You can follow along with this series under the label for Superman2025, a series of posts leading up to the release of WB's new movie in 2025. All Superman posts since the start of this blog can be found under the Superman label.
With James Gunn's recent social media posts about the start of principle photography on Superman (2025), we now enter into one of the curious aspects of Superman as a character and property:
Everyone has an opinion
Folks have ideas about what the movie should and should not be. They have bold ideas that haven't been tried before. They have ideas about period settings, and what would *finally* make Superman click with a wide audience. They have opinions about why Superman doesn't work for them, but *could* if they just did X. Folks demand they not do an origin. Or, they demand Superman dies. And so on and so forth.
There are the occasional think-pieces and social-media threads arriving in various levels of provocativeness and consideration. These are usually more focused on the characterization and actually worth glancing at as the writer is often someone working through a thought experiment of the challenge of writing for a guy who can bend steel with his pinky finger and melt a tank with a hard stare.
One such thought-exercise which made the rounds this week was from writer Michael Chabon.
The ideas thrown out there by social media users and the deeper thinking is welcome. It's engagement. It's people with feelings about one of the original superheroes and an American icon. It's sometimes quality writers pondering the challenges of writing for a character who has been around since 1938 and which seems stuck in place - and so we want to throw an idea or three out there.
It's nice that we *want* to like Superman, and we are being helpful.