Why an X-Men "universe" works but a Spider-Man "universe" doesn't:

Marvel's The Avengers movie has sent the world of cinema into a tailspin. While a lot of stand-alone movies weren't succeeding particularly well at creating critical acclaim in the first place outside of Christopher Nolan's seminal Batman Trilogy, now they are being forced to create entire universes around the properties they do own. You'd think that Warner Bros. would have been the first ones to create a unified cinematic universe and the ones giving it their dues, after all, they own DC comics and the licenses to their characters in their entirety unlike Marvel/Disney, who don't actually have the movie licenses to several Marvel characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men who are owned by Sony and Fox respectively. Not to mention they'd successfully done it twice on TV, once in the DC Animated Universe and once just using Smallville. But in spite of not having many of their star players, Marvel are the ones who brought their heroes together in The Avengers first and they are reaping the rewards of a crap ton of money and an ongoing franchise. So naturally this being Hollywood and all, everyone else has to cash in on this "collective universe" style of storytelling where they bring together dozens of heroes into one big movie and milk it for all it's worth, except DC are failing to realise why The Avengers worked in the first place, because each character had their stories set up in their own stand alone movies, not just Superman and Batman, who apparently the later of which isn't even getting his own stand alone this time around. But I'm not here to mock DC for their efforts, I do that enough on Twitter. I'm here to talk about two other companies, Sony and Fox and their attempts to create a collective universe using the superhero properties they already own, Spider-Man and the X-Men.

Now to Fox's credit, they'd already been doing X-Men long before Marvel released the first Iron Man or even the original Ang Lee Hulk, but they were stand alone movies, just like each Marvel movie, with no real ties to spin offs or anything like that until the tragically bad X-Men Origins: Wolverine, now they want to do Deadpool stand alone, the Magneto stand alone became First Class, and now they're trying to create a universe based around X-Men just as much as Marvel has the Avengers. They're also trying to add The Fantastic Four into this universe as they own the rights to that too. Sony on the other hand, are trying to create a series of films, "one per year" in fact to quote them, based around the ever-popular but with diminishing returns as of late, Spider-Man. This started because they made The Amazing Spider-Man after Sam Raimi, director of the original Spider-Man trilogy, wouldn't put up with their interfering bullshit any more after the dismal third entry, so they scraped Spider-Man 4 and made The Amazing Reboot-Man.

Now Spider-Man does have the rather impressive collection of characters in his "universe" as it were, from the Clone characters like Ben Reilly to Spider-Man 2099, which I've gone into a bit more in the past to his fantastic rogues gallery including the Sinister Six, Venom as an anti-hero and a ton more really cool characters. The problem however is that Sony wants to milk this cash cow for all it's worth and turn this into a fully fledged universe of it's own making already confirmed spin-offs for the Sinister Six, a group of villains who really serve no purpose outside of being villains to Spider-Man despite what their comic run says, Venom, a character who MUST be introduced via Spider-Man otherwise he makes absolutely no sense and apparently it all has to do with the evil Oscorp... corp.  From Green Goblin to Electro to Spider-Man himself to the Lizard, all superpowers stem from here. So it's really going to stretch this character thin and really going to milk it for all it's worth. I believe it's going to cause it to crash and burn, we've already seen that Amazing Spider-Man didn't do nearly as well as the previous movies nor did it's sequel, which critically has been panned but is still making enough money to clearly warrant the continuation of not only Spider-Man's films but to build a whole universe around it. They're already having to push the limits of what Spider-Man has going for him often repeating aspects in movies that we'd already seen in the previous Raimi-helmed trilogy. I admire their attempts to do something better, I really do and best of luck to them, but Spider-Man is one part of a larger universe, he's a single character in a single city, where apparently everything is Oscorp's fault. It's going to take some serious skill and balls to try and pull this universe off, something that based on the last two entries, they going to struggle to do.

X-Men on the other hand is a different story, unlike The Avengers, the X-Men is already a team united, and has a basic causal link between heroes powers. Ignoring the Fantastic Four reboot for a second, the X-Men and all the superheroes in these movies have got a common cause for their powers, they're mutants. In fact Stan Lee himself said it best when he said "... they didn't need to be exposed to gamma radiation or bitten by a radioactive spider, they were just born this way, it was easy." And so too is it easy for the writers behind these movies to say "this guy/girl was just born this way". In fact never once have the X-Men in their movies been referred to as superheroes in the same way as Superman, Batman or The Avengers have been. The heroes and villains in this series are complex characters who are just born with their gifts rather than bestowed upon them. This makes for a much more unified universe and as such, the X-Men characters can spin-off into more than just solo films, there can be whole new characters like X-Force, who are in the same universe but don't even need set up like Spider-Man, they are already set up by their premise "they're mutants". Marvel pulled off something miraculous and pretty soon we'll be finding out just how far they can push it with Guardians of the Galaxy, but X-Men, it's already it's own universe. Hell, I always get a little surprised in the comics when the X-Men crossover with other characters because it gets a little confusing when there are heroes who aren't mutants in this world. The X-Men has as diverse a cast as the rest of Marvel combined, hence the recent Avengers Vs. X-Men storyline. And this is where Fox may struggle, will the Fantastic Four be mutants or will they be something else, that's the question if they're going to merge these properties together. 

X-Men works on it's own, it's got it's own universe, method for powers and social setting that really is quite globe-spanning. We can see Wolverine stand alones, or maybe one day a Gambit stand alone. Spider-Man is a hero who works on his own or could work with a team like The Avengers but to create a whole universe around one character's premise is a little crazy. X-Men created it's own universe without ever needing to create a universe and now Fox are capitalising on the success they've already had and adapting to new expectations of Marvel and DC's expanding universes. Sony on the other hand feels desperate to milk their cash cow Spider-Man for all they can and they're going to try to create heroes and villains who are directly related to Spider-Man but without Spider-Man in the movie. At least when Warner Bros did Supergirl in the 80s, it was clear she was from Krypton, and didn't need an accident to happen. But every character will have to be introduced in a Spider-Man movie and then you end up with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, frankly an absolute clusterfuck.

Should Spider-Man Be Only Peter Parker in the Movies?

Okay, so for those of you who don't know, Sony has basically come out and said "No-one will be Spider-Man in the movies except for Peter Parker." Now for a company that seems so hell bent on the whole "building a universe based around Spider-Man and only Spider-Man because we don't have any other major properties", this is very limiting. In addition to all the variations of Spider-Man that have been around over the years, there's already a whole (and frankly superior) trilogy of movies based around Peter Parker and his time as Spider-Man. So this means no Miles Morales, no Ben Reilly and no Miguel O'Hara. These are the three primary other Spider-Men, and they all could tell their own unique stories. 

Instead Sony has gone ahead with what is frankly a bit of a bat-shit idea and is going to milk Spider-Man for all it's worth, or more appropriately, Peter Parker. They're going to tell the story of the same guy again, over another trilogy, and probably a further trilogy after that if they don't reboot him for a second time. But here's the kicker, with great characters come great responsibility, except Sony isn't willing to use that responsibility. I get that Peter Parker is the most recognisable Spider-Man, just like Bruce Wayne is the most recognisable Batman. But the truth is, they've done Parker, twice now. And they didn't even vary the stories all that much, they're still telling the same story with some slight variations and everyone praises them for "Non-Organic Web Shooters", which by the way, I personally think is a dumb-as-shit, and I don't get why everyone complained about the dude with mutant Spider powers having the ability a spider does, to shoot webs. Yes, I know it's the original comics, doesn't make it any less dumb, it's like giving Superman a jet pack to fly despite the fact he has all these other insane superpowers.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. They aren't even considering telling a new story, or maybe they think they are, I just don't know. It's very confusing at this point. The thing that irks me the most though, is Ben Reilly is a story that could be told while still using Peter Parker, giving the Scarlet Spider some time would give the Peter character a much needed break. Okay, so maybe the Clone Saga doesn't have the best reputation, but it's at least better than repeating the same stories over and over and over again. In an ideal world I'd love to see 2099 Spider-Man or more importantly Miles Morales come into the story. But we don't live in an ideal world... oh well.

So, about that Man of Steel Ending...

WARNING: The Following Blog-Post has MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MAN OF STEEL - duh!

So as you may have noticed you're one of the three total people who read this epic blog of awesome crap, I did not write a Top 5 Things I HATE about Man of Steel. This is for two, almost opposing reasons and a third, which I'll explain now. I felt like I couldn't narrow it down to just five reasons, I really hated this movie, but at the same time those dozens (yes, dozens, I counted) of reasons, all circled back to the same point. This movie lacked hope, fun, enjoyment and inspiration - which can be fine and all but it's not what the character is supposed to represent, no arguments about adaptation here, the movie even says so. But even The Dark Knight was more hopefully and inspirational than the movie about a man who has a symbol for hope sprayed across his chest. The third and final reason was that simply, I just hated the movie so much that trying to write about what I hated about it was not bringing me any joy either, I just felt so drained and let down by a movie that so badly misrepresented the character, who has literally been an inspiration and guiding light in my life in the way that he is supposed to be in the movies. To paraphrase General Zod in Man of Steel; my soul, that is what this movie has taken from me.

A tad over dramatic? Yep, but that's me. I speak almost exclusively in hyperbole. But this movie did really emotionally affect me. And truth be told many people point out the ending of Man of Steel as a low point, how Superman is forced to kill General Zod, and then worse, the destruction and death and his neck snapping is just thrown under the rug at the end because apparently they couldn't spare five more minutes of run-time to show a city in recovery or Superman feeling guilty. This ending has been debated to death and I'm not going to even begin to say how much I hated it (though it's not my only issue with the movie); and how much of an absolute betrayal of the character it was. Superman does not kill - end of story. Has he done it before? Yes, it was bad writing then it is bad writing now. But that is also not the point. I never considered the ending of Superman II as a kill either, just a severe beating (even if it's a deleted scene, it clearly shows the creators intention). But at least Superman II had earned it up until that point Man of Steel had not. One day I will probably do a "What I Would Have Changed" about Man of Steel, but I'm just not there yet, in order to do that, I should probably watch the movie in it's entirety again. 

And here is where I do this. All the problems can be summed up in the ending, the lack of hope, inspiration, the lack of joy, all there. Many of my other problems too, a lack of character depth, a lack of growth or story arc, a lack of real meaning to the story other than mindless destruction. It's all there. Superman is young and inexperienced, but he learns nothing and the audience is taught nothing either. The flashbacks serve no reason but to disjoint the story, and Jonathan Kent just comes off like an asshole frankly. Protective of his son, but still a douchebag. So what do the flashbacks have to do with the ending? Bearing in mind hindsight is 20:20 or X-Ray vision in this case, and I do not purport to be a better writer than Goyer, Snyder or Nolan - they're totally out of my league. But picture this:

The Final Battle: Superman vs. Zod is raging all around Metropolis. They go up into space now are plumetting, as in the movie, Superman gets the upper hand and is forcing Zod down to the ground. A few hundred feet before they hit the station, Superman draws his fist back and in a blast of rage and anger and SLAMS it into Zod's face. Zod crashes into the station leaving a crater where he hit. Superman on the other hand gracefully glides in. Zod begins to rise to his feet, he's clearly dazed and beaten, there's even blood on his nose and swelling around his face from bruises forming. Before Zod can even react, Superman BLASTS HIM with his heat vision pinning him further into the crater. We see the rage and madness of an angry God in Superman, he teeth gritted his flared eyes glowing. 

He's pounding Zod with a continual beam of heat. Zod screaming in pain. Superman lets his heat vision go, he jump up and POUNDS DOWN onto Zod. The crater in the hall gets even bigger. Superman wants to kill Zod, it's obvious, people are terrified of the fight. Zod looks helpless now and Superman just starts PUNCHING HIM over and over and over and over with rage in his eyes. Now, Lois walks in, she see him, shes horrified and screams out his name "Clark!". Clark Kent realises who he is again and where he is, he looks down at Zod, now beaten to a bloody pulp, face messed up, Superman's knuckles covered in blood.
 CUT TO:

Except instead of this scene as in the movie continuing on, it starts at "Clark... you have to keep this side of yourself a secret..." "What was I supposed to do? Just let them die?" "Maybe..."

Momentarily cuts back to Superman looking down at his beaten opponent. The piano music showing the vulnerable, emotional side of Superman begins playing. It cuts back to Jonathan Kent now sitting on the car with his son.

"I don't have all the answers, son. I know you can't just let people die... I know it's hard with all your power and ability. I know you can't just stay on the sidelines forever, Clark. You might be this world's greatest hero one day... One day you'll have to make a decision for what kind of man you want to be Clark. I've tried my best to raise you right, to be a good man and do the right thing. And I trust that when the time comes for you to step out into the light, you'll do the right thing - and save them."

Remembering his father's words, and Jor-El his birth father's words from earlier, "You can save them, Kal, you can save them all." Superman stops. Zod slumps down. He's beaten and out cold. Lois runs up to to him and they embrace.

"I thought you were going to kill him..." Superman shakes his head, confirmed in his decision not to kill him. There's been enough death for one day, and he won't be responsible for any more. From now on he will do his best to save them all. He does not kill, he learns not to kill, no matter how much he wanted to. He has become a Superman. 

So what does this do for the movie? Well it establishes Superman as Superman, not just the alien who came and let everyone die, or punched shit up. It establishes him as Superman, the man who will do his best to save everyone to always find another way. The easy way out is to kill, the hard way is to be the example. The hard way is to be, Superman to shoulder that responsibility. He can now be an inspiration to people, they have seen him not kill, they have seen him save the world.

Following scenes in my mind include Superman literally stepping out into the light and hundreds of Metropolis citizens seeing the man who saved them, who stopped the evil General Zod and did not kill him, setting an example. He flies off with people cheering him and watching him in awe.

Zod now in a Kryptonian prison chamber de-powered by a Kryptonian atmosphere is sent back to the Phantom Zone using the same technology, but not vowing to Superman that he will return and kill everyone he loves that Zod should have killed him (as that is what Zod wanted, he wanted Superman to kill and Zod would have won, as in the movie). Superman accepts this responsibility for protecting Earth. He accepts it knowing it will not be easy, but that if he is to be the inspiration to humanity, he need to be a paragon of human kindness, compassion, forgiveness - y'know all that stuff in the Bible and what not that the film oh-so subtly presented to us with symbolic imagery.



Metropolis is on the mend, people debate about it, the death toll was high but limited. Superman saved those he could. Now we have a hopeful ending, one that says "bad things happen" but we can rebuilt, we can overcome and now we have a true hero for truth, justice, all that stuff. 

And that is the story arc Clark has, he is as powerful as a God but he knows he needs to be an inspiration and a symbol of hope. His story up until now the one we saw in the movie, has not been an easy one but it has let him to become: Superman.

The Man of (Dark & Edgy) Steel

Allow me to just point out I'm a huge Superman fan, despite my constant proclaims that "I'm Batman"... which I should add is not just a claim but fact, I am the knight... I am... not the point... anyway... Superman is and always has been my favourite hero, super or otherwise. I grew up watching the Christopher Reeve movies to the point that I'd credit the morals instilled in me by Superman to be partially responsible for what I'd say is often a high moral standard I set for myself. I watched the animated series as a kid and later Justice League when I was an adult, I watched Lois & Clark and I watched all ten seasons of Smallville.

People have often said the problem with Superman is that he's too powerful, so he's not relateable. I've never had that problem, not because I can fly or shoot fireballs from my eyes but because I don't relate to him, that's never been the point; I look up to him. Fictional character or no, Superman represents three things, Truth, Justice and the American Way. I'm a Greek-Cypriot born and raised in Britain so the whole "American Way" thing might sound stupid. But what that saying means it believe in freedom, liberty, choice, love and respect for each other. It doesn't mean "whoever can grab the most money they can" or "every man for himself", it doesn't mean "God is great" and it doesn't mean "our way or the highway" as the term American way has come to be twisted to be looked at. The "American Way" just simply represents the human way of life, the ideal that human beings are slowly working toward, something that's been around since before America, before Britain and even before my ancestors in Greece were creating the first democratic government.

So, what does this have to do with the upcoming blockbuster produced by Christopher Nolan, written by David S. Goyer and directed by Zack Snyder, "Man of Steel"?

Man of Steel is being produced and touted as a "Dark Superman". Now therein lies the problem, Superman as a character is not dark. What he represents is not "dark". The Dark Knight was a great film, and because it was "dark and edgy" it seems like everybody wants to jump on the "dark and edgy" bandwagon since it's success. As though making a film darker is the key to success, well sure for Batman that's part of the success, because Batman is a character who operates during the night, wears black, has a tragic back story of the death of his parents right in front of his face and deals with the constant idea of did he create half is own rogues gallery himself? Hell, he's even nicknamed "The DARK Knight". He is a dark character, he's also quite literally powerless, to the point that many debate if he's even a real superhero. (He is, but that's for another discussion all together).

Superman, is not dark. He wears the three primary colours brightly on his body, doesn't wear a mask and shows himself off to the world as a symbol to be looked up to. He proclaims that he stands for "Truth, Justice and the American Way" not "Crushing the criminal scum" like Batman does. Does this make Batman an evil character, no, of course not. But let's say for a minute you gave that eight year old year old Bruce Wayne the Super powers of Superman... He would have ripped Joe Chills arms off and beaten him to death with them before incinerating the body with heat vision and probably a few innocent bystanders by accident too. Batman despite his dark persona is only human and spent twenty odd years mastering to control his rage and aggression to the point that he had to swear to himself that in his vengeful crusade he would "never kill". Batman is a vengeful character, an aggressive dark knight who channels that aggression into crime fighting so that he can try and prevent others from ever having to endure what he did as a child.


Bruce Wayne constantly feels guilty for his inactions of the day of the death of his parents, he swears a vengeful crusade and as we've seen for example in "Batman Begins". He even attempts to shoot Joe Chill until someone else takes away that chance. He then swears that killing is not the option, he won't learn to kill, he'll learn to kick some major ass sure, but never to kill. He does believe in justice, the same way Superman does. But it took him ten of those twenty years to realise this and once again later in that movie, Bruce is given the choice by Liam Neeson's Henri Ducard/Ra's Al Ghul to kill a murderer and exact "justice". He denies this chance and burns the mountain-top fortress to the ground. His dark and tragic past is a part of who he is, he wears black, he's a dark character. But that's all part of The Batman; that's who he is.

But Petros, Superman has a tragic back story too, his parents died when a whole planet blew up... True. But baby Kal-El first of all doesn't even remember them. Hell, in some versions he wasn't even born yet when he was sent to Earth (don't ask it's kinda icky). In most versions, Superman doesn't even learn he's from another planet until he's in his teenage years, hell there was a whole ten year television series about the journey from Clark Kent the boy who knew nothing about his ancestry to becoming Superman in Smallville. Superman was raised a human, he never refers to himself as Kal-El, he is Clark Kent, born and raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent, two farmers living in Smallville, Kansas. He was instilled by good-natured if a little naiive foster parents, to be truthful, respectful and to respect the human way. He grew up with those ideals, those ideals of being a good person, and he became a shining beacon of light known as "Superman". No-where is this better illustrated than at the end of John Byrne's 1985 Comic book series that rebooted the character (correctly), the probably at this point ironically named "Man of Steel". As seen on the right here...

"It was Krypton that made me Superman, but it is the Earth that makes me human!!"

That is Superman's declarative statement, that despite all his powers, he thinks of himself as one of us. And even though he has been raised as a human being he is not one of us. But he does represent that human ideal to look up to. He's got some tragedy in his life but it doesn't consume him, it's not what drives him to be a hero. In fact Superman isn't just a superhero, he's THE superhero, the original; he's the man that stands out first, who stands up as a beacon of hope that big S on his chest is as much as symbol of hope as the Batman-Signal in the sky. But the Bat-Signal is a symbol of fear and dread, a warning to criminals that the Dark Knight is out on patrol; and you'd better play nice or he's gonna get you. There's no Superman symbol to make criminals afraid because he's not a symbol of fear, he's as symbol of hope. He flies into the sky and makes people look up at him and say "everything is going to be alright" and "when I grow up I wanna be just like him".

Superman is not Dark, leave that to Batman. And y'know what, even Bats himself says that he's glad Superman is as goody-two-shoes as he is. To Superman it doesn't even occur to him that he is a God, he sees himself as one of us, as stated before. To quote Batman himself...


"It is a remarkable dichotomy. In many ways, Clark is the most human of us all. Then... he shoots fire from the skies, and it is difficult not to think of him as a god. And how fortunate we all are that it does not occur to him..."

He is good and decent, and he doesn't lose control. He'll fight, he'll kick ass and he controls his abilities to much that you'd better not get on his bad side or he could lose control and then you'll see what happens...

...Yeah that was pretty awesome. But it wasn't Dark Superman. It was good Superman pushed to the edge and only beating Darkseid to a pulp because he knew that Darkseid could take it. He doesn't kill, he still stands for all he normally stands for. This is the Superman we all know, this is what Superman represents. To turn Superman "dark" for the sake of it flies in the face of the character. You make Superman dark and he's not Superman any more, go and do a new original character. Can his stories be dark, sure but is the character dark, absolutely not.

This all being said, will Man of Steel suck as it seems I am predicting. Maybe, maybe not, maybe the "dark superman" thing is just a way to get people into the theatres. Everything I've been shown indicates that are making the Big Blue Boy Scout the Big Midnight-Blue Boy Scout. I more than anyone will be happy if it's a great film, believe me and I am not going into the film intending to hate it but I just hope it does not fly in the face of what Superman is. It'd be like making James Bond an American (has been done once by the way... ugh) he's British, that's who the character is, it flies in the face of who Bond is, what he represents. Superman is good natured, he's a good person, he's not dark or else the character makes no sense for starters and wouldn't even be Superman any more. He's truth, justice and the american way, not truth, justice and VENGNEAAANCCEEE!!!

Point is: Superman is not dark, don't make him so as that's not who the character is; that's someone else.

Anyway... rant over...