“dc films shouldn’t be dark!” this is a company that did a telephone poll to determine if one of its (child) characters would be brutally murdered what exactly were you expecting from dc???
SUPERMAN shouldn’t be dark, Superman is supposed to be cheery boyscout that when he does get serious it’s an ‘oh shit’ moment. Batman can be as dark and moody as you like but Superman is supposed to be a feel good experience.
no offense but Superman’s cheeriness is all circumstantial, so that’s actually a misconception
As someone who has read a TON of modern superman comics, I can honestly say that there are a select FEW happy ones, and then there are the rest of the Superman comics. And once again, as an avid Superman fan, his comics are most certainly not always a “feel good” experience. Some of them will break your heart. Many of them will illuminate the darkest corners of humanity to you and make you question whether the fictional people in DC’s universe deserve Superman’s help.
His entire race is dead. He’s the last of his kind living on a foreign planet. He grew up thinking he was a freak. His story is not an inherently happy one.
Thus, the idea that Superman should smile all the time is fundamentally wrong (i go into greater detail here)
This isn’t the first time Superman has acted this way either. Smallville’s Tom Welling rarely ever smiled, and that show continued for 10 seasons to critical acclaim.
The general idea is that Superman tries his best to fill a human role, and since humans don’t always smile, neither does Superman. Maybe he always smiled in the vintage comics (not really the case, but it can be argued that he smiled more in those than he does nowadays). But the vintage comics were (in my opinion) oftentimes ridiculous, juvenile, and sexist, so I don’t regard them as definitive characterization. A movie made in 2016 should address the characterization that is most accurate for its era – which is a mature, adult, serious, modern Superman who acts like real people today act.
i think those are super good points and i should have been clearer. Superman should be optimistic.
from what i’ve seen from the justice league cartoons and from the admittedly few comics i’ve read it’s that superman is optimistic and is open about his optimism for the future. Even in the darker comics he is optimistic, they rip my heart out yes but i can FEEL the optimism coming from him.
Superman cares from what i’ve seen he genuinely cares about earth even on it’s worst days he cares about every person on the earth. He isn’t lawful good, he’s Neutral good, he’ll follow the law and encourage others to do the same but he wont hesitate to uphold justice in the face of authority figures.
the superman in the movie felt souless and dull, he didn’t need to smile but it would have been nice if he seemed like he cared more than he pitied.
i watched smallville and Smallville felt fun, it didn’t feel dull, it’s hard to explain with abstracts like that i know. When i compare the superman in Smallville to the one in Man Of Steel i feel like Smallville superman would stop to help a kid catch his lost balloon where man of steel superman would pity the kid instead.
……………..what movie were you watching?
Like in Man of Steel he saves people not out of pity but as an instinct, several times. As a child he saves his whole class. When Faora and company attack Smallville, he protects soldiers from being killed. In BvS he saves a space capsule from crashing and puts out a fire in Mexico again on instinct.
He is TORN UP when he’s unable to save people in the Capitol Building, and deeply reflects on what he’s doing and if he should be doing it, because he wants to help. He never pities or acts in a cynical manner. In fact, BATMAN is the cynical one in the movie. BATMAN is the one who is callous and uncaring towards criminals. He’s the one who puts them in danger and brands whem with bat logos so they’re targets in prison. Part of the whole movie is Clark’s deep seeded disgust for Bruce’s actions under the cowl, which are too dark and too extreme. In short, Bruce has given up on “protecting” and is focusing on “punishing” while Clark is trying to protect people (even though they’re criminals) FROM Bruce.
I have to ask if you’re projecting that cynicism onto him because an optimistic character happens to exist in an admittedly cynical world (which is largely the POINT of Superman in the DCEU)