times too long. So now Krypto is dragging Superman’s prone body through the snow back toward the Fortress of Solitude, which arises from the Arctic. And it’s a cool-looking Fortress of Solitude.
But don’t worry, it gets worse.
Once Superman is brought inside, a team of robots, presumably of Kryptonian origin, starts to handle him and then they have one of the most nonsensical exchanges in any James Gunn movie. They say robots have no feelings, and then the female robot starts giggling like a little girl.
The entire attitude is wrong. The gold standard for a “Superman” movie remains the original “Superman” from 1978, by far the best “Superman” movie. It was significantly better than “Man of Steel” because it understood in the first half that there’s a solemnity to Superman, that he is supposed to be the embodiment of America, and then the second half of the movie shifted into a more comic-book, humorous mode. The color palette was very rich and very bright.
In “Man of Steel,” they basically desaturated the entire film so the entire color palette was grayscale and kind of ugly and dark and the entire character of Superman was much darker.
The attitude of the preview is totally wrong. It’s just “Guardians of the Galaxy” in a Superman suit, and it ticks me off, it really does. As a lifelong fan of the Superman brand, it’s not that hard to get Superman right. He’s supposed to be the embodiment of everything cool and heroic about America. And of course, he’s supposed to be charming as well. That’s the whole shtick.
So you don’t need full-scale James Gunn. He makes Superman the same as Chris Pratt’s character in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and all the jokes are the same as the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. It’s silly and stupid and bad. Two thumbs down.
Then I discovered that for Greta Gerwig’s Netflix adaptation of “The Magician’s Nephew” — the first book in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series — the person who they are thinking about casting as the voice for the lion Aslan — who is obviously a metaphor for Jesus — is Meryl Streep.
This makes no sense at all on a character level. On a metaphorical level, it’s one of the dumbest things you could possibly do. If you want to alienate the entire C.S. Lewis audience, this is exactly what you should do. Meanwhile, Charli XCX is apparently in talks for the role of the White Witch.
Why are they doing this??
Just adapt the story straight. It’s not that difficult. It’s a great book. Adapt it straight.
This is the same as that ridiculous suggestion a while back that Cynthia Erivo was going to be cast in “Jesus Christ Superstar” as Jesus.
Stop with this stuff. Stop it. Just stop. It’s stupid and it’s insulting and it’s gross and you would never do this with any other religion. You wouldn’t.
It’s ridiculous and annoying and demonstrative of how Hollywood spits on people who don’t believe the things they believe, and then takes classic intellectual property from those spaces and uses it against them.
[#item_full_content]
[[{“value”:”
If there’s one thing that puts me in a worse mood than politics, it’s Hollywood, which never fails to disappoint in its stupidity and its arrogance.
I watched the new preview for “Superman” from director James Gunn. As you may know, I’m not a huge James Gunn fan. His work on “Guardians of the Galaxy” is fine, when he engages in ridiculous, gonzo humor. But elsewhere?
Back in the day, Gunn’s old jokey and ugly tweets were resurfaced. Based on those old tweets, he was actually fired by Marvel. I publicly supported the idea that he should be rehired because people shouldn’t be canceled based on jokes they made back when Twitter was a jokier platform.
But now he’s directing the new “Superman” movie and the preview sucks. It’s bad. It’s terrible.
In the preview, Superman is wounded and lying on the snow, then whistles for Krypto, the Superdog, who arrives and then proceeds to beat the living hell out of him for over a minute. He’s screaming in pain as Krypto jumps on him and continues to fight him.
I don’t see the purpose of this; it’s not dramatic. It’s just silly and ridiculous.
WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show
Finally, Krypto figures out that he needs to take Superman back to the Fortress of Solitude. Every James Gunn joke is a Monty Python gag that lasts three times too long. So now Krypto is dragging Superman’s prone body through the snow back toward the Fortress of Solitude, which arises from the Arctic. And it’s a cool-looking Fortress of Solitude.
But don’t worry, it gets worse.
Once Superman is brought inside, a team of robots, presumably of Kryptonian origin, starts to handle him and then they have one of the most nonsensical exchanges in any James Gunn movie. They say robots have no feelings, and then the female robot starts giggling like a little girl.
The entire attitude is wrong. The gold standard for a “Superman” movie remains the original “Superman” from 1978, by far the best “Superman” movie. It was significantly better than “Man of Steel” because it understood in the first half that there’s a solemnity to Superman, that he is supposed to be the embodiment of America, and then the second half of the movie shifted into a more comic-book, humorous mode. The color palette was very rich and very bright.
In “Man of Steel,” they basically desaturated the entire film so the entire color palette was grayscale and kind of ugly and dark and the entire character of Superman was much darker.
The attitude of the preview is totally wrong. It’s just “Guardians of the Galaxy” in a Superman suit, and it ticks me off, it really does. As a lifelong fan of the Superman brand, it’s not that hard to get Superman right. He’s supposed to be the embodiment of everything cool and heroic about America. And of course, he’s supposed to be charming as well. That’s the whole shtick.
So you don’t need full-scale James Gunn. He makes Superman the same as Chris Pratt’s character in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and all the jokes are the same as the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. It’s silly and stupid and bad. Two thumbs down.
Then I discovered that for Greta Gerwig’s Netflix adaptation of “The Magician’s Nephew” — the first book in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series — the person who they are thinking about casting as the voice for the lion Aslan — who is obviously a metaphor for Jesus — is Meryl Streep.
This makes no sense at all on a character level. On a metaphorical level, it’s one of the dumbest things you could possibly do. If you want to alienate the entire C.S. Lewis audience, this is exactly what you should do. Meanwhile, Charli XCX is apparently in talks for the role of the White Witch.
Why are they doing this??
Just adapt the story straight. It’s not that difficult. It’s a great book. Adapt it straight.
This is the same as that ridiculous suggestion a while back that Cynthia Erivo was going to be cast in “Jesus Christ Superstar” as Jesus.
Stop with this stuff. Stop it. Just stop. It’s stupid and it’s insulting and it’s gross and you would never do this with any other religion. You wouldn’t.
It’s ridiculous and annoying and demonstrative of how Hollywood spits on people who don’t believe the things they believe, and then takes classic intellectual property from those spaces and uses it against them.
“}]]
