New Superman Movie to be Directed by Bryan Singer
But, amazingly, a rare accident happened: some brave genius at Warner Brothers studios decided to do something different and hire somebody with talent this time.
So, it was announced that Bryan Singer would be the director of the new Superman movie. When I first heard the news, it felt like the punch line in a “good news/bad news” joke-except it’s not funny.
The good news is that finally Superman is in the hands of a gifted director who sees comic books as a legitimate form of artistic expression so he won’t dumb it down to make it easy for the folks living in Mayberry, USA. He isn’t a neutered house cat like Chris Columbus (who turned J.K.
Rowling’s wonderful Harry Potter books into a pair of boring Hallmark cards). And he won’t be afraid to fight to make the best movie he can (“That jerk Singer was goddamned scarier than Wolverine,” an anonymous crewmember from X-Men said).
And the corporate androids from Warner Brothers know that even though Singer is a migraine waiting to happen, he’s worth it if they get a movie that makes a truckload of money plus an enthusiastic “thumb’s up,” from Roger Ebert.
However, what’s good news for Superman could be bad news for Bryan Singer, because it’ll make him richer but it won’t make him a better director and might stop him from becoming a great one. What I’m afraid of is he’ll never make a movie like The Usual Suspects again.
Singer’s The Usual Suspects is special because it was released during an era in Hollywood when way too many Sons of Tarantino were churning out derivative movies starring violent, wise-cracking gangsters: Killing ZoÃ?«, Suicide Kings, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.
Years later, while most of these movies have faded into well-deserved obscurity, The Usual Suspects still feels fresh, innovative, smart, haunting, enigmatic and-hell, fun. And Keyser Soze, the cunning puppet master hiding behind the curtains, is an ingenious creation that belongs with other great cinematic villains like Harry Lime, Darth Vader and Hannibal Lector.
But The Usual Suspects didn’t drop an ATM into Bryan Singer’s lap, the X-Men movies did. In Hollywood, success can sometimes be a corrosive toxin that slowly eats away a talented director, especially if he makes the wrong choices. It’s a Faustian bargain that has made several promising directors both commercially successful and creatively bankrupt.
For example, after years of making competent hackwork like In The Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm and (shudder) Troy, could Wolfgang Peterson ever create a brilliant movie like Das Boot again? Could George Lucas do another American Graffiti?
If Singer isn’t careful, he’ll find himself trapped on a profitable but stationary merry-go-round making the same formulaic super hero movie over and over again.
Yeah, the devil exists, but it isn’t Keyser Soze. It’s a smiling producer from Warner Brothers carrying a blank checkbook.
