Next Man of Steel Cast

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, there's a number of people on other message boards and in RL that I've talked to that don't want or need origin stories for Batman or Wonder Woman or for a lot of other superheroes. Last son of Krypton, orphan with murdered parents, Amazon. We've heard it quite literally dozens of times already!

Batman, maybe, not so much Wonder Woman. Far as I remember we haven't seen an origin story on her since the Lynda Carter days. Hell, even the failed pilot episode recently didn't do an origin story on her.

[Teaos]

I dont know anything about Wonder Woman and I am a pretty casual Nerd/Geek. I just know she is something like an Amazon, but how that fits into our world... no idea.

[McAvoy]

Wikipedia.

Anyhoo. She is almost like Superman in terms of strength and durability.

[Atekimogus]

Yeah, there's a number of people on other message boards and in RL that I've talked to that don't want or need origin stories for Batman or Wonder Woman or for a lot of other superheroes. Last son of Krypton, orphan with murdered parents, Amazon. We've heard it quite literally dozens of times already!

Batman, maybe, not so much Wonder Woman. Far as I remember we haven't seen an origin story on her since the Lynda Carter days. Hell, even the failed pilot episode recently didn't do an origin story on her.

Yeah, but isn't that basically because her origin story just isn't very good? I mean there is no great drama, plot twist or anything really interesting going on. You have an bunch of amazons who lived isolated lives deciding to send an ambassador to the world of men for reasons (which may vary). But there is no great internal struggle going on and she isn't a borderline nutjob with issues to work out or anything to fill a movie. There is no threat or menace to the island or her people and the concept of basically a mirror world Steven Trevor crashlands in, where women rule and man are basically subhumans just doesn't work very well anymore for western audiences since it isn't 1950 anymore.

Honeslty, given the material, I think I would also struggle to come up with an interesting concept for an origin story. First, the premise that in this day and age it is possible for a whole human society to remain undetected is already hard to swallow.

But that's ok since they are hidden? by.....magic? Another problem few other heros have. Iron Man has a suit, Superman has krytonian cells storing sunlight energy, spiderman is a mutant basically....that all fits well into the modern world. Wonder Woman has magic. That is problematic. Or more precisly she draws her abilities from gifts of the greek gods. That's even more problematic since explaining that they'd need to tackle the whole pantheon/existence of gods noone even believes in anymore. Heck, personally I don't really mind since magic from the gods is good enough for me but you know them religious nutjobs......mainstream audience will have a hard time swallowing it.

Fact is, their greatest demographic for such movies are probably male christians. Wonder Woman starts out as a female chauvinist who proofs the existance of greek gods. I'd call that problematic. Now combine that with having no real counterpart/villain (at least I cannot think of one) how the hell do you make an origin movie about her.

Probably better to skip as much of it as possible and go one with more interesting business.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, there's a number of people on other message boards and in RL that I've talked to that don't want or need origin stories for Batman or Wonder Woman or for a lot of other superheroes. Last son of Krypton, orphan with murdered parents, Amazon. We've heard it quite literally dozens of times already!

Batman, maybe, not so much Wonder Woman. Far as I remember we haven't seen an origin story on her since the Lynda Carter days. Hell, even the failed pilot episode recently didn't do an origin story on her.

Yeah, but isn't that basically because her origin story just isn't very good? I mean there is no great drama, plot twist or anything really interesting going on. You have an bunch of amazons who lived isolated lives deciding to send an ambassador to the world of men for reasons (which may vary). But there is no great internal struggle going on and she isn't a borderline nutjob with issues to work out or anything to fill a movie. There is no threat or menace to the island or her people and the concept of basically a mirror world Steven Trevor crashlands in, where women rule and man are basically subhumans just doesn't work very well anymore for western audiences since it isn't 1950 anymore.

Honeslty, given the material, I think I would also struggle to come up with an interesting concept for an origin story. First, the premise that in this day and age it is possible for a whole human society to remain undetected is already hard to swallow.

But that's ok since they are hidden? by.....magic? Another problem few other heros have. Iron Man has a suit, Superman has krytonian cells storing sunlight energy, spiderman is a mutant basically....that all fits well into the modern world. Wonder Woman has magic. That is problematic. Or more precisly she draws her abilities from gifts of the greek gods. That's even more problematic since explaining that they'd need to tackle the whole pantheon/existence of gods noone even believes in anymore. Heck, personally I don't really mind since magic from the gods is good enough for me but you know them religious nutjobs......mainstream audience will have a hard time swallowing it.

Haven't Marvel already gone down this route with the Asgardians? I was dubious about the idea of introducing the Norse gods to a world that had so far been based in scientific superheroes (albit rather wacky hollywood science, for sure), but they just went with "advanced aliens that fulfill the god role" and the audiences were fine with it. You certainly don't see many christians being turned off by the idea that Thor is walking around on screen, because the christians have the out of saying "well he's not the real god, he was just mistaken for one by those primitives". Don't see why they couldn't just as easily say that the Greek gods are some sort of mysterious but powerful beings who were revered as gods by humans, and who chose to grant both protection and special abilities to certain humans for their own purposes. Christians can say the same thing to that that they do to Thor.

It's certainly abundantly doable, IMO... the only thing I question is the practicality of doing that, plus Batman's origin, in a film that then needs to introduce Luthor and have some sort of plot on top.

[Atekimogus]

Haven't Marvel already gone down this route with the Asgardians? I was dubious about the idea of introducing the Norse gods to a world that had so far been based in scientific superheroes (albit rather wacky hollywood science, for sure), but they just went with "advanced aliens that fulfill the god role" and the audiences were fine with it. You certainly don't see many christians being turned off by the idea that Thor is walking around on screen, because the christians have the out of saying "well he's not the real god, he was just mistaken for one by those primitives". Don't see why they couldn't just as easily say that the Greek gods are some sort of mysterious but powerful beings who were revered as gods by humans, and who chose to grant both protection and special abilities to certain humans for their own purposes. Christians can say the same thing to that that they do to Thor.

I think that is indeed the big problem. Marvel has already done that. So for DC just explaining the greek pantheon away as also just very advanced aliens would firstly seem like a total rip-off. (And I am talking just about mainstream-audiences, guys like me who saw the movies, watched some cartoons but haven't touched a comic and are not experts on 40 years of comic-history)

It would also create a whole new set of problems imho, since while the god "might" be aliens, Wonder Woman - to my knowledge at least - is still very much a human. So were does her powers come from then? The lasso thingy could be technology, ok....but strength, speed and flight? There we are back with magic again.

It's certainly abundantly doable, IMO... the only thing I question is the practicality of doing that, plus Batman's origin, in a film that then needs to introduce Luthor and have some sort of plot on top.

I am really struggling with the "doable" part. I mean what would it be ABOUT? As I said I am not a comic-reader but just by cultural osmosis I can more or less exactly quote origin stories for Superman, Batman, Spiderman etc. their trials and tribulations, their struggle being accepted, coming to terms with their power, dealing with the loss of parents etc.

Wonder Woman? She's an amazon. What more is there....really? That is broadly my point, you can make a origin story...it's just that Wonder Womans....kinda sucks. Better to ignore it or come up with something more interesting.


(On that note, maybe the reason DC is so struggling is that apart from Batman, none of their Heroes do fit well into the modern - HAS TO BE - gritty and realistic setting. There heroes are all way more fantastic and trying to place them into a realistic modern day scenario is imho a preprogrammed fail.

Marvels Heroes are more down to earth and as such are more easily accepted by mainstream-audiences. Science gone wrong creating Spiderman and Hulk...yeah I can buy that. Guy building a power-armor, sure why not? X-Men mutants? Might be possible, why not? etc. etc.

Compared to DC....Alien powered by sunlight, but only yellow sunlight...o....k.........."amazon" powered by magic of the gods.......right, sure. Guy being incredibly fast because.....(actually I don't know were flash get's his powers from etc. etc. )

Now personally I quite liked the Justice League, but those heroes need their own setting and the real world of today just isn't it imho.

[Graham Kennedy]

I think that is indeed the big problem. Marvel has already done that. So for DC just explaining the greek pantheon away as also just very advanced aliens would firstly seem like a total rip-off. (And I am talking just about mainstream-audiences, guys like me who saw the movies, watched some cartoons but haven't touched a comic and are not experts on 40 years of comic-history)

I don't think DC will mind a ripoff.

It would also create a whole new set of problems imho, since while the god "might" be aliens, Wonder Woman - to my knowledge at least - is still very much a human. So were does her powers come from then? The lasso thingy could be technology, ok....but strength, speed and flight? There we are back with magic again.

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the comics, but IIRC in at least some iterations Diana is actually created by the gods... moulded out of clay and then life breathed into her, much as god is suppose to have made Adam from the Earth.

As for where her powers come from, I don't see that it needs a sciencey technobabble explanation. One could say the whatever-they-ares filled her blood with nanoprobes that enhance her body, or whatever, but I really wouldn't bother if it was me. Make the Greek god aliens akin to the Q/Organians/Douwd/whatever, and say their methods are beyond our understanding - we merely see the results, which is super strength, etc.

Is that really any harder for an audience to buy into than the idea that Superman gets invincibility, super strength, speed, cold breath, laser beam eyes, X Ray vision... all from the fact that he's in a different atmosphere under a yellow sun?

Frankly if I were doing a Wonder Woman origin story I'd be far less concerned than how the Amazons get their powers or the exact mechanism by which the "gods" hide their island and far more concerned with depicting the effects these things have on the characters. Give me an interesting Amazon culture with interesting people in it. Say something intelligent about how the possession of superpowers and the lack of men affects those characters and their world - and preferably not "without men it's a utopian society because men are beastly and women are perfect". Give me a plausible reason why they'd want to send one of their own into our world to fight crime. If they delivered that then I don't give a crap how the magic of their gods works.

I am really struggling with the "doable" part. I mean what would it be ABOUT? As I said I am not a comic-reader but just by cultural osmosis I can more or less exactly quote origin stories for Superman, Batman, Spiderman etc. their trials and tribulations, their struggle being accepted, coming to terms with their power, dealing with the loss of parents etc.

Wonder Woman? She's an amazon. What more is there....really? That is broadly my point, you can make a origin story...it's just that Wonder Womans....kinda sucks. Better to ignore it or come up with something more interesting.

There's fertile ground to explore gender identity and issues there... like I say, just what does it do to a society when there are no males? When everyone is immortal and superpowered? When gods (of a sort, at least) actually do exist and you know that because there really is evidence all around you? What kind of culture clash does it create when a woman from that society is thrown into ours?

Just off the top of my head, if I were writing it I'd go with the idea of Paradise Island as being an apparently Utopian place, and have some outside guy thrown into it due to an accident... a lost pilot, which is the usual story. I'd have the gods be present, but I'd leave their nature mysterious. To the Amazons they are simply the gods, and the power and immortality they give is simply a gift from the gods; the pilot would react to that incredulously and say no way, they must be aliens who are enhancing you with nanotech or genetic engineering or something. And I'd have them argue it back and forth a little, but the point would be that it's unknowable - because as Clarke said, if the aliens are advanced enough then they effectively are gods, for all practical purposes. In fact I'd probably have an exchange where he says something like "there's only one god, and he doesn't show up and do magic tricks, however impressive" and she just shrugs it off and says "well, I have what I believe in and it works for me, if what you believe in works for you then good for you".

For the Amazon culture, I'd subvert it a bit. Have the Amazons wanting to just get rid of this guy, ostensibly sending him home but actually planning to kill him to keep their secrets. Diana stumbles on that and is against it. And have her come to realise that for all their claims of perfection, their society is actually not that great to be in once somebody steps up and defies the authorities. Traditionally they've shown the Amazons actually competing to select the best amongst them to take the guy back to the outside world, I'd subvert that by making Diana an outcast. Her mother's the Queen, and in the end when Diana makes it plain that they'll only kill him by killing her first, her mother is unwilling to kill her own daughter. So she releases the guy, and exiles her daughter. "You love him and his world so much, go with him then!"

So now you have a Wonder Woman who is an idealist, who is an exile, who is coming to terms with the fact that most of what she's believed about her home is a lie, even as she still misses it terribly, and who is trying to find her footing in the outside world that really is a much harsher and more terrible place than her island, for the most part... but which at least tries to live up to the ideals she believes in. Hence giving her a motivation to do what she does, which is fight for those ideals and try to make the world a little bit more like the utopia she believes in. You have a Wonder Woman who would constantly struggle over whether what she was doing actually made any real difference, who would question whether her utopian ideals were even possible or is this cynical world plain reality.

To me that would be an interesting character you could get involved with. But that's just my take on it, the real point here is that if they want to do an origin story then give us an origin for the character; an origin for her powers is nothing more than window dressing.

(As an aside, I actually find myself quite intrigued by the outline above... now I want to write a Wonder Woman story, dammit!)

However, I suspect that Hollywood isn't going to want to touch anything like that. They will see anything to do with gender issues as "a film about feminism" and assume that no teenage kid will want to see that. If we see Paradise Island at all, it will be an excuse to have a parade of sexy ladies in skimpy outfits and little more.

(On that note, maybe the reason DC is so struggling is that apart from Batman, none of their Heroes do fit well into the modern - HAS TO BE - gritty and realistic setting. There heroes are all way more fantastic and trying to place them into a realistic modern day scenario is imho a preprogrammed fail.

Well, I don't think there's any such thing as a preprogrammed fail. Anything can be interesting, if it's done well. You can put a fantastic character into a realistic modern setting no problem... the problem is when you do that and then ignore the fact that that is what you are doing. That's where you're cheating your audience, and they will sense it and you'll lose them. Put a fantastic character into a gritty setting and then explore that - how does a fantastic character cope with that setting? How does that setting react to her?

If a Wonder Woman showed up in a gritty modern setting, people would react with incredulity and laughter. The bad writer ignores that and makes people act as people would not. The good writer makes people laugh at her and then explores where that goes. Do they still laugh after she's ripped somebody's head off for doing it? Do they still laugh if half the police department takes her on and she smashes them to pieces effortlessly? As long as you explore the consequences in a logical way you can carry your audience with anything.

Marvels Heroes are more down to earth and as such are more easily accepted by mainstream-audiences. Science gone wrong creating Spiderman and Hulk...yeah I can buy that. Guy building a power-armor, sure why not? X-Men mutants? Might be possible, why not? etc. etc.

But as I'm sure you know, most of those things are in fact impossible and outright ridiculous and the explanations for then are just stupid if you give it any thought. But that's the point... it's okay to put things in that are impossible, the audience will forgive you for it - but only so long as you are consistent and realistic in how it plays out, and so long as you use it to tell a story about a character they can identify with.

Lest we forget, one of the most compelling and popular stories in film history is about a farm boy learning to use magic, based in part on the advice of a ghost. It's ridiculous, and how the magic works is never explained - and this is NOT a weakness, because how the magic works is not the point. Indeed, when a later prequel did attempt to put a science explanation on the magic, it provoked howls of anguish from a fandom who were perfectly prepared to invest in magic and ghosts - so long as it was hung on a good story about an interesting character.

Compared to DC....Alien powered by sunlight, but only yellow sunlight...o....k.........."amazon" powered by magic of the gods.......right, sure. Guy being incredibly fast because.....(actually I don't know were flash get's his powers from etc. etc. )

Now personally I quite liked the Justice League, but those heroes need their own setting and the real world of today just isn't it imho.

Well, we shall see. Now excuse me, I have to go start writing....

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

You know, graham, I'd pay legit money to read/watch that.

[Atekimogus]

Frankly if I were doing a Wonder Woman origin story I'd be far less concerned than how the Amazons get their powers or the exact mechanism by which the "gods" hide their island and far more concerned with depicting the effects these things have on the characters. Give me an interesting Amazon culture with interesting people in it. Say something intelligent about how the possession of superpowers and the lack of men affects those characters and their world - and preferably not "without men it's a utopian society because men are beastly and women are perfect". Give me a plausible reason why they'd want to send one of their own into our world to fight crime. If they delivered that then I don't give a crap how the magic of their gods works......

Good beginnings, as I said I am struggling to come up with something interesting and you provided a good start.

What doesn't work for me with your idea is that balancing the whole thing around the gender. I fully expect and I am quite confident that a society of women will be more or less exactly be the same as a society of men or of mixed gender. The functions of a society are not that much dependent on a certain gender as most people would think imho and making an utopia or even a fake utopia would be meaningless for me since it could happen anywhere else and is nothing "amazon" specific imho. It might be a point that they are deluded in "thinking" they are any different (hey, look we are so much better) but even THAT mindset isn't anything special to a society, so.....


What WOULD be most interesting to explore is not having a society of women (since as I said, men-women tomato-tomato imho) but having a society without means of reproduction but with the members being immortal. Now THAT is something worth exploring imho. (To be honest, didn't know they were immortal....always thought they were just a bunch of female humans with WW being blessed by the gods because she has to go crime-fighting and stuff. So are they a completely different race on a dna level (2 parts human 1 part clay ) or what?)

If a Wonder Woman showed up in a gritty modern setting, people would react with incredulity and laughter. The bad writer ignores that and makes people act as people would not. The good writer makes people laugh at her and then explores where that goes. Do they still laugh after she's ripped somebody's head off for doing it? Do they still laugh if half the police department takes her on and she smashes them to pieces effortlessly? As long as you explore the consequences in a logical way you can carry your audience with anything.

True but do they then have much to do with the characters they are supposed to be in the first place? Anyhow, my point was more bemoining the fact that everything HAS to be dark, gritty and borderline depressive nowadays, whereas the more fantastic and unbelievable heroes like Superman, Wonderwoman etc. would greatly benifit from a lighter setting where people don't die in the thousands every 2 seconds and the story demands of them that they all sooner or later become psychopatic mass murderers "for the greater good".

(Honestly, if we remain in a realistic setting, after all that happened in Man of Steel, how is Clark Kent NOT the enemy nr.1 of.....well the whole world? That's my point...Superman doesn't really work in the "real" world without stopping to be superman).

But as I'm sure you know, most of those things are in fact impossible and outright ridiculous and the explanations for then are just stupid if you give it any thought. But that's the point... it's okay to put things in that are impossible, the audience will forgive you for it - but only so long as you are consistent and realistic in how it plays out, and so long as you use it to tell a story about a character they can identify with.

Agreed. However I still believe that there some heroes who are more suited to certain settings than others.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Teaser pic of (the latest variant of) Batman has been tweeted:

http://www.cnet.com/news/holy-new-look- ... -unveiled/

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Well, that's... gray and depressing. Why am I missing Adam West all of a sudden?

[Graham Kennedy]

I watched the Half in the Bag Man of Steel review today and they make an interesting comment about this current dark/gritty trend... little kids are losing their Superheroes. It's all so down and dirty and complex and whatnot... great for us adults, maybe, but how is a ten year old kid supposed to like Batman now? Or Superman? Can you see a little kid running around going "I'm Batman! Yeahhhh, I'm so... depressed... oh god my parents are dead and the Joker messed me up so bad...."

[Teaos]

X-Men are still kinda fun. As is Iron Man, probably why Iron Man has been one of the most popular SuperHero Costumes for Halloween the last few years.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, marvel does have that lighthearted tone a lot of the time. That's actually one of the things that I'm liking about the Guardians of the Galaxy trailers... it looks like they've decided to make a real fun action comedy romp with that one.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Yeah, marvel does have that lighthearted tone a lot of the time. That's actually one of the things that I'm liking about the Guardians of the Galaxy trailers... it looks like they've decided to make a real fun action comedy romp with that one.

With a squirrel riding a tree!