Kevin Smith Thinks Singerman is Boring... and a Rapist

Well you can add another name to the list of people in the comic/film industry who have come out to voice their issues with Singerman. The latest one being Hollywood director and comic writer Kevin Smith, who by his own admission is a huge fan of the Man of Steel. As you may recall, Smith was actually brought on the Superman Lives film project a few years ago before Jon "Let me show you what boys have" Peters ultimately scared him off the project with talk of gay robots and polar bears.

Smith appeared at last weekend's New York Comic Con and conducted a Q&A session for fans. Some of the fan questions had to do with his impression of the group of comicbook films that have been released recently. According to numerous reports, Smith responded with the following regarding Singerman:

"It was kind of....boring," he said, before launching into a diatribe on the lameness of Lex Luthor and the silliness of pitting a superhuman alien against a real-estate scam artist. "I'm gonna get a mortgage at .4 percent!" Smith joked. He said that X3 was better than Superman Returns, and also went off on another tangent, about supposed logic problems with the film.
According to Smith, the logic problems occur if you accept Bryan Singer's premise -- that Superman Returns picks up where the second film leaves off, with Superman having sex with Lois, then giving her an amnesia kiss and taking off to go find his relatives and whatnot. When Lois finds out her kid in Superman Returns can throw a piano, and is therefore Superman's kid, why is she not very surprised? She should have no memory of having sex with Superman, so
when she visits him in the hospital, shouldn't her first question to him be -- Smith's words -- "When did you rape me?"

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that Singerman was boring or pointed how stupid the Luthor land scheme was, I might have enough money to make my own $200 million disaster. Smith also echoes our earlier point about Singer's giant cop-out of using the first two film's continuity but only where he sees fit. If you're going to pick up where another film left off, you've got to do it all the way. You can't just pick and choose where you want because the audience has no idea what's in continuity and what isn't. Despite the lameness of a lot of Richard Lester's Superman II, that's what people know since that's what was released to the public, the vast majority of the audience will never see the Donner cut (although as one of our astute readers pointed out, in Donner's cut Supes turns back time anyway so the sex never happened so Singer is still screwed.) Sticking with that, you've got Lois who has a kid with superpowers who never remembers sleeping with an infinitely powerful being (well, some of the time at least) who she knows could use his powers to do pretty much anything he wants to someone. No, that's not creepy at all... Good job Singer!

Mailbag: February 24th

Been a bit busy the past week or so, but wanted to take the time to answer a few of the deluge of emails we've gotten recently about our views on certain hot topics regarding Singerman, etc. Instead of emailing readers back and forth, we thought we'd just address the most common comments/questions here on the blog. We did this once before back in August and figured we'd give it another shot here since the emails picked up again.

So now let's get on to the mailbag (user names and emails have been omitted to protect the innocent):

"Hey! I cant believe this blog is still up and running and still getting so many comments! Kudos to you on the dedication. I think the blog has actually outlived the interest in this crappy movie. If they feel the need to punish us with a sequel, I'll look forward to getting the "real news" here."

Thanks, and that's the beauty of these things I guess. There's so much that goes on now with films after the theatrical release between the DVD's, financials, awards, etc. that there's usually something every couple of days worth noting. Plus the fan response has been great, and knowing there are a LOT of people out there who share our feelings about this keeps us going.

"I was just wondering whether or not you post on any Superman-related message boards on the Net like SuperHeroHype, Supermanhomepage, BlueTights (LOL), etc. and what your screen name was?"

Posting on message boards isn't really our thing. Every once in a while we'll peruse a couple of them just to see fan reaction to certain things, but we've never had a serious urge to really post much. There seems to be a lot of vitriol on message boards (especially on one certain board anytime we post anything here) and too many people think that their opinion is THE ONLY opinion that matters. We have our opinions on things and feel strongly about them but don't begrudge others who feel differently (why do you think we dont moderate the blog comments?). SuperheroHype is an excellent site as a news source though and seems to be the most neutral out of those you listed.

"It's funny how you mock SR for not getting any worthy Oscar nods and make fun of Bosworth for her Razzie nomination, but yet you mention nothing about the TEN Saturn Awards that SR was just nominated for. A little unfair, no?"

The only reason we even mentioned the Oscars was because of that silly poster WB put out to the Academy. In our opinion at least, the Oscars are really the only one of all these silly awards that are handed out this time of year, that really mean anything. The fact that Singerman didn't get nominated for any of the awards outside of one for visual effects was no real surprise to us, just like the fact that Date Movie wasn't nominated. The fact that WB thought the film was worthy enough to grab a nomination is what we found truly humorous.

We pointed out Bosworth's Razzie since it had to do with one of our major critiques of the film, her abysmal performance. The Razzies are the anti-Oscars that are sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing in Hollywood. If she wins, and is a good sport and actually accepts it like Halle Berry did a few years back, we'll give her all the credit in the world.

As for the Saturn Awards, I'm not sure why the fact we didn't post that they were nominated would surprise you? This is after all a blog about for people don't like the film. Do the sites that shill for Singer post anything even remotely critical of the film? I must ask though, is a nomination for one of these really that big of a deal? What is a Saturn Award nomination supposed to mean? I see films like Snakes on a Plane and X-Men 3 nominated for Best Film awards. Are you sure you really want to put yourself in league with those kinds of movies? (although we TOTALLY would) Kate Bosworth for Best Actress??? C'mon now.
This all seemed a bit odd to me so I did a bit of digging into just how these awards work and why they were nominating such bad movies like Singerman. Well as it turns out they're pretty much like the Oscars where they have committees of film professionals who nominate films in the genre, but low and behold look at what we have here!!! Who's name should appear as one of the committee heads for the Saturn Awards? None other than Bryan Singer, himself! And who else do I see as committee heads? Brandon Boyce, who wrote Apt Pupil for Singer, and WB executive Bradley Marcus! Hmmm very interesting to say the least, that explains a LOT of things.

"Hey SSS, I found the following image throughout my travels on the internet. Thought you might get a "kick" out of it. LOL. Sort of sums up these two movies, no?"

Heh, that is pretty cool. OWNED indeed. Could you imagine those two facing off in a potential Justice League movie? Talk about a mismatch.

Well that's it for the mailbag. Feel free to email us HERE with any comments, questions, suggestions, death threats, etc.

Singerman: My Creepy Valentine

Just in time for Valentine's Day, an emailer sent us this YouTube link to a video compilation of scenes from Singerman set to some rather creepy music that highlights the "Super Stalker" aspect of the film that we all "loved" so much. This is pretty damn funny, and we give kudos to "jmariamellinas" whoever you are. Enjoy.



If you have any more videos send them in to us, we'd love to see them.

The Singerman Ripple Effect?

<-- Singer seems to have gotten some practice hanging on to Singerman. Hey may need it.

Well it's been quite the bloodbath the past few days over at the W.B. Studios Superhero Department. Last Friday, Joss Whedon announced that he'd been relieved of his duties on the long-in-development Wonder Woman project. The following day David Goyer announced on his MySpace page that he and W.B. have gone their separate ways on doing The Flash film. Then on Monday they announced that they've brought in Shawn Levy to helm the project.

While there's noting truly earth-shattering about a film changing directors, it's the timing and the apparent reasoning behind the changes that caught our attention. Some of the reasons for the "irreconcilable differences" sound AWFULLY familiar to some of the criticisms people had of Singerman. Coincidence? Perhaps not. Check out what Whedon had to say on his website about his dismissal:

"I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked.

We just saw different movies, and at the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that's never gonna work. Non-sympatico. It happens all the time. I don't think any of us expected it to this time, but it did. Everybody knows how long I was taking, what a struggle that script was, and though I felt good about what I was coming up with, it was never gonna be a simple slam-dunk."

Now what is Whedon's writing style? And what do Buffy, Angel, and Serenity all have in common? That's right they have a dark, edgy tone to the characters. Also keep in mind this was just days after it was announced that WB had purchased a Wonder Woman spec script to allegedly avoid any copyright issues with Whedon's. Latino Review got a hold of that spec script and reviewed it as:

"The spec that Silver picked up ROCKS! A fun filled adventure packed girl power action movie in the 1940s! 1943 to be exact...Overall, a very great read. The writers did their homework. As a comic book character origin movie - it is just as good as Batman Begins.I can see why Silver supposedly took it off the spec market. If I was a betting man, I figure this is the origin story that Warners might stick with. My note to the studio is to not touch the script, leave it intact, get yourself a good director and shoot this script. It is all there on the page."

LR also points out that WB buys this excellent spec script and says something along the lines of committing to Whedon’s contemporary version, then the very next day Whedon is off the project. Why would you take a spec off the market when you own the rights already?

Now let's compare that to what went down on The Flash project. On his MySpace Goyer is quoted as saying:

Well, I've been waiting a few months to relate this news -- but I am sad to say that my version of The Flash is dead at WB. The God's honest truth is that WB and myself simply couldn't agree on what would make for a cool Flash film. I'm quite proud of the screenplay I turned it. I threw my heart into it and I genuinely think it would've been the basis of a ground-breaking film. But as of now, the studio is heading off in a completely different direction.

Sound familiar? The following day it comes out that Shawn Levy will be replacing him, and The Hollywood Reporter tells us that:

"Despite Levy's previous films, including Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther, they have "no intention of making Flash a comedy," but they do intend to "aim for a lighter movie than previous Warners Bros comic adaptations, such as Batman Begins and Superman Returns." Goyer was in part responsible for the former's script, his Flash was said to be "dark themed" as well."

Hmmm, sensing a theme between these two? A lighter, more action-oriented film? Didn't like the previous director's dark, overly serious take on a historically "lighter" character? Who does that sound like? Yup that's right folks, Singerman.

While Batman is a hero historically depicted to be of a darker and more cerebral nature lending himself to a writer like Goyer, characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash are not. Wonder Woman and the Flash were slated to be WB's next big new superhero franchises launched after Singerman, but now seem to be years away from seeing the light of day. Is WB trying to avoid repeating the mistakes that it made with Singerman especially now that most of the damage from the lackluster box office and home video sales has been assessed by the studio's bean counters?

It seems to me that there's a MAJOR rethinking of the studio's comic book projects not named Batman at this point, thanks in great part to some of the major shortcomings of Singerman. Whedon and Goyer were both paid millions of dollars for their efforts, so the fact that Singer signed on to write the script for the sequel doesn't exactly assure him of helming the project. We can only hope that someone out there writes an outstanding spec script for an actual Superman film, and WB kicks Singer to the curb.

Miscellaneous Bits: 2/2/2007

There's been a lot going on recently. So here's a few interesting tidbits from around the World Wide Web that we thought we'd lump into one big blog posting for you.

• If you thought we disliked Singerman, wait until you see this guy's website! We were laughing so hard at the photoshop gallery that we were almost crying. Case in point. --> [BrandonRouthIsNotSuperman]
  


• Apparently the guy who coined the name "Super Man," Friedrich Nietzsche, wouldn't have been a big fan of Singerman either. [PopMatters]
  
  
• Time Warner had a nice 4th Quarter of 2006. No thanks to film and home video divisions though. Say, who was their main summer tentpole film again? [Bloomberg]
  
  
• Now is the time to go write a Singerman 2 spec script. W.B. may buy it off you to cover their butts when Singer and Co. steal some of your ideas, because W.B. just TOTALLY did that with Wonder Woman. [/film]
  

If you have anything else, keep sending them into us! The feedback has been great recently.