I think a new Superman show is swell! Superman was married for 20+ years in the comics before the new 52. I think this show fits the arrowverse very well. The world needs Superman on tv to show us how great people wish to be, they only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all I have sent them you…my only son .
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The world needs Superman and Lois.
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“Swell”? You know, there are very few people left in the world who feel comfortable saying that word.
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It always felt natural to me.
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I just couldn’t resist.
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I can quote Superman the movie all day long! It’s a fantastic movie!
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Some of the most recent posts here are full of assumptions and factual inaccuracies, and it would take time that I don’t really have right now to address them individually, so what I’m going to say is, “No, the writers have not written Supergirl as a ‘gender-swapped Superman’”, and “no, Osric Chao’s Ryan Choi is not replacing Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer on Legends of Tomorrow”.
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YES!!! I’m gonna be so hyped if this actually happens!!!
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Dude I HOPE so!!! I love his run so much and would love to see a version of it adapted into a show!!
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That is your opinion that they didn’t write gender swapped Superman.
Here is my counter rebuttal…
One of these describes Superman.
One of these describes Supergirl.
Let us see which one more closely matches the TV show…
-
An alien from another world crashes on Earth and is found by their cousin. They live with her cousin’s adopted parents until they go to Metropolis. They are taken to an island and trained by warriors on that island. Eventually they decide to live a mostly normal life attending high school, but can’t resist the call of their powers and must balance school and hero life. As a high school student they start working with the DEO.
-
An alien crashes on Earth, they are raised by adopted parents in a small town in the US. They travel around the world hiding their abilities until they land a job at a major newspaper, working with them is a photographer named Jimmy Olsen. One day they spot a crashing plane and leaps into action. Doing so reveals them to the world. They work with a female character to design a costume. They face villains like Metallo, Master Jailor, Manchester Black and a genius businessperson/inventor with the last name of Luthor. They come to be known as the most powerful and moral hero in the world.
While Supergirl, the show, keeps a few elements from the first, a very few. The majority comes from the second.
The second is Superman.
The first is Supergirl.
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Your two descriptions share much in common to begin with (alien crash lands and is raised by adoptive parents in a small town, etc.). Using this argument, one could say that Supergirl was a gender-swapped version of Superman from her first appearance in the 1950s.
She stands now as her own character, in any case, and while the TV series has borrowed some villains and storylines, it has also introduced a lot that is original.
The two characters have coexisted in the comics for decades (give or take the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths period during which Kara didn’t exist). I don’t see why they can’t coexist on TV, as well.
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I’m not saying they can’t coexist.
I’m saying that it creates huge problems.
I mean, because Superman the series came after Supergirl they’re limited in what they can do with Superman because it would be too similar to Supergirl.
So - Its hard to explain -
The default setting for Superman is with Clark Kent and Lois Lane working together as reporters. The standard supporting cast is Jimmy Olsen, Cat Grant, and Perry White.
Those are your 5 core characters.
Only we can’t use Cat because if the changes they made to her for Supergirl.
They can’t use Jimmy because of the complete changes they made to him and the current Jimmy doesn’t fit the dynamic of the old Jimmy anyway. Also, he’s like, in another town or something.
So we are left with only one more main support character- So right away we’ve cut out a huge chunk of Superman’s support cast.
Supergirl even took out Lex Luthor. Meaning Superman’s greatest enemy was defeated by Supergirl. Then he died.
This just makes my head hurt.
I don’t see how this can be justified.
Edit - They did the Red Son bit too!? What the…
Crisis is coming and they are both CW shows. They have both the option of reusing the characters from Supergirl or recasting them if they so like. Supergirl is done with all those characters, so they are free for the Superman show to use or refit post-crisis how they want. Maybe Supergirl might want to hold on to Cat Grant in case they can get Calista back on set, but that’s about it.
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I agree that there are some limitations. As you point out, Cat Grant and Jimmy Olsen are most likely off the table (although I’d be happy for the versions of those characters introduced on Supergirl to make appearances on the new show, if that proved possible). The idea of a new Perry White interests me, though, and it’s not as though there aren’t other characters yet to be explored (the Kents come to mind). As for Lex Luthor, last season’s finale seemed to imply he might not be gone for good, and I’d love to see Jon Cryer’s version face off against Tyler Hoechlin’s Clark.
You’re also right that some originally Superman-centered storylines have already been used (i.e., Red Son, “For the Man Who Has Everything,” etc.) on Supergirl, but after eighty years of storytelling, there’s a lot left to mine (not to mention that writers can also write original stories).
There’s also the vast range of story and character possibilities opened up by establishing a Clark and Lois who are raising a child, which the comics haven’t even dealt with all that much (and seem to be drifting away from presently).
While I understand what you’re getting at in terms of limitations, these limitations just don’t seem to be that insurmountable to me. I’m excited about the new show.
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It’s not insurmountable, it’s just going to be weird.
Since they were doing this many changes, if I were them, I’d have gone full on alternate reality.
Where Supergirl didn’t get knocked off course and raised Clark. Then they could’ve just established it as a radically different Earth. I would’ve had main Superman in Arrow so you could avoid these snafus
Not really look forward to this. Superman is my favorite hero of all time and CW just hasn’t treated him properly. Zack Snyder was truly on to something with his version of Superman that pop culture and mainstream audiences was to afraid to see through. If the show actually does well then I applaud it, but Superman is a character that demands a bigger budget and screen.
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If that were true then Smallville wouldn’t have ran for 10 season, Superman The Animated Series would have flopped, and so on and so forth. Superman doesn’t demand a big screen and big budget, he just needs people who care and some good writers. Want specific proof? Look at Max Fleischer’s original cartoons, some of the best Superman content ever created. And while I applaud Zach Snyder for having his own vision, he failed to have any scenes, lines, or stories that propelled Superman to be something new and more. Snyder really only made great moments rather than stories.
Edit/Addition: And, sure, the Fleischer cartoons had a big budget for the day, but the stories are small scale and they’re small when compared to other pieces of content. That’s more so the point I was making. I am more engaged by Superman fighting some maniacal and cliche evil scientist with his generic cannon than I am by the entirety of Man of Steel.
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This would be a very interesting take, but it would be far more weird to me than what we have and what we’re getting, because it would be much further away from what we’re used to.
Also, I don’t have the impression that those in charge of these productions were planning any of this that far in advance. When Supergirl started, the intention seemed to be for Clark to never even actually appear, much less have his own series.
This notion is false, as Greg Berlanti and original co-creator/showrunner Ali Adler were adamant - and clear - from the very beginning that Superman was going to have a presence in the series, even going so far as to state that doing a series without him present on Earth wasn’t ever an option they even remotely considered.