Can we all agree this jerk is the reason it took so long to get good Superman media?
Posted Jul 16, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC
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His behaviour is what got Dirk Gently cancelled. That by itself was enough to put him on my shit list for life.
Sooooo close to perfect, with an apparent 3rd season wrapping up the overall story.
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That show was amazing. Frustrating that he’s such a jerk.
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Yeah, what do frustrating is that apparently it was planned as 3 seasons to tell the story but then the option for doing more if they wanted.
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But like I don’t think that was a show where you can just switch writers. The cadence was pretty specific.
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Yeah…it’s just disappointing all round.
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I know he's not a great person and good riddance, but didn't he also write American Alien and that's considered really good?
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The art is considered good. The story is widely regarded to be plagiarized from older, better stories.
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To say stolen would be dramatic and disingenuous. He was retelling the basic Superman origin so obviously aspects will be taken from previous works. He leaned on tried and true Superman tropes while paying homage to some great books/stories, and adding his own stuff
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I didn’t say “stolen”
His Mxy pages are airlifted from Morrison and Moore. His Smallville issue is just a watered-down “Superman For All Seasons.” And his Joker story was pretty much a Reddit thread come to life.
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You said plagiarism which by definition is " the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." You know what else me and taking someone else's things stolen.
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Plagiarized is a strong word, let’s leave it at “unoriginal”
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Yes, it is a really good story. He also made other short stories of Superman and also were good.
He could not be the best person, but he knows how to tell a story.
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He also wrote Bright, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
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I don't remember that one.
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Geez bright has a whole list of problems. Although apparently they were filming the movie before the script was even completed so I'm not sure how much of that I can really blame on Landis. Not to say they haven't written some stinkers because they have.
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He gave us good Superman media
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No.
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American Alien is one of the best Superman books. So yes.
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And he did more for Superman than just American Alien.
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I don’t know who this is
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Basically 11 years ago this man made a video on why “superman sucks” it went viral and for YEARS everyone would hate on Superman and say he sucks and needs to be darker…which is why man of steel is so dark in tone and why we went forward with the Snyderverse
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I see.
Also why is everyone saying he’s also a terrible person
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He’s not an ally and has been facing multiple sexual assault allegations
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He’s also a sex pest.
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Google it
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You’re massively overestimating the impact of that video and Max Landis in general.
Nerds shared it and not much else.
The idea that Superman sucked and was too boring and need to be darker had been happening since Dark Knight Returns if not earlier.
Man of Steel was the way it was because Nolan’s Batman films were successful and the studio decided to do a massive overcorrection after Superman Returns.
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Nepo babies have a lot of pull in holly wood. Being John landis’s son and making chronicle really hit him a lot of pull at WB
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And WB hired him to do — nothing.
The closest he got to Superman was American Alien and once the allegations came out about him DC shit canned him and hasn’t invited him back. And American Alien wasn’t even dark and gritty. It was straight up goofy in some parts.
In fact the entire premise of this thread is flawed as “Regarding Clark” came out nine days after Man of Steel meaning it literally could not have impacted anything about that film’s development.
There’s a lot of legitimate reasons to not like Landis’ public persona, or his work or the very credible allegations that have been made against him but laying Warner’s ability to shit all over Superman at his feet is ridiculous.
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I literally never heard of the video before this thread lmao.
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The Snyder Verse was the direct result of Superman Returns being dogshit.
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You also missed the point of the video. He’s being hyperbolic and intentionally over simplistic with his “nobody gives a fuck about Superman” as in; the general audience doesn’t. And he was criticizing the dark age of comics. There is no way to watch that video and then be inspired to create the Snyderverse
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Idk who he is but I always see insta meme accounts use a twitter handle, kirawontmiss or some shit. Fuck that kira person cause they missed it entirely when they mocked having Superman as a favorite superhero..
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I put the blame solely on WB executives. Their big movie success had been Nolan's dark, gritty Batman so they wanted to try and replicate that success with their whole DCEU. They gave everything over to Snyder, another 'auteur' who's all bout that aesthetic and the rest is history. Sad, sad history.
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Another reason the Flash TV series stood out. The city was very lively and vibrant and took place in daylight sometimes.
Batman and Gotham are grim and blue hues the rest of the world has sunlight hours
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DC has been part of WB for nearly 35 years. And for about 25 of those years WB has been embarrassed of the IP. They thought it was childish. They thought it should be relegated to animated and tv. They didn’t understand the character (they chose Joel Schumacher who said something like “he’s a grown man, he would have gotten over his parents death by now”). They could have introduced other characters and team ups and a universe in the 90s. Batman (Nolan, Reeves, and Phillips all got it right) is obviously a highlight but then there’s The Rock and Suicide Squad (1) and Catwoman and Steel and on and on and on. Even on tv Gotham and the completely disposable Alfred show and Birds of Prey. It’s just been shitty project after shitty project from creators that didn’t respect or care for the source material leading to executives not wanting to allocate money because the return on investment wasn’t there. Even this new era has immediately stumbled out of the gate (underwhelming slate announcement with no stars or creatives, confusion on how it will work, and absolutely cutting the legs out of under current and upcoming projects). For me the worst part is that they fucking knocked it out of the park with DCAU: Batman, Superman, JL & JLU could have been the blueprint. Instead we are here…praying that Blue Beetle is good.
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Oh completely. His hipster bullcrap analysis of both The Death & Return of Superman and The Knightfall Saga” are beyond cringeworthy and operate on the hope no one will fact check him and not on continuity crap but actual business practices in the industry. Also, American Alien sucked as does every time he wrote Clark.
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Mmm…American Alien is great. I am super confused how anyone could say otherwise.
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They say otherwise because for them it's impossible for someone to be right and also wrong about different things
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Or, and this is crucial...I didn't like it. I genuinely didn't like it. And that little short story he did with Superman and The Joker was awful in my view.
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That's fine to not like it. But some act like he never wrote anything good. Like joss when, when it came out that he was a creep, many started acting like he was whack writer. There is always some revisionist history that happens.
Not saying your one of them but it happens allot
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Maybe.... but can we agree that Mandy Moore made a hot Lois Lane in that video?!
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It's funny because I knew him for the opposite take in Regarding Clark
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Landis actually claimed Eisenberg was intentionally doing a Max Landis impersonation / parody as Lex. Like... it's one of those things where Landis is both arrogant and full of shit enough to totally make that up, but on the other hand, I mean, they ARE pretty similar in physical mannerisms and Eisenberg did go immediately from filming the Landis written American Ultra to BvS back to back, so his interactions with a hyperactive, annoying geek would have been fresh in his mind. Don't know.
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I'm a long time Superman fan and actually found his video hilarious. I hadn't made the connection with Hollywood only giving us Evil Superman though
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There is no connection, OP is just reaching
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I think the problem is larger than a viral video, it comes from a generational standpoint of ''gritty, ground, realistic, etc.'' about superheroes, the same point of view that gave us the edgy characters of the 90s, and in that regard, Superman is the opposite, so the only way they thought they could make him interesting in this context is by appealing to his alien side, how conflicted he should feel about his powers, so Superman rather than being a symbol of truth and ideal justice, he became a symbol of power with the question ''in real life, how would a guy with Superman's powers be like?'', and thus, the fucking trope.
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Max Landis is a fantastic writer who wrote both American Alien and the most recent version of Dork Gently’s Wholistic Detective Agency. He also wrote “Bright”, which is awful but I suspect he had less say over how that came out. He is not a good person, but his take on Superman is S-Tier.
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I think American alien is god awful, but to each their own
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Yeah I mean I guess but like..it is one of the best Superman OGNs to exist. It does a neat job painting Clark as a human being trying to deal with his Superman-ness without making him less good or noble. I’m curious what your complaint is.
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I, too, would like to hear the complaints.
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I'm not familiar with his work.
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Max Landis poisoned the watering hole when it came discussing Star Wars when he threw one of the first utterances of ‘Mary Sue’ and pretty much pioneered ‘The Fandom Menace’. So, that’s for fucking nothing Max.
The more time passes, I’m convinced that Chronicle was a fucking fluke.
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Eh... the Sequel trilogy was poorly planned. Sure, Lucas shot the OT extemporaneously, but he had the story in his head. He knew where things were going and how they would end.
Disney tried to recreate that without actually having a story or character arcs planned out.
Luke went from a whiney, impulsive, naive farmer to a cold-blooded fucking Jedi that had buckets of wisdom dripping off of him over the course of three films. Rey was a largely static character.
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So you didn’t pay attention to literally any of the movies.
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WB pushing for a billion dollars.
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Easier to make him the scapegoat than admit recent Superman movies has just had horrible writing, I suppose.
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I don't think so. If anything more positively received recent media like My Adventures With Superman and the animated movie Superman: Man of Tomorrow are directly inspired by his : Superman: American Alien miniseries.
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Bender voice: "Who the hell's he?"
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I don't know about that, but Max Landis is certainly a bad writer and worse person.
I haven’t been a fan of his work, but know next to nothing of him personally. What did he do?
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There's been a lot of abuse allegations there's a pretty good summary on their Wikipedia page.
Ty. Will wait until I have a desire to lose some faith in humanity before I look it up
Yeah that's fair it's really not good.