Superman returns
Aug. 1st, 2006 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIt was well crafted, but didn't really excite me. It looked good, had a good plot (the villian's plan was, well, fairly reasonable), the characters fit, but didn't really grip me.
I think they drew a new perspective on superman's power, making him seem slightly less omnipotent, which I think overall worked well, though occasionally seemed odd in the context of the other films: last time he could fly round the earth in a seventh of a second, how did he have so much difficulty catching up with something? But you did get the impression there may be things he can't do.
Richard was nice. Despite being too good to be true, he was also pleasant, and trusting, and had a sense of humour, but I still felt sorry for him, he still seemed too nice to be interesting, if you see what I mean.
It made me think. Often you're asked, what would you do if you were god? Hard to answer. And omnipotence is hard to define: OK, you can do anything, but even leaving aside paradoxes, eg. can you do everything at once? A more graspable question is, what would you do if you were superman?
Is it a problem with free will if you do too much? Maybe. Ruling the world may or may not be a good idea. But instead of being a reporter I accept a small stipend for large engineering projects. Imagine a vast clean fresh-water river flowing through some countries. Imagine infinite free power. Imagine food and medicine being flown all across the world.
Instead I'd adopt a social life where I don't have the be on time, centred around having normal friends, and preferably something where superpowers don't help, eg. dancing, pub quizzing, or something :)
In terms of tackling crime I'd probably be more systematic. If I prevent one crime every five minutes, that's not *that* much, because no-one thinks *they'll* be caught. I'd adopt a small area, stop *every* violent crime there, and work my way outward. Then no-one would even start something, because with nothing else going on they'd know I'd be right there. He probably is right to just catch people and hand them over to the law though, it's enough of a deterent without becoming a tyrant.
I think they drew a new perspective on superman's power, making him seem slightly less omnipotent, which I think overall worked well, though occasionally seemed odd in the context of the other films: last time he could fly round the earth in a seventh of a second, how did he have so much difficulty catching up with something? But you did get the impression there may be things he can't do.
Richard was nice. Despite being too good to be true, he was also pleasant, and trusting, and had a sense of humour, but I still felt sorry for him, he still seemed too nice to be interesting, if you see what I mean.
It made me think. Often you're asked, what would you do if you were god? Hard to answer. And omnipotence is hard to define: OK, you can do anything, but even leaving aside paradoxes, eg. can you do everything at once? A more graspable question is, what would you do if you were superman?
Is it a problem with free will if you do too much? Maybe. Ruling the world may or may not be a good idea. But instead of being a reporter I accept a small stipend for large engineering projects. Imagine a vast clean fresh-water river flowing through some countries. Imagine infinite free power. Imagine food and medicine being flown all across the world.
Instead I'd adopt a social life where I don't have the be on time, centred around having normal friends, and preferably something where superpowers don't help, eg. dancing, pub quizzing, or something :)
In terms of tackling crime I'd probably be more systematic. If I prevent one crime every five minutes, that's not *that* much, because no-one thinks *they'll* be caught. I'd adopt a small area, stop *every* violent crime there, and work my way outward. Then no-one would even start something, because with nothing else going on they'd know I'd be right there. He probably is right to just catch people and hand them over to the law though, it's enough of a deterent without becoming a tyrant.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-01 11:00 am (UTC)I think you need to be slightly more scheming - a system where noone's quite sure if the superhero figure exists, and your work is more invisible. The benefit is that it doesn't rely on you being omnipresent, and once started, the system has a higher chance of maintaining itself.
There's also trouble with catching people and giving them over to the law, in that you have a suspect, and the prosecution service must then gather evidence and build a case against them. This can possibly require longer periods of detention under suspicion, with no charge. "Superman handed them in" shouldn't be sufficient evidence for a conviction.