Why alot of superhero movies fall flat.

I read J. Michael Straczynski's Superman: Earth One with some relish. The only complaint that I had was that Shane Davis went a bit overboard with trying to make Superman look hip to the kids (he wears a hoodie (pet hate #25) and looks alarmingly like Robert Pattinson as Edward from Twilight on the front cover (pet hate #47)).

If Lois Lane ended up looking like Bella, I may have thrown my laptop (I mean, uh, legitimate paper copy of the comic book) out the window.

 Yes, Clark comes off as being a bit too much of an 'angst ridden teen' (IGN), and yes, perhaps the circumstances that lead him up to taking on the Red and Yellow 'S' insignia seem to detract from traditionally infallible portrayals of Superman. At the end of the day, though, what I took away from the book was not only how precisely human Clark Kent is portrayed, but also the manner in which Straczynski manages to pull it off. It made me realise precisely why I love the Bryan Singer movie so much and why I'm not particularly relishing in the idea of Zack Synder (of Sucker-Punch fame) directing the new Man of Steel.

Starcynski's portrayal of Clark's journey  (*retch*) is particularly effective in how understated it is. The dialogue between Clark and his mother and the flashbacks to his life and self discovery in Smallville are very effectively interwoven with his struggle to find out precisely who he is. The comic relies on Shane Davis's quite emotive artwork, portraying young Kent as someone who really is suffering for his inability to be human. Earth One doesn't labour the point and doesn't tell us what Clark is thinking. It makes us figure it out by humanising him and allowing the reader to feel his pain.

What both Starcynski and Davis manage to do together is avoid what a lot of modern superhero films (and for that matter, comic books) are doing - wowing us with big explosions, stunt sequences and fun romance. Sure - Earth One does have a fair bit of action in it, but it has a point. And as an intelligent reader you never think that the action is just there for being action, or that Superman is firing off his heat vision just for the lasers pew pew fanboys.

The main question I had in mind in writing this post is, why couldn't more Superhero movies have an emotional point? Superman Returns will remain one of my favourite Superhero movies of all time because of the fact that Singer makes a point of pulling as many filmic tricks out of the bag as possible to get us to relate and really feel Superman and the people around him. The flying scenes and the special effects are there, of course, like other films. But Singer's inclusion is so much more subtle, as if Superman does this every day. And the effects don't detract from the point of the film: that Superman is back, and is not really sure how he fits in.

Clark Kent - Awkward Central

I guess, at the end of the day, I want to relate to my superheros in a lot of the same ways that the comic book writers of old did. Superman and The X-Men and others were all written so that those who felt as if they were insignificant or misunderstood could believe that someone like them could do something magnificent and feel accepted. But in order for myself, and others, to really feel that and immerse ourselves in the story, I guess we're asking that writers, film makers and comic book artists try to maintain some finesse in worming their way into our hearts and minds.

Snyder, if you ruin Superman for me, I will do unto you what I did to the writers of Smallville...

Nothing at all to be honest.