I am just going to come out with it, up until Smallville, live action Superman films and television shows were boring. Even Superman Returns that came out a few years ago, directed by the very talented Bryan Singer, was very boring, maybe even more so than Superman 2. I don’t necessarily believe that is any one person’s fault, I blame the way it is handled. Smallville did something that to my knowledge has never been done before, it’s taken Clark Kent and made him interesting. Coming up on the last five episodes of the series you can go through the last ten years and see the journey he has faced, from being one of his only kind on earth, to being a hero only because he can do things others can’t, to finally accepting his fate and fully embracing it.
A lot of people are complaining that Clark should be wearing the suit already and stop being the Blur and embrace Superman already, but that character Clark is still turning into. Once Clark embraces being Superman and fully making Clark Kent the disguise, then it is no longer the story of Clark, it is the story of Superman, and once it is that story then the story of Clark completely changes. Once Superman is born, the story of Clark Kent in Smallville ends. He no longer is a guy who goes out saving people because he can, he becomes a super hero who disguises himself as Clark because he has to, and we’ve seen that story five times in movies before and every time the scenes with Clark are boring.
Think about the Burton and Schumacher Batman movies, in those movies I know personally I couldn’t wait for Batman to come on screen and for Bruce to hide his face, because in those movies Batman was the focus and Bruce was the secret identity that we had no interest in seeing because like Clark he is a disguise and not who the character really is. I think Nolan’s Batman movies really embrace the idea that, like in Smallville, the hero and the person are really the same person, at least to those closest to him.
For those of you who don’t know, Nolan is producer on a new Superman movie starring Hendry Cavill, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, and Kevin Costner, Zack Snyder is directing the movie and has given big praise to Smallville recently. He says his story will be more focused on Clark becoming Superman, so hopefully they will do what was done with Batman and hopefully it will at least not make me want to fast forward through all of the Clark Kent scenes. Either way, my one main hope for this movie is that it has more action in it than an episode of Smallville and that it is not boring in the least.
