Let's Talk the Superman Reboot

If you haven't heard (because this is older news), Zack Snyder has been announced as the new director for the latest Superman film.

Wait... let's back up to 2006...

In 2006, Superman Returns was a box office failure. Okay, it didn't fail. But it didn't do as well as planned. Regardless, there was a plan for a sequel in which director Bryan Singer and all of the cast would return however with a very low production budget. But because Warner Bros. decided to simply reboot the series, Bryan Singer moved on to direct other things.

Fast forward to October 2010 where Zack Snyder was announced as the director for the new rebooted film. Zack Snyder is responsible for such films as 300, Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, Legend of the Guardians, and Sucker Punch (not yet released). I'm just going to mention now that he is not my cup of tea. At least his directing style isn't. I didn't care for Watchmen and I thought 300 was simply okay. In fact, I'd say 300 is overrated.

Luckily, Christopher Nolan (director and mastermind behind Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and Inception) has taken the helm of the Superman franchise given his success with Batman. He never planned to direct, but Warner Bros. simply wants him to keep an eye on Superman and help them steer it into the right direction. Good.

Now for my opinion...

I enjoyed Superman Returns, but I knew something was missing and to this day, I don't know what that something is. At the time of its release, I was in love with this movie because, at the time, I was a diehard Smallville fan. Although, it was missing something and I knew that people hated it, I still wanted them to put out a sequel to give them a chance to redeem themselves.

When I learned that they planned to scrap it all and reboot the series, I was pretty disappointed. Is that the trend now? Starting fresh, even when the last movie is only a couple years in the past and the films are still lingering in people's recent memories, seems to be the thing. In my opinion, there needs to be at least a 8 year buffer period between reboots. That was the amount of time between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins. Now we have reboots for Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Superman in the works. Spider-Man was last seen in 2007, Fantastic Four in 2007, and Superman in 2006. I feel as though that is way too short of a time between movies that will completely changed. Especially when Spider-Man and Superman's reboots aren't necessary. (Fantastic Four's reboot I support completely.)

Once I found out that Christopher Nolan will be taking part in the reboot, I felt a little better about it. There is nothing that Christopher Nolan has done terribly. On top of that, I was happy to hear that Zack Snyder was reconsidering keeping Brandon Routh as Superman, after saying he wanted to recast the whole series. I hope he does keep Brandon and also considers Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane again. Kate was really enthusiastic about playing Lois and was really hoping for a sequel. They can recast everyone else. ;)

Those are my thoughts on the Superman subject. The new film with its new title The Man of Steel is expected to be released Christmas 2012. (Interestingly enough, the sequel to Superman Returns was planned to be Superman: Man of Steel.)