Xiroteus

Everyone thinks the decade they grew up in was the best thing in the world. I have nostalgic feelings for a few things yet I can also be aware that it's bad or dated. I have seen many people say animated programs were better in the eighties then ten years ago, today etc... and not really. There have been some amazing stuff that has been released over that last fifteen years.

Some of it holds up while some is okay or even bad. Of course it seems awesome at the time when one is a child. Like the new Turtles movie, I don't care if they change some things, I just hate that they made them look ugly and creepy. GOOD change is fine.

I never want to be that old person that gets stuck in whatever decade saying how great things were in the past. There will always be some things that are better and other things that are worse.

Every year people say how movies, tv and music today sucks compared to a decade, fifteen years, twenty years ago etc... again, not really, tons of shows movie and music that is enjoyable today.

Mike86

True that some of the stuff in the films may have been intentionally campy, the stuff with the villains in particular. I still think that the overall tone of the films was that they seemed to be taking themselves at least semi-seriously.

robin2099

That also fits with the time that the movie was made though. Superman was basically a love letter to the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics. Batman basically kicked off movies resembling the modern age.Plus Superman ages a heck of a lot better than say something like Flash Gordon which is the textbook example of camp.

It's not really nostalgia necessarily. To at least twenty years worth of kids, Christopher Reeve was Superman to them. And these movies are still being watched by kids today. Heck a month ago, Superman was being shown on The HUB which is a channel specifically for kids. Plus Donner's movie was really the first modern superhero movie, and it did something crazy. It was well made, shot and directed when it could have just as easily been garbage. That in and of itself is impressive. Lets look at some of the ground it broke that still effects superhero movies to this day:

1. Casting of well known and established acting talent

2. Casting an unknown as the lead

3. Longer run times to establish the character more

DaveyJoe

Dean Cain will always be Superman in my world.

Sonic

How come nobody mentions Superman II's underarm sweat stain when he lifts up Zod with one arm?

fujishig

That scene plus all the destruction surrounding it. This is anecdotal but I had a friend who's kid is a huge Superman fan, who watched it at home and the kid just refused to watch it partway through when all the destruction was going down. I can't imagine his reaction if he stayed through to the end.

As far as Star Wars, I think kids of this time will have Clone Wars as their Star Wars of choice. Tangentially related, I still wonder what happens when a kid watches Clone Wars, where Anakin is a brash but still likable hero, not knowing anything about the movies, then watches the devastation of Episode III...

Michael Corvin

Wow, you're just a ray of sunshine.

The Cow

Dean Cain does rock. Agree there.

RocShemp

He was a great Clark Kent. However, he looked like he never got comfortable playing Superman

mcnabb

Nostalgia is a natural thing for anyone who is older, but Movies like Star Wars, Superman, Raiders, Back to the Future all hold up today because they are great movies, IMO, and that is why I continue to revisit them on BluRay or whenever they are on cable. There is no way I would still continue to watch them all of the time if they didn't hold up today.

Now I will say there are nostalgia things in my life that I revisit once in a while, but cringe and don't revisit them for years. Most of the Pop 80's music I grew up with watching on MTV Does NOT hold up today. I hear songs by Men at Work, Thomas Dolby, Adam Ant, Styx, Rick Springfield, etc. I hear those songs every once in a while on the radio and it does bring back memories of my youth and watching them on MTV every day, but also makes me shake my head on how cheesy that music was back then!

Sorry, but the Original Superman from 1978 still works for me on many levels the same way Star Wars, Raiders, and Back to the Future does. Its the characters that are timeless and that is why most summer blockbusters are totally forgettable in todays age.

Shannon Nutt

I can't believe there's actually a debate going on here about Man of Steel being better than Superman: The Movie.

The only valid argument is that the effects are (obviously) better in the new version. Everything else, from storytelling, to directing, to acting, to pacing, is vastly superior in the 1978 version.

Hokeyboy

Not that I don't disagree that the scene was played for laughs (Larry Hagman cameo, indeed), but you aren't remembering that scene properly at all. They didn't lift or steal the nuke; they simply broke in, reprogrammed its targeting coordinates, and left it on the truck.

And of course they fucked that up. "You want to see a VERY long arm Otis???"
To each their own, but

taffer

I agree with you that Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future hold up today. I still rewatch them often as well. I disagree with Superman though. It makes me cringe like the 80s pop music does to you.

Also, I don't think these movies are as timeless as you think. It really is nostalgia playing a big part in it. They're "classics" to our generation but not necessarily to the new generation. For example, a Back to the Future video game was released just a few years ago. I remember many young people asking if they needed to watch the movies in order to understand the game. My jaw dropped that so many young people had never seen the Back to the Future trilogy. They don't really care about movies from our generation (just like how most of us don't care about what our parents watched).


Ah ok. That makes a little more sense.

EddieMoney

And my God, Teri Hatcher used to be hot.

Mike86

I wouldn't necessarily say that Man of Steel is a better film than Superman: The Movie, but I do think some people have the rose colored glasses of nostalgia thinking that Superman: The Movie is all that though. I get that people like what they grow up with but the Reeve films have aged pretty badly and it's silly to argue they haven't.

Numanoid

You're just wrong. And personally, I think MoS will be seen as more dated in 30 years with all of its little CGI figures flying around than Superman: The Movie is now, with its timeless practical effects.

taffer

It's hilarious that you say his opinion is wrong and then turn around and give your own personal opinion. Opinions are never wrong. His opinion is just as valid as yours.

It simply astounds me that people can think the Donner movies are timeless and haven't aged. It's a man hanging from a wire and punching buildings made of paper mache, all while making bad puns like "Bad vibrations?" and "Elevator broken?" It's definitely aged. Anyone that cannot see that is just simply blinded by the nostalgia.

I'm not saying it's a bad movie. It was a great movie for its time. However, that time has long since passed. It's a fact of life that everything ages, and some things age better than others. The Donner movies haven't aged well.

Stop being the old grumpy man shaking your cane at the new kids to get off your lawn. Everything old isn't great and everything new doesn't suck.

Brack

Yeah, because "It's not an S" isn't already cheesy.

To be fair, the other guy's opinion was suggesting it was silly to argue his opinion.

Giantrobo

I feel your pain and frustration taffer.

The cool thing is they have their Donner films and the rest of us have our Man of Steel. Believe it or not the world really is large enough for both films to exists and for both sides to like whatever the fuck they want.

taffer

It's not nearly as cheesy as getting hit with a crowbar and saying "Bad vibrations?" or asking a burglar scaling a building if the elevator is broken.

I really don't get why people have such a problem with the chest insignia being a symbol for hope anyway. Is it really so unfathomable that the Krptonian language has a symbol that vaguely resembles one of our own symbols? Really? We have hundreds of languages on our own planet and they're not all 100% unique. The idea that one symbol from an alien language may somewhat resemble one of our own isn't that weird at all.

It's too bad that internet message boards weren't around back in the late 70s. I can just imagine what people would have been posting...

"This new Superman sucks!! Christopher Reeve is nothing like the Superman that *I* grew up with!!"

Xiroteus

How about this times a billion? It doesn't even take long before you start seeing this happen. Late twenties at best? Already have people in their mid thirties saying how everything sucks today and one is so slow at embracing anything new they still use a portable cd player. However they still continue to like new things.

I'm sure. I also heard people say that about the new Star Trek show in the eighties. I then said, (this was not asked at the same time) the original Star Trek ended twenty years before this aside from the films. They were thinking it was some type of replacement when it's just continuing the story of that universe. Of course they really liked The Next Generation.

fujishig

They all suck compared to the true Superman... the dude from Wings in the Animated Series. Come on now.

robin2099

I like the Donner movies. I like Man of Steel. I even like Lois and Clark even though man is the writing on that terrible today. The point is it is possible to like all interpretations of a character without going into super nerd boy rage like some people do. I think this clip sums all this up pretty well.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/d6UDEi8H43M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[QUOTE]It's not nearly as cheesy as getting hit with a crowbar and saying "Bad vibrations?" or asking a burglar scaling a building if the elevator is broken[QUOTE]

So whats wrong with that? It's a superhero movie it's supposed to be cheesey. Hell if those lines were in The Avengers I bet you no one would say anything at all. Like I said earlier on, the Donner movies for the time they were made age pretty well(and yes I've seen them recently). Like I said earlier if you want to talk about a movie aging terribly watch something like Flash Gordon.

fumanstan

I always thought it was interesting that a lot of people seem to find old practical effects better then new CGI, whereas I feel like many of those old effects are bad or stand out just as much, if not more. I don't know if it's also a nostalgia thing (i'm 31 now), but I recall people still saying how great Superman flying looks in the first movie (believing a man can fly, etc), whereas I think it looks pretty poor now compared to the effects in Man of Steel.

Anyway, that said I was also never a big of fan of the original Superman. It's ok, and I get the representation of the character during that era, but I agree that stuff like Superman turning back time or throwing his S shield would be torn apart nowadays. Those things, and the slap stick portrayal of Luthor and Otis never stuck with me. Of course, I still wouldn't call Man of Steel a better movie even though I enjoyed it. I think the straightforward origin was still done better in the original.

Paul_SD

I don't discount nostalgia as part of the reason I love the original movie.
But when people (a generation or two younger than me usually) call it dated, I have a slight disconnect.
I'm sure to them it is dated, but to me I still view it as containing so much that was timeless or ahead of it's time. When that film dropped, I was still watching re-runs of the TV show. Where you guys see Hackman's Luthor as campy and clownish, I compare him to the truly childish "dese, dem, and dose" style gangsters of the Ellsworth produced later seasons. Pushing a cop into the path of a subway car, threatening to use poison gas on a segment of the city, destroying an entire heavily populated coastline...all this stuff was a HUGE departure into a darker area. Yes, it's not all entirely realistic- but it's fairytale dark (and witty). At least it was, and remains so, to me. And yeah, even back then not all of the effects (flying specifically) were 100%- but some were. The material with the helicopter rescue was sensational as was the scene where he rises out of the pool after the kryptonite has been disposed of and lifts off and blows a hole right through the ceiling to the swelling of Williams score.
I don't care what anyone says, that scene remains one of my favorite in any movie period.

I don't begrudge another filmmaker coming along and trying to wrest the property over into a completely mature and realistic sensibility- either approach will just make the other more interesting and viable as an alternative. But if you are going to take that route with the material, then you don't get any kind of pass when you then don't bother to address aspects intelligently and thoughtfully.
There is much less tolerance for stupidity when you clomp around po faced and surly in an effort to be taken so seriously.