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Supergirl


Greywind

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What looks good on a comic page, and what looks good on a real human being on a comic page, aren't always one and the same. Look at the Flash TV show. They went with a deeper red for his costume. The bright red of the comics would look terrible. The light blue of superman's costume (or supergirl's) looks good in the comics, but on a regular person? Not so much. This is why the X-films went for leather body suits. Can you imagine the yellow and blue pajamas they wear in the comics on real people? It would be hideous. Sometimes a little darker and a little more subdued makes it, pun drum-roll please, more palatable.

 

Christopher Reeve looked fine. Looked just like Superman from the comics.

 

SupermanChristopherReeve.jpg

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Here's an article looking at the trailer. Her take is different from mine, but the author makes some very good points. I'm obviously not a woman, so she saw some things that I didn't

 

The only thing I disagree with, is her belief that the Flash is "dark and gritty". Maybe I missed something else, but I don't see it.

Flash is dark and gritty like brown sugar is dark and gritty.  Mostly, it's just sweet.

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Yeah everyone says that.  I wonder though, what a art good director and cinematographer could do with brighter colors.  Its not like movies aren't made with anything but dull muted tones.

 

I wasn't going to comment on this, but I have 30 minutes to spare.

 

I think the real problem is that since the 70s, comics fans have wanted to be seen as oh-so-very grown up. We can't stand the idea of people thinking that we like something "childish" and "silly" like superheroes. A lot of us, when we were younger, were looked down on and mocked for liking stories about people in tights fighting other people in tights. We prefer to move away from anything that smacks of "silly" or "juvenile".

 

Jump ahead several years and a lot of these same people are now working in Hollywood or running the Big Two comic publishers. They grew up with Miller, Moore, Morrison, Waid, Claremont, Byrne, etc. They remember how much they loved Dark Phoenix Saga and Dark Knight Returns, and Kingdom Come and so many others. They don't want to remember a time when the Avengers fought a Nazi whose ultimate weapon was really powerful glue. They want you to forget the time Superman had a super-monkey or Batman had a dog who wore a mask (to hide his secret identity).

 

So they make everything "serious" and "profound" and "deep". Muted colours enhance that. Bright, primary colours remind people that these characters, these ideas, came from somewhere silly. They'll say, "We're trying to appeal to a wider audience." They forget that comics sold better when things were "silly" and "ridiculous" and fun.

 

Keep in mind, I'm saying this as a huge fan of Watchmen, Kingdom Come, and Final Crisis.

 

But I'm also a fan of 60s Legion of Superheroes, All-Star Superman, Supreme (the Alan Moore version), Tom Strong, and the 60s Doom Patrol.

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Yeah everyone says that. I wonder though, what a art good director and cinematographer could do with brighter colors. Its not like movies aren't made with anything but dull muted tones.

The Dick Tracy film was a good example. Many flamboyantly dressed characters, including the lead, who was literally in a yellow suit. It's hard to pull off, though. Reeve's Superman dates from the late seventies and early eighties when no one had any fashion sense whatsoever. ;)

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Yeah I'm with you Andrew, and I do think there's a market for the lighter hearted, more romantic (in terms of moral outlook and worldview, not lovey) stories with superheroes.  Superman is a classic for a reason.  Would it do as well as murder fest Man of Steel?  Probably not, but the popularity of the Flash seems to indicate there's significant interest.

 

You're really super, supergirl.

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Going by the message, Superman SHOULD be bright and noticeable, and not subdued or murky. He's supposed to inspire hope in people.

I will be sure to tell President Obama to put on the bright yellow zoot suit. Because obviously bright primary colors are the only way to be inspiring in appearance. (^_^)

 

La Rose.

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Costumes should match the tone of the show. The Arrow should be in dark green tones since that show is dark in tone. The Flash should be in bright red since the character and the show are, by and large, bright and cheerful (the fact that they are "building towards" the brighter red costume is sort of a lame compromise, IMO...Reverse Flash looks suitably menacing in his dayglo yellow costume and bright red glowy eyes). If this Supergirl is going to be perky and bright, then her costume can be perky and bright as well. Going against tone is misguided and unsupportable aesthetically, in my view.

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Maybe, sorta. I mean, I can be apathetic about any specific show and still be passionate about how its genre gets portrayed by Hollywood as a whole. Even if I never care to watch a single episode of Supergirl, I can still value it as a springboard for discussion of larger issues with regard to how superheroes are depicted in movies and on television. But I probably will watch at least the first episode, despite the disappointing costume design...

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SupermanChristopherReeve.jpg

Is that like a fanboy cross for a canon-heretic vampire?

 

This will probably be heresy to many, but while Christopher Reeve's costume looks okay, I think the darker blue of the more recent films, and then the costume in Man of Steel, look better.

 

I don't oppose tradition when it works, but I'm not so doggedly devoted to it that I'm not willing to consider "new looks" or make cosmetic changes to aid in adapting it to a medium or changing times.

 

But, then, who am I to talk? I think most comic book superheroes look ridiculous -- and tend to run settings where pajamas and capes aren't really a *thing.*

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I must be a 20-something girl too, then. (Which would come as quite a surprise to me, my wife, and many others....)

 

Because I liked it. It wasn't what I expected, I admit. It looks very CW-ish (if that's a word), but still--Supergirl. She flies. She's bulletproof. She can stop a speeding semi  without budging. And I really like the "learning to be a superhero" aspect to this. Yes, you have Phenomenal Cosmic Power , but you have to learn how to use it. And when to use it.

 

I'll be watching it.

"I think I'm bulletproof..."

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On the bright side, all of the arguing about the costume and the trailer means that people aren't apathetic about the series. Hopefully, that translates into an audience when the show does arrive.

Actually, it's probably more that this little slice of humanity really likes to argue about stuff. 

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Here's an article looking at the trailer. Her take is different from mine, but the author makes some very good points. I'm obviously not a woman, so she saw some things that I didn't

 

The only thing I disagree with, is her belief that the Flash is "dark and gritty". Maybe I missed something else, but I don't see it.

 

These things are relative.  Barry's mother was killed, just about right before his eyes and his father was unjustly convicted for that murder and is still in prison.  Most of his opponents kill several people before Barry even gets on their tail.  Once he gets them, he commits kidnapping and holds them illegally in a private black site without even a toilet.  Except for the murderers he decided to just let run free as long as they didn't reveal Barry's secret identity, which was only a secret to his foster sister, who he is going to marry.  In pursuit of this noble cause he has been working respectively with another murderer (who was in fact the man who killed his mother), the man who built the weapons for the 3 murderers Barry let go, and a woman who is destined to create a few bodies of her own.  He was inspired to take up the cause by his friend from a neighbouring city who has made a career of out of murdering people who should live and not killing anyone who should die.   In pursuit of the cause he lured his father figure into being complicit in his numerous felonies.  Next episode he's going to fail to save his mother via time travel.  Don't whine about spoilers, we've already seen him fail.  

 

That may not be as dark as Arrow, the series about the second-worst superhero in the world, a man who ruins everything he touches, but it's substantially darker than the character from a chick-flick who one day says "Y'know, I haven't been living up to my full potential.  In fact for some reason I'm wearing glasses I don't need just to look less attractive even though I haven't been a superhero yet and thus don't even have a secret identity to protect.  I think I'll save a few hundred lives before going back to my job working for one of the ladies from Sex and the City".

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Is that like a fanboy cross for a canon-heretic vampire?This will probably be heresy to many, but while Christopher Reeve's costume looks okay, I think the darker blue of the more recent films, and then the costume in Man of Steel, look better.I don't oppose tradition when it works, but I'm not so doggedly devoted to it that I'm not willing to consider "new looks" or make cosmetic changes to aid in adapting it to a medium or changing times.But, then, who am I to talk? I think most comic book superheroes look ridiculous -- and tend to run settings where pajamas and capes aren't really a *thing.*

The thing is, Hollywood (and its apologists) aren't advocating "going dark" because they are "open to new looks" as you are. They are convinced that brightly colored costumes can never work in live action, period. It's natural to have a personal preference, say, towards darker tones. It's something else altogether to idiomatically rule out other aesthetics merely because one lacks the necesary creative vision to (figure out how to) make them look good.

 

Now if I were a film or television producer, I wouldn't listen too closely to anyone who thought any aspect of comic book superheroes was "ridiculous" (to the point of dismissing it out of hand). It's all part and parcel of the genre, and when you reject any of its most prominent elements you end up with a nice, hot, steaming mess that isn't really a member of the genre it purports to be (*cough*Heroes*cough*TimKring*cough*).

 

Oh, and a memo to Hollywood: you've used "re-imagining" a genre to "make it fresh" as code for "we don't understand or appreciate the genre so we're going to butcher it for what we perceive as the lowest-common-denom, er, widest possible audience" for long enough. We're onto you. You can't fake it anymore and get away with it like you used to.

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