I keep remembering how many people freaked out when Martha Kent said:
“Be their hero, Clark. Be their angel, be their monument. Be anything they want you to be. Or be none of it. You didn’t owe this world a thing anyway.”
Don’t you think Clark having a choice in his status makes it stronger?
He’s not just Superman because he needs to be, he’s Superman because he wants to be.
He wants to save the world. He wants to be a hero. It makes everything he does much stronger because it’s his choice to be this way.
Humans are these dark, twisted beings. We’re this unsettling mix of good and bad.
Yet there is a person who looked at us, looked the darkest of us in the eye and realized that he wanted to help us. He wanted to use his powers for our benefit.
Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone?
Superman could easily leave the earth and go as far away as he can, but he doesn’t, because he made the choice to stay on earth and help humanity out.
And it’s that choice to stay that truly makes Clark Kent super.
like to expand with the concept art version BC IT IS THE MOST:
also, i want to back up crediting patty and zack bc this is not just a one off aesthetic choice. the dceu is intentionally maintaining a classical paintings motif that’s BEYOND standard referencing:
fall of the rebel angels depicts michael casting down lucifer
and this is important bc! right after this scene with finch and lex we get one of bruce’s crazy dreams! where he sees, ding ding, michael!
this is not even the first time we’ve seen an ANVIL sized church window visual red cape motif:
except i’m not here to talk about jesus parallels
i mean, it’s possible, lol, but this post is not about that. it’s about how hard the dceu is going on this motif. it’s reference, it’s thematic, but also clearly a huge visual inspiration
(the descent from the cross)
and it’s now being incorporated into the story. by turning the painting upside down the narrative is drawing our attention back to it. it’s a message or/and there’s a hidden message (common in detective fiction).
AND bc this post is really about celebrating how wonder woman is an intrinsic part of the dceu AND bvs and that patty and zack and others worked closely: let’s look at the what stands out about hippolyta and antiope:
hippolyta and antiope share the visual of the first painting. hippolyta gets the white horse. ANTIOPE GETS THE RED CAPE! it’s not just a staple of superman anymore, it’s associated with angels and with michael, with battling hell and with sacrifice.
I didn’t think I could appreciate the DCEU more than I did before and then this happened
Something that has been bothering since the first reviews of Wonder Woman came out. Critics loved the movie, they love Diana (of course, I mean) and especially they loved her character development and delivered many important messages without “forcing an agenda”.
With development, they meant – Diana’s save paradise place, actually being quite confident, leaving it to be introduced to mankind, her naivety is funny, of course, but doesn’t have the “Born Sexy Yesterday”-Trope, the more she sees how double-sided men are, the more she questions everything and gets more confident in what she wants to do instead of what others tell her to do because she is able to do that. She realizes although there is both dark and good side in each human being, love is the only to fight it (be it romantic, be it a family, friends etc.)
They loved that. It was great, that’s true.
But this is the exact same thing, that Clark has gone through. That Bruce has gone through. Surely it was a bit different here but they all had the safe space™ where they came from (Clark from his farm in Kansas, Bruce from the wealth of his parents), were forced into the double-sided coin of mankind (i.e. meeting a threat but getting to know people that would support them somehow), struggling with both believing in good in people and making a decision to do something evil or staying good (Bruce and Clark killing each other, though they fight for the same thing). We had Man Of Steel and Batman v Superman to show this from Clark’s POV and partly Bruce’s POV, most people know Bruce’s history as Batman so far (especially with the hint of Jason’s death), so there is no need for him to have an extra movie to point that out.
So what I am saying is: These critics only loved it with Diana because a) they gotta act like they are not sexist because she is a woman and women have “more” emotional feelings and can “easier” show them and b) ARE sexist at the same time because Clark and Bruce did show their feelings towards this whole development, each of one them individual because of different personalities, but then with men it’s not okay because men “can’t” have feelings.
So maybe the problem people had with the Snyder’s version of Batman and Superman was that they were shown vulnerable, broken, emotional, not just a bag of masculinity and being ripped. The Trinity is so well-known for a reason. Also why they work so well together. Because of what they’re gone through and yet always find a way to keep on going.
I agree with this but I also think it’s because the critics have a gross misunderstanding of who Clark, in particular, is as a person and a character.
Too many people accuse Clark of being “perfect” and not having any real problems and therefore is an iron character because his powers makes things easy for him. Except that’s completely untrue. Snyder gave us a Clark/Superman that is extremely emotionally vulnerable and doubts himself and struggles. In other words, just as other popular media (ahem*comics/tv*cough) he gave us a human!Clark. And all of a sudden this was BLASPHEMY!
The thing is, Diana and Clark, regardless of what the “mainstream” audience thinks, are not the same. She grew up sheltered, Clark grew up bullied. She grew up royalty, he grew up poor. She did not come to man’s world hiding who she was, Clark is an undocumented immigrant refugee. Diana came to man’s world with a naive thought that all men were good; even when she learns otherwise, she first doubted and then ultimately chose love. Clark, having grown up among us, knows people can be evil, mean, and just plain awful to each other, but he still fights for us anyway and believes everyone and anyone deserves a second chance. I mean!
I maintain that the problem people had with DCEU Superman is that they wanted this coded-Other to Rise Above It ™ regarding the criticism and bullying and micro-aggressions from the media and the public (i.e. The same shit that is told to minorities) instead of allowing his character development which was that he actually did basically rise above it in the end and sacrificed himself IN BOTH MOVIES to protect humanity.
omg, the Snyder’s haters are pissing me off so much they actually managed to ruin post WW glow.
all the “WW SAVED THE DCEU” bullshit aside, there’s has been a lot of people lately who claim that the reshoots requested by JW are caused by Wonder Woman’s newfound popularity and he’s now trying to give her a bigger role in JL because Zach underused her in his original script.
Like, people, from the moment she appeared in BvS, Diana has been in the spotlight. She outsmarted Bruce Wayne, she saved his life, she gave Clark the opportunity to kill Doosmday. At the end of the movie, Bruce is the one who’s asking for her help because he knows he needs her. The few promo pictures of JL that were released showed her in the front. She also has a pretty big presence in the JL trailer. So let’s stop pretending that the only reason they’re having reshoots is because they just now “realized” how important WW is thanks to her solo movie success.
The criticism that bugs me the most towards Zack Snyder’s Superman is that he doesn’t smile or that he spends too much time being sad. Recently in another post I talked a bit about how I interpreted this version of Superman to be a metaphor for depression so I’ll expand a bit of my thoughts on it here – but not by focusing solely on depression but rather on what it means to be human.
To get to the point, I think it’s disgusting when people make the complaint that Superman shouldn’t be sad and that he spends too much time doubting himself since he’s capable of so much more, because in a way the reactions by these critics mirror the way humanity shuns Superman in the DCEU for not being able to do everything expected of him, the way humanity in the real world disapproves of and/or alienates those struggling with depression or any mental illness in general, and the way the media attacks Zack Snyder as a person for simply making films that are different from their own tastes. It’s natural and justified for Superman to be in emotional distress, and in my opinion it would be insultingly unrealistic for him not to be.
It’s like telling someone struggling with trauma and depression “why can’t you just be happy?” or “just get over it! smile!” despite them going through or having gone through hell, despite them living in a world that prefers ignorance towards issues that need to be addressed, and despite them constantly being attacked by those who make them feel as if they’re a failure or a burden to the people around them.
Humanity in the DCEU views Superman as a devil and a god, as an enemy and a savior, and he knows that every decision he makes, even merely existing, will anger a lot of people. Humanity in real life idealizes Superman as a perfect hero who always finds the optimal solution to every problem, who smiles all the time, who isn’t allowed to show vulnerability or weakness. Zack Snyder utilizes these expectations to reveal that not even Superman is perfect, and in doing so he sheds light on the beauty of vulnerability and why it’s okay to surrender yourself to your emotions when it all becomes too overwhelming. That’s how you humanize a character like Superman.
“You look at Superman, and you wonder, what can he possibly
have to worry about? What could possibly ever hurt him? But just because
his skin is invulnerable, that doesn’t mean his heart is. And that’s
how you hurt Superman. You break his heart.”
DC stories are mainly about finding the humanity within god-like beings. Wonder Woman, for example, beautifully portrays optimism and joy in a superhero film that explores the character’s humanity in its own grounded and special way, and many people are calling the film a breath of fresh air yet many are unable to do so without attacking the “dark and brooding” character of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice’s Superman, because that character reminds them too much of the issues they’d prefer to stay silent on.
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