Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The first Superman film took up a huge chunk of our lives, but it was a wonderful time for us. We were young, my daughter was little, we were filming in London for a year, so we became like a close family.
You can't relate to a superhero, to a superman, but you can identify with a real man who in times of crisis draws forth some extraordinary quality from within himself and triumphs but only after a struggle.
I am always a sucker for the underdogs. I love Batman and Superman, but when it comes to the guys who don't stand in the front of the line, Aquaman is one of the key guys for me. He's so much fun to work on.
Let's be realistic - 90% of superheroes are male. Personally, I prefer Superman, Batman and Spider-Man to Wonder Woman. Not that I don't like female superheroes, but watching male superheroes gives me a high.
Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.
In this drawing we just let our imagination run wild. We visualized Superman toys, games, and a radio show - that was before TV - and Superman movies. We even visualized Superman billboards. And it's all come true.
I grew up watching 'Superman.' As a child, when I first learned to dive into a swimming pool, I wasn't diving, I was flying, like Superman. I used to dream of rescuing a girl I had a crush on from a playground bully.
They fired director Richard Donner because they didn't want to pay him, and he's the reason the franchise became so successful in the first place. There's a big part of Superman II that he did that no one has ever seen.
I really kind of always wondered, if I did Superman, what I would do, and what I would be able to do, because it's a little harder for me, being kind of a realistic guy, to imagine doing a character who almost has no limits to his powers.
You eventually come to the conclusion that there's only so much you can do with these established characters, and you start wondering who among us will be the one to create the next 'Superman' or 'Batman' or 'James Bond' or next 'Lone Ranger.'
I did a show called 'Lois & Clark' - it was about Superman - years ago. They wanted someone to play the president of the United States. The plot was the president got kidnapped by a group, and they made a clone of him, who was very irresponsible and silly.
Superman is the hardest character to draw. There are a couple of things that make him difficult. He's got a very simple costume and doesn't have the long cape like Batman. He's not a character that is necessarily always in shadow, and he doesn't have a mask.
Justin Bieber was born with the Superman powers. He could sing, he could dance, he could play instruments. I wasn't born with those gifts, so I had to become a different kind of superhero... I'm a normal Joe. But, with a lot of effort, I've got a shot at being Bruce Wayne.
I didn't have that typical high school experience of feeling ashamed of who I was. I once wore a superman cape and pajamas, and I thought that was awesome - and some people didn't! But some people did, and it was an arts high school, so nobody made me feel bad about who I was.
When you feel sad, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Everyone has those days when you doubt yourself, and when you feel like everything you do sucks, but then there's those days when you feel like Superman. It's just the balance of the world. I just write to feel better.
I already had top 10 records before 'Sunshine Superman,' with 'Catch the Wind' and 'Colors,' but this was a real breakthrough for me. It was a consciousness change for songwriting, as people are now saying I initiated the psychedelic revolution with this album, 'Sunshine Superman.'
If you're not perfectly conscious of yourself, that self can be tyrannical; in relationship to others, anyone can become a tyrant. That's why no one can be a Superman. You have to go beyond yourself with a 'third eye' - self-awareness - because the one thing you cannot flee is yourself.
John Carter was also one of our first recognizable superhumans and there is little doubt that his extraordinary physical feats inspired Superman's creators. Remember: before Superman could fly or turn back time, he was nothing less than an earthbound crime-fighting John Carter in tights.
The Wonder Woman that you see in 'Batman v Superman' is a woman who has been around, and she's very experienced. She understands a lot about man. Whereas, in the standalone movie, we are telling the grown-up story, Diana becoming Wonder Woman, and this was a story that was never told before.
Christopher Nolan's astounding third Batman feature, 'The Dark Knight Rises,' represents the true maturation of the superhero movie - and provides the key to understanding the bottomless craving moviegoers have for these films, 34 years after the Christopher Reeve Superman gave birth to the genre.
Prior to 'Action' and 'Justice League 1,' there was no label 'superhero' for a superpowered being. It's really the emergence of Superman and the Justice League that gets the public comfortable with the idea of people amongst us who have extraordinary power and that they've agreed to be our champions.
The way you challenge Superman is by having things happen very, very quickly in different places and then asking, 'Who does he save first? What powers must he use to save each person or stop each disaster?' That's one of the ways you make him interesting beyond the thematic and moral issues that make Superman.
The beauty of Captain America is that you didn't have to come from a distant planet, like Superman, or he didn't have to be born into a family of billionaires like Bruce Wayne. He happened to be in the right place at the right time, and someone gave him a magic potion, and he grew muscles and became a superhero.
I understand the rules of Superman - not necessarily better than anyone else - but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing 'Watchmen' and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say 'I get this guy. I know what this is.'
It's not like I walk around being Superman in real life. But when you read the script and put yourself in the position that Superman is in - I mean, he's always saving the planet, for God's sake. When you realize that, it's not difficult to take the gravitas of the situation and make your voice do what it needs to do.
When Captain America is in a room full of Marvel superheroes, he is always Top Dog, even though his powers are pretty modest. He could be stood next to Thor, Iron Man, whoever. He is the one that everyone looks up to. To me, that is Superman, too. Even de-powered in the Legion arc, he was still Superman. Still Top Dog.
For a lot of people, Superman is and has always been America's hero. He stands for what we believe is the best within us: limitless strength tempered by compassion, that can bear adversity and emerge stronger on the other side. He stands for what we all feel we would like to be able to stand for, when standing is hardest.
I do proclaim myself king of bachata because I have to represent my genre. I have to always come out and put on the Superman cape. I'm pretty much representing my culture. I'm not going to change that. But I definitely don't want there to be a misconception where people are like, 'The only thing he likes to do is bachata.'
Weightlessness was unbelievable. It's physical euphoria: Nothing about you has any weight. You don't realize that you are weighed down all the time by yourself, and your organs, and your head. Your arms weigh down your shoulders. In space simulation, you get to fly like Superman! You're hanging in the air! It's the coolest thing.
Here's the miracle: I grew up thinking, 'Wouldn't it be great to write 'Superman' someday? Wouldn't it be great to create my own show, or work on 'Lensman,' or 'Forbidden Planet?' Those were very literally the goals I set for myself, the dreams that I thought I didn't have a chance in hell of ever actually achieving. But it's happened.
This character matters so much to so many people. I want to get that right. I want to do it justice. I want people to believe in the character and have faith in the character and kids to grow up wanting to be Superman. Or, God forbid, there's people who are going through hardship and wishing that this character would turn up and save them.
I will say that adapting a character like Da Vinci really wasn't that dissimilar from doing Batman or Superman. Because all three of these guys are really iconic figures, and yes, Da Vinci was historical, but there's clearly been a lot of mythmaking about him, and a lot of things have been attributed to him that may or may not have happened.
Outside of, as a kid, just wanting to be able to fly and run faster than a speeding locomotive and being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, we'd like to hope that, when push comes to shove, we can do the right thing. I think as long as there is that hope in our society and in the zeitgeist of superheroes, Superman will be relevant.
