• I dunno, guys; I think I’m aging out. Twenty years ago I would have lost my mind over this picture and now it’s a giant meh. If I was art directing this, he’d be on the end of the bed with one boot on, Lois sleeping peacefully through it all, and Krypto at his feet with his other boot in his mouth, looking up expectantly. This composition has no Superman in it.
• But I’m just talking about its effectiveness as an ad piece. It’s minimum effort if your brief is to sell the new guy and the tone of the new Superman.
• I’m sure I’ll love the movie; James Gunn is batting a thousand with me.
• I’ve had the luxury of collaboration with folks who are mostly if not 100% on the same page. This is just corporate collaboration distilled down into inoffensiveness.
• If this was my pitch, they’d have bought it with my compelling story, like Tom Mason said. It’s time to make the donuts for the man of steel… AND HE’S GOT THIS. I’M JUST SAYING I SEE HOW THEY BOUGHT IN, it’s icy postRona rizz on a plate. Too bad that’s not Superman, like, at all. It’s not a bad take for the MCU but Supes is too Type A to be so nonchalant to hot death from above.
• Yeah, I like the suit well enough; he looks great. But it’s not hard to LOOK like Superman; the trick is to embody truth and justice and all that jazz while you wait in line at the DMV like everyone else. Batman is the notes in class to the goth girl who gets you; Superman is VALENTINES AND WARM HANDSHAKES ALL AROUND It’s insane how much the obvious gets left out in the scrum for cash.
• The more I look at this, the bigger whiff I see. Tony Panaccio’s point about “Monday morning, no coffee” is a bullseye.
- Superman doesn’t help out because of obligation, Superman helps out because it’s the right thing to do. Batman has bad days; Superman has temporary setbacks. Writing for 70, 90 year old IP isn’t hard; you’ve had plenty of time to suss out the point of these archetypes.
• Attn: the inevitable article about what people are saying Richard Johnston is probably working on now, I will point out he can have a Bleeding Cool excloo that pop culture darling and part-time industry gadfly Larry Young is the only one on the entire Internet whose criticism is couched in a way to make it better, rather than shit on it in various, creative ways.