greycrusader wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:01 pm
Even extending this to animation,
Avengers: Assemble! is inferior to
A:EMH, but the Squadron Supreme story arc was really good.
This was one thing that immediately came to mind.
I'm a huge fan of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (I think it equal to all but the very best episodes of the DCAU), and I
HATE Avengers: Assemble with the fiery passion of a million Foreman Grills. The show is just . . . bad. And I tried to give it a shot, I really did, but the episodes can frankly be painful to watch at times, and the animation is inconsistent as Hell. Sometimes it's rock solid, sometimes it's breathtakingly gorgeous, and sometimes it makes my eyes OH THE PAIN WHY WON'T THE PAIN STOP IT HURTS TO LOOK AT.
But weirdly enough, the episodes where any member of the Squadron Supreme show up are actually . . . REALLY GOOD. Like, Avengers:EMH good. Hyperion's appearances in Season 1, the ongoing Squadron Arc in Season 2, they were really solid. I would have loved to see the Squadron stuff done in the Avengers:EMH series, because it would have been awesome (at least in the episodes where Jeph Loeb wasn't screwing over the creative team).
One thing that comes to mind was the
Man of Steel film. The film brings ups several times the concept of choice, of how Krypton was doomed because it's people had essentially taken away their own ability to choose, instead making citizens that were essentially biological robots programmed for specific functions. Both Jor-El and Zod are trying to fight against this, but whereas Jor-El wants to give people back their ability to choose, Zod wants to simply control how the Kryptonians are made, tweaking society to create his ideal version of Krypton.
Superman is then unique among Kryptonians for actually being able to choose his own path, having the freedom to be whatever he wants. The movie creates this wonderful idea that Clark Kent can choose to do anything, and what he chooses to do is be a hero. Pa Kent says it very well when he simply says, "You just have to decide what kind of a man you want to grow up to be, Clark; because whoever that man is, good character or bad, he's... He's gonna change the world."
And then the movie completely wastes the concept by having Clark going around doing whatever the closest Father Figure in his life tells him to do. He doesn't save someone in trouble because Pa Kent tells him not to. He spends a lifetime trying to find out about his origins largely because Pa Kent told him to. He decides to be a superhero because Jor-El tells him to be. He decides to turn himself over to Zod because a priest tells him to. He is constantly doing what other people tell him to do instead of actually making his own choices.
What Jor-El should have been pushing for is for Clark to make his own decisions. Jor-El can tell Clark about why Krypton failed, why he's unique, that he has to choose, and encourage Clark to use his abilities wisely, but above all else he should be pushing Clark to make his own decisions, not just do what others tell him.
I like that they showed that Clark always had the impulse to help others, but I hated how they mired his childhood experiences with him being picked on, unpopular, an outcast, and how his life was governed by fear. How his father chose to let himself die rather than allow Clark to save him. It was a beautifully shot scene of someone doing something incredibly stupid.
What should have happened is that Clark saves Pa Kent, and when he does he looks at his dad and says, "This the kind of man I want to be." And then have the people of Smallville actively cover up for Clark, with the idea that Clark's powers are kind of an open secret among the town who are grateful for what Clark has done, so the people in the know keep it to themselves.
For that matter, why couldn't Clark have been someone who got along with everyone? He's a good guy, friendly, easy going, likes to help, and in a farm town he should have just been "one of the guys". But instead they had to turn him into Peter Parker.
Now having the government being cautious/suspicious of Superman made sense, the military being kind of squeemish, etc. That was good, because it built up to one of my favorite lines of the film. Namely, the scene where Christopher Meloni looks at Superman after being rescued by him and simply says, "This man is not our enemy." There was
power in that simple statement, and how following it the military is completely on Superman's side.