This diagram is highly un-satisfying.

While we wait for the film…

I wouldn’t have been surprised if Superman also turned back time in Bryan Singer’s version. It’s all sort of within the ambit of Superman’s god-like powers, kind of like how the crew of the Enterprize (TOS and TNG) decided to travel back in time to move the plot along in The Voyage Home and First Contact and no one bats an eyelid.

On the topic of Christopher Reeve impressions, I would’ve liked to see Tom Welling in Bryan Singer’s film, he does a pretty good Clark Kent worthy of Christopher Reeves and he is far less wooden than Routh. Also, George Reeves does a far better Superman than Dean Cain.

I have never read the Tower Of Babel but I know about it and I have seen Doom. That’s what I was getting at. I love the premise and wish it was fleshed out a bit more (than what I saw in Doom) because in the end it was still a bit on the cartoonish side of things. Imagine a Nolan-esque live action version of this…

I’d be happy if Christopher Drake did the soundtrack score, I thought he did a brilliant job on Doom. That opening title sequence with his score was hair-raisingly good.

Righto. A number of points there, and not all of them relevant to Man of Steel.

First off, the turning back time thing was just from Richard Donner’s version of Superman. He doesn’t usually have that power.

And yeah, the thing about Kal-El is that he has the power of a god, and thus has to spend a lot of his time deciding if and when to use it. The interesting Superman stories are the ones about morality and the concept of the greater good. (It’s the same with Green Lantern really, since he has the ‘most powerful weapon in the universe.)

With regards to Batman v Superman, you can look to the comics. There, Batman is pretty much described as a genius. This means that everything Superman could throw at him, Bats has already thought of a way to counter it. It isn’t always Kryptonite-powered suits.

In the Justice League Tower of Babel story (and the animated adaptation, Justice League: Doom), it’s explained that Batman has dossiers on every single one of his fellow superheroes, just in case they turn bad. He doesn’t think anyone should have the power of gods, and thus he never completely trusts any of them. Suffice to say, that doesn’t make him very popular with his peers.

Brandon Routh did a good impression of Christopher Reeve; and I guess that was his remit.

“…..I find the concept of the royal
family totally alien. Thus, it’s fascinating to watch English cinema’s
depiction of the royals. Never mind the whole ‘born into privilege’
thing – these are real people with real failings, and
we should feel sorry for them, it seems. I don’t mean to sound
antagonistic, but as a member of the colonies, it’s all a bit weird,
revering someone purely because of their lineage.”

That’s sort of how I feel about Superman in film, especially Bryan Singer’s interpretation. Kal-El arrived as a baby with certain privileged alien powers when exposed to the sun from this solar system. He can fly, he has super strength, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes, he can turn back time, and a menagerie of other godly powers.

It’s different from most of the other superhero films we’ve seen where the protagonist(s) were either born without powers and only discovering them later on (Spiderman), or born without any powers at all (Batman, Iron Man), or born with powers but with limited somewhat and with many attached weaknesses (generally, the X-Men).

Superman – pretty much godly. The only thing that holds him back is the mysterious element of kryptonite which doesn’t even make an appearance in this film. And it doesn’t really explain how a pair of spectacles renders him unrecognisable to people in the real world either.

Bleh.

I guess this is what makes the concept of Batman vs Superman very intriguing. How would an exceptional human being (NB. without godly superpowers) defeat a god? The attraction to this premise is really about how Batman could possibly take on Superman, it’s not really about how Superman could possibly defeat Bruce Wayne. Everyone knows Superman could easily crush a regular non-superpowered human being.

But anyway I kind of appreciated this film more than Bryan Singer’s version which I thought was completely uninspiring.

In conclusion – for a film about an all-powerful god, it’s a bit better than Bryan Singer’s film about the all-powerful god. The difference comes down to Henry Cavill’s performance as opposed to Brandon Routh’s wooden performance as SuperWoodenMan.