Even Dean Cain Thinks Singerman Sucks

Well you know you've reached a different plateau of "suckitude" when the worst Superman of all time, i.e. Dean Cain, thinks you suck. In an appearance on the KTLA morning show ( you can watch the video HERE if you can stand the vapid, tedious morning show banter), Cain was on talking about his guest appearance on an upcoming episode of Smallville as well as his time in the tights, when the subject of Singerman was breached by one of the douchebag morning news anchors (who himself even called the film "not very good"). He kind of puts Cain on the spot about his impressions of the film. Cain's response: 'Um it didnt do very well at the box office...but it was umm "visually stunning," I'll tell you that."

Really Dean? That's all you could come up with? You couldn't even put out a "it wasn't too bad" or something even a bit more positive? That's like going out on a first date and when a friend asks you how it went, you respond by telling him that she had nice shoes. You could tell Deano was struggling to find something, ANYTHING to come up with on the spot, and that's all he (a Princeton University grad BTW) could come up with? Hilarious, to say the least.

The Kevin Smith NY Comic Con Footage

Thanks to a number of readers who submitted this over the past week. Sorry for the delay in getting it up. Here's the clip of Smith talking about Singerman at the N.Y. Comic Con a couple weekends ago. Instead of getting the details second hand, it's always more interesting to hear them directly from the source. Note how the audience is just eating up every bit of it. Guess that's what happens when you get a room full of people who understand the character of Superman. Why couldn't Warner Brothers do that?

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!

"One of the Biggest Disappointments of 2006"

Sure we've been saying this for over 5 months now, so for that to come from us, it wouldn't mean a whole heck of a lot. However when that comment is coming out of the mouth of someone at a nationally respected publication, people will sit up and take notice. And when said publication just so happens to be owned by Warner Brothers, well then that's really telling and pretty darn humorous if you ask us. That's right folks, Entertainment Weekly has come out with their list of the biggest disappointments in entertainment for the year 2006, and guess who's near the top of the list? Yup you guessed it, neither your friend or mine, Singerman!

Here's a few choice quotes from EW's Assistant Managing Editor, Dawnie Walton:

"Cut to opening weekend, me asleep in a theater. I checked out around the time someone exposition'ed that Lois Lane (a limp Kate Bosworth) had won a Pulitzer — a Pulitzer! — for some petulant, woman-done-wrong essay titled ''Why the World Doesn't Need Superman.'' When I woke up, Kevin Spacey was screaming at me, and former soap star Brandon Routh was doing something amazingly tedious with a huge floating island of Kryptonite. I wouldn't have minded if the movie had been merely bad — it would've given me something to talk about/make fun of with my husband on the walk home from the theater — but Superman Returns was just... boring. And is there anything worse than that?"

Well she certainly hit the proverbial nail on the head! I don't think there's anything else that we can add to that which hasn't already been mentioned here. The fact that something like is getting published by a WB entity leads me to believe that there's just a bit of a difference of opinion among some of the major players at WB as far as Singerman is concerned.

Pirates Scribe and Singerman VFX Coordinator Poke Holes in the Film and the Crew

Thanks to all the readers who pointed this piece out to us. We waited to post it for a while because we wanted to verify that the two individuals were who they say they were. After a bit of checking, we've found that this is in fact legit.

Recently on his own Wordplayer website, Hollywood scribe Terry Rosio, gave his thoughts, from a writer's standpoint, on Singerman. Who is Terry Rosio? And why should we care what he thinks, you ask? Well Terry's written a few "somewhat successful" films like Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2, and this film called Shrek, that we heard made a few dollars. So whenever a guy who's written a film that's made over a BILLION dollars worldwide speaks up, it's probably a good idea to listen.
Terry takes the writing in Singerman to task in a number of areas including a few that we've been hammering at for months. He also provides some great insight in a number of other areas like this:

From what I could see, there were two ideas presented in the film -- 1.) hey Superman, guess what, while you were away, turns out you've made a kid. And 2.) Lex Luthor is free because you didn't show up to court.

So what is Superman's position on these topics? Wish I knew, because here's a surprise -- neither of these issues is discussed in the film either.

Superman does not say a word -- and I'm serious, this is a true statement -- Superman does not say a word about having a son. (Well, unless you count the deadbeat dad response, "I'll be around." Yikes!)

And Superman does not say a word about the issue of being responsible for Lex Luther being free. He does not defend his action, he does not regret it, he does not discuss it. At all.

Okay, okay ... let's cast around for something. The film has to explore some kind of topic, right? Yes! They DO talk, a little bit, about this issue: Does the World Need Superman?

With nothing else going on, that's the subject of Lois' essay. That's the purpose of the flight up into the sky. So there should be some juicy stuff there, right?

Okay, let's lay out the arguments.

YES, the world need Superman because he resuces Space Shuttles and saves people from explosions and there is a lot of human pain and suffering out there.

NO, the world doens't need Superman because ... because ...

Guess what, filmmakers. You picked an issue that has only one side. Poor Lois was assigned the position -- via an insert shot -- that the world does not need Superman. Why? We don't know, and we can never know, because ... there isn't anything you can put on the other side of the argument.

There you go. Right from the mouth of someone who writes for a living. Like we've been saying all along Singerman presents a myriad of ideas but fails to explore any of them effectively. I HIGHLY recommend reading the entirety of Terry's post. It's long but his insight into the topic is fantastic.

What became even more interesting was that later on in that very same thread, one of the VFX Production Coordinators, from SINGERMAN chimed in on the topic, and his revelations about Singer and Co. are unbelievable:

It was one of the most educational experiences of my life. Seriously. I could see from their very inception, the birth of countless bad ideas...and the murder of good ones. I witnessed the endless creative battles and the cowardly finger pointing. Honestly, if this is how movies of this size usually get made -- I'm amazed they get made at all....

Bryan Singer has an issue with never doing test screenings...and has the juice to enforce it. Instead, he has what he calls "Friends and Family" screenings. This is where the crew and executives can invite a limited number of -- well – “Friends and Family” to see a rough cut of the movie. So, as it turns out, this version of the movie clocks in at well over three hours. The cards come back from the audience and, lo and behold, most of them say it's too long.

After a lot of tense meetings and heated arguments with the execs, the decision was made to cut several sequences. Several WHOLE sequences. Yes, there were trims made within the rest of the movie -- but they were minimal. The majority of the cuts include several scenes that I believe, by and large, were necessary for the story. Not only that, but several sequences that survived should have easily ended up in the Avid trash bin -- but remained in for the very reason you stated, "Because they looked cool."

WOW! So apparently there may have been a little more meat to the film but Singer would rather cut things that were integral to the story instead of things that were "cool looking." Ah, but the plot thickens:

You know, I can safely say that there wasn't one moment that I was really connected with these characters. They just seemed like blanks, hoping that the audience would imbue them with some sort of malevolence. They were as dumb as a box of rocks and their master plan was moronic. I laugh every time somebody says that Lex's whole scheme is a stupid real estate grab. I mean, who the hell does he think would ever want to live on that disgusting piece of crap?

Keep in mind this is someone from the FILM CREW saying this! Another great read, and it actually explains how some of the film actually had parts that were necessary to the plot left on the cutting room floor because Singer doesn't know how to edit a film properly and his ego is too big to allow a proper test screening for anyone who's not a lackey of his. I highly recommend spending the time to read it all. It shows just how this cast and crew was seemingly flying by the seat of their pants while ruining Superman in the process.