With how things are going on in the DCEU in regards to the way they’re handling Superman, you gotta wonder if they’ll ever be able to get it right. Granted, Henry Cavill is pretty good in the role but the films he was in weren’t very good to say the least. Things do seem to be turning around for the DCEU with Aquaman so maybe we may get the Man of Steel we deserve in the future. However, it looks like even that may be a pretty tough endeavor according to some experienced filmmakers in the superhero genre.
Yeah, we had some good Superman flicks in the past including the first two films starring Christopher Reeve back in the day but it’s shame that we haven’t gotten an awesome incarnation of the character of late. It seems that the reason for that would be the sheer amount of difficulty in translating the Man of Steel to the big screen… at least according to MCU directors Anthony and Joe Russo.
The Russo brothers who directed some of the MCU’s most acclaimed films, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War believe that Superman is the hardest character to bring to the big screen. Speaking with Business Insider, the filmmakers were asked which superheroes they think would be the hardest to translate to the big screen to which the two unanimously chose the Man of Steel. Joe explained:
“He’s a very difficult character, you have to find an emotional flaw or weakness in the character in order to make them vulnerable.”
That is true since Superman is basically a bloody god with Kryptonite being his only weakness. Like, the dude can do almost anything. It’s hard to really care for a character who’s near indestructible especially when it comes to film. Anthony further explained:
“The more powerful a character is, the more difficult to deal with that character on a narrative level, as storytellers, and the way we explore characters, we always look for vulnerabilities in characters because that’s where characters become interesting. They’re superficially interesting in their strength, but they get much more depth when you find where they don’t have that kind of strength. In general, the more powerful a character is, the more tricky that is.”
That’s not to say that Superman hasn’t had s–t thrown at him before that he had to overcome especially in the comics but it’s easy to see where the Russos are coming from. For general audiences especially, it would be fairly difficult to engage yourself in someone as perfect as the Man of Steel. However, we have seen good incarnations of the character before and it goes to show that it’s not impossible so maybe it just takes the right filmmakers to do so.
Source: Business Insider
