batman by snyder & capullo omnibus hc vol 01

Each uses one aspect to get to the other, from different directions, and it makes a huge differences in how to think about and tell these stories. DC uses stories about characters’ lives as a way to talk about myths and legendary themes. Marvel uses myths and legendary themes as a way to tell personal stories about the lives of characters.

I was sitting in the theater noticing different choices made and failing to adequately appreciate them in their own context as an intentional reimagining of the Donner films that are such a part of our mainstream pop culture memory and awareness, and which couldn’t merely be ignored yet could be nodded to from a new angle, asking what lies beneath the things we take for granted in those myths, considering what the myth looks like if we imagine a more realistic and modern story in which to ask these questions and understand the answers.ĭC superheroes and Marvel heroes are different in a specific way. So my reaction to Man of Steel upon seeing it for the time was to mentally keep comparing it to those original Superman films. Those are also two of my personal favorite movies of all time from any genre. I also complained about the fact the film included so many of the same primary plot points from Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) and Richard Lester’s version of Richard Donner’s Superman II (1980), two of the best superhero movies ever made and still the template used the most successful modern superhero movies (the Marvel Studios approach, which so many DC fans disparage, is in fact just an updated version of the template created in Donner’s Superman, and Christopher Nolan famously pointed to Superman’s template as the one he followed as well). His parents, the loss of his father, his life in Smallville, how he kept his secret - these are important foundational aspects of the character, and so much of that backstory is seen from a new perspective deconstructing the origins and common awareness of those events and themes in Clark’s life.

My complaints arose first and foremost from the unfamiliarity with those storytelling choices, because they are counter to how these things and themes have been presented previously.

Batman by snyder & capullo omnibus hc vol 01