@lifeofkj / lifeofkj.tumblr.com
“Girls want a Superman, but they walk past a Clark Kent every day”
You fuckin CLOWNS think you’re a CLARK KENT? Not on my fuckin watch. You dumb, headass motherfuckers are barely a Guy Gardner and you think you’re a CLARK KENT? The amount of disrespect is unreal.
Kal-El’s mild-mannered alter-ego is key to understanding the character.
As Supergirl returns for second season, the central character risks being overshadowed by her own cousin, a certain Man of Steel. After being teased across the show’s first year he’s finally going to be more than just a caped silhouette or a red-and-blue blur, as Everybody Wants Some!!’s Tyler Hoechlin steps into the spandex for the first time.
It’s a bold move given that Warner Bros already has another Superman in its ranks, even more so given that Hoechlin’s take on the Kryptonian boy scout seems precision-tooled to avoid every single criticism laid at the feet of Henry Cavill and bulletproof DC director Zack Snyder. Hoechlin even reportedly auditioned for the part in Man of Steel, making his appearance in Supergirl a tantalising glimpse of what might have been.
Where Cavill’s Superman is all dour and glower, Hoechlin’s is light and breezy. The first time he appears he’s on the phone to his Daily Planet editor promising an article will be ready “lickety-split”, while later he takes the time out of a fight to say hi to a passing family not once, but twice across the episode. Perhaps in response to those frustrated by the wholesale destruction at the climax of both Man of Steel and Batman V Superman, here his focus is primarily on saving lives and not beating up baddies. He even helps Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) rescue a passenger jet (in a knowing nod to the first Christopher Reeve movie), props up a collapsing skyscraper, and shields a family from lethal drones. Across the entire 42-minute episode he doesn’t throw a single punch – and he definitely doesn’t break anyone’s neck.
That’s partly a reflection of the lighthearted tone that Supergirl has adopted ever since it first aired in 2015, but it also stems from an understanding of a side of Superman that Snyder’s two films have never really grasped: Clark Kent. Man of Steel and BVS show more interest in Superman than his mild-mannered alter-ego – in fact we hardly ever see him out of the costume in the latter. Snyder has always seemed fascinated by the character’s Kryptonian background, focusing firmly on Superman the alien: as immigrant to earth, as religious allegory, as divine power beyond basic human comprehension. The fact that he spent his formative years on a small farm in Kansas was inconsequential, a backstory to skim past on the way to killing his dad and making him fight Batman.
By contrast, Supergirl gives Clark and Superman equal billing. Indeed, he spends the bulk of the series premiere actually using his investigative journalist skills to help solve the mystery of the week. There are plenty of references to his all-American upbringing, and perhaps even more crucially importantly, the show emphasises that Clark isn’t a disguise – he’s who Superman really is. When he bumps into someone, knocking a pile of papers to the floor, it isn’t part of a klutzy act as Supergirl assumes. “Uh, that was actually real,” Clark admits, that one brief moment giving the character as much humanity as Cavill and Snyder managed in almost five hours of film to date.
It’s a vision of Superman that recognises that his 30 years living on earth have done more to form his character than the six weeks he spent on Krypton as a baby. Instead of asking ‘What if an alien came to Earth?’ the show asks ‘What if the nicest guy in Kansas had superpowers?’ Can those boy scout virtues survive exposure to the wider world? Can that simple, cheery moral outlook face up to our rather murkier political climate? Is his fundamental optimism about humanity well founded? Rightly or wrongly, these aren’t the sort of questions Snyder’s films have so far shown much interest in answering, but they go to the core of Superman’s character.
Superman’s big-screen return in next year’s Justice League offers a chance to re-establish the character and his place within DC’s film universe. It remains to be seen if Snyder will find space among the plethora of other heroes to give Superman much development – let alone Clark Kent – but he could do a lot worse than look to Supergirl for inspiration.
Instead of asking ‘What if an alien came to Earth?’ the show asks ‘What if the nicest guy in Kansas had superpowers?’
This is by far the best summary I’ve seen so far of the difference between classic Superman and new, gritty Superman.
if kal el landed on earth in 1987 he’d be 28/29 in 2016 but more importantly he’d be 17 in 2004 which means he probably had an american idiot t-shirt and wore it with a long-sleeved shirt underneath it. with thumbholes in the sleeves. lana lang probably looked like avril lavigne, except they were rural so she did the best she could with what smallville’s thrift stores had to offer. she probably pierced her own eyebrow even though clark kept telling her she’d get an infection. how many of those little wrist sweatbands do you think he owned. did he have a wallet chain.
clark and lana on livejournal, blogging about lord of the rings. he had like thirty different icons of sam. with that little pixel text that livejournal icon gifs had, because they were so fucking small. his myspace was one of those obnoxious html-ridden nightmares where you couldn’t actually see any of the links to anything it was just a great big photo and autoplaying music you couldn’t stop. the music was the strokes.
“I can’t dye my hair,” he said, voice muffled, face buried in his arms. “I can’t get piercings. I can’t get tattoos.” Clark lifted his head to look down to where his mother sat at the dining room table. “It is physically impossible for me to do anything cool.”
Martha did not look up from her seed catalogues, because she knew exactly what her son moping on the ceiling looked like. “Poor thing.”
Before she learns about his secret identity, Lois Lane thinks Clark Kent is a goddamn mess
She goes to his place to work on a joint article and it takes her like half an hour to find out that Clark lives in an absolutely nonfunctional house
She has to change a lightbulb but there are no stools, no sufficiently high chairs, no way of reaching the ceiling unless you find a way to climb the walls. “How the hell do you change your bulbs?” she asks. Clark mutters something about misplacing the footstool and helps her drag the table from the kitchen to the living room.
Lois watches Clark make lasagna and has to physically restrain him from pulling the tray out of the oven with his bare hands. “Are you out of your goddamn MIND?” she yells, scrambling to pull him away on time. “What are you DOING? WHERE ARE THE OVEN MITTS?” and Clark is just like “Right…..oven mitts…….. I think I lost them with the uh. footstool” both he and Lois pause for a moment to engage in a riveting game of Mentally Punch Clark
Lois runs into the bathroom to put on a disguise and yells out, “Where do you keep your razor?” There’s a gust of wind and Clark comes back with slightly windswept hair. “I got it!” he says with unwarranted triumph. “It’s right here. The razor I use.” Lois looks at it and it is CLEARLY recently purchased and never used and she’s just like. I don’t even care anymore
For weeks she just assumes Clark is missing some crucial element in his home and starts stacking her own things all over the place. Lois thinking Clark has no clue how to take care of himself while Clark is Eternally Tormented and has to find ways to keep his identity a secret while living in close quarters, and the slow burn mutual pining roommates AU of my dreams begins
Oh my god this is amazingly awesome! Yes please lol
Lol! Omg, yes!!
I literally can’t stop laughing at the lasagna scene, oh my god! LOL
@kookygeekpalace this seems like something that’d be in your fic
“How has this ridiculous human disaster not died yet”
- Lois Lane, probably
what if cap met supes
meanwhile, somewhere else:
batman: you can not imagine the tragedy which has shaped me
bucky: OH YOU WANNA PLAY THIS GAME
The sequel to Man of Steel is one of the most awaited films. There’s a lot of inquisitiveness regarding the plot. However, the producers are making sure the storyline stays behind curtains. In this technological era, it’s not hard for inside details to surface. Alleged spoilers include a retired forty-year-old Bruce (plausible), Batman is an international legend (no doubt), the film starts seven years after the events of The Dark Knight Rises (highly questionable), Batman is rebuilding his city alongside Nightwing, and Wayne says he’s financing Batman (this can’t be connected to Chris Nolan’s Batman ‘cause Wayne’s dead?). Probably a bunch’a BS, if you ask me. Still unsure how they’ll fit WW…
The Saturday Morning Post, by Ruiz Burgos.
This is just a theory, but I think Superman enjoyed being a smartass
In many ways, Clark is the most human of us all.
"This is Clark Kent. Good luck Kent."
that last gif… every time.. he smiles and glasses, and just i fucking swoon and sigh away DAMN
the glasses the smile! I swooned so hard and flailed all over Sofie. Sofie remembers. I might have accidentally hit her in the face. but I was beyond myself.
