Re: Hot Toys - MMS152 - Superman: 1/6th scale Superman Collectible Figure
I agree. I love Bill's speech to the Bride in Kill Bill for the point he was trying to make: Extraordinary people (the Bride / Superman) shouldn't pretend to be weak...but that only holds if the characterization of Clark Kent is weak and bumbling, like the Reeve Clark purposely was to make his contrast with Superman that much greater.
For sure. Don't get me wrong, Bill's speech was spot on. There are one or two Superheroes that are similar, but in Superman's case, what Bill said in the movie was correct. As you mentioned Reeve, the scene where he takes off his glasses to tell Lois who he is but thinks better of it(and his change from bumbling, stooped Clark Kent to Superman, is remarkable).
There's a beautifully acted moment in Superman Returns(That always gets negatively looked at when people mention the movie).
Clark is back, he has saved the plane(And Lois), found out she has moved on and has a son and a fiance. She gets in a cab to go home and he goes to see her and eavesdrops on her conversation at home with Richard.
Some people have called this "creepy stalker superman". I see it differently(Mainly because it's
known that Superman can hear and differentiate Lois's heartbeat from
everyone else's on the planet, So if Superman wanted to just listen to Lois, he could do it from China).
The way i see it is this: Clark is back and he has only seen snippets of Lois since he returned. He probably thought about her the whole time he was away. He wants to see her face, listen to her voice. And when she says to Richard that she didn't love him(Which we, as the audience,
know to be a lie for Richard's sake as well as her own), It damn near break's Clark's heart. You can see the emotion in his face. Imagine the person who you love with all your heart said they didn't love you(And you overheard it and weren't supposed to), of course you'd get the hell out of there as fast as you could. But he doesn't fly off casually. He blasts away at top speed and hangs out in space for a while to clear his mind.
Seeing that, when i first viewed the movie, i realised that Bryan Singer viewed Superman/Clark Kent as i did. That despite the suit he wears to protect the people he loves, he's really Clark Kent. That he's just like us. Love can floor him as surely as a lump of Kryptonite. That for all his invulnerabilities, he's able to be hurt. But it's cutting words from Lois that could hurt him. In that scene we see that it doesn't matter if bullets bounce off his eyeball. He can still be made to suffer.
But then, that's not the "real" Clark anyway either, right? That's just the public face he shows the world. Like shallow, aloof billionaire Bruce Wayne that shows up in public. Jonathan and Martha Kent know the "real" Clark Kent, just as Alfred knows the "real" Bruce Wayne. Separate from their superhero persona and their public persona, each have third identities that reveal their true selves.
Actually, that was something i meant to mention earlier also. That it's actually truer of Bruce Wayne than it is of Clark Kent.
In more and more modern tellings of the story, BRUCE is the disguise. His rage at lawlessness and injustice, and funnelling his vast wealth into fighting crime himself makes me believe that(Not just in my mind, but in the writer's minds also these days), Batman is who Wayne is deep down. He wears Bruce Wayne to hide in the same way Bill said that Superman wears Clark to hide.
Michael Caine's Alfred put it best when he said that Gotham needed Wayne's resources and money, not his sacrifice. If Wayne funded the police force the way he funded Batman, there would be little or no crime on the streets of Gotham. It's his need to do it himself that shows his true drive, and his true character.
Or, you can cut out the silly public persona entirely and have the real identity be the public persona. Remember "Lois and Clark"? Clark wore glasses, yes, but that is about where his classic "nerdiness" stopped. He was confident, he dated beautiful women (besides Lois) and he stood up threats and bullies...and even challenged Lois, all as Clark.
My favorite line from that series: "Superman is what I can do. Clark is who I am."
Very good. I watched the show when it was on TV but haven't seen it in years. I might have to give it another viewing.
Awesome pics Viking Spawn!!! This figure is one of my favorite.
