2015 Movie News Archives

November 18, 2015: How "Man of Steel" Traumatised Mark Millar

Huck #1 In an essay published at GamesRadar.com, writer Mark Millar describes how the ending of the "Man of Steel" movie was the catalist that turned him away from superhero violence and inspired him to write his new comic book series, "Huck".

    Now let me preface this by saying that I'm an enormous fan of everyone involved in this movie from the director to the writer to Cavill himself, who I think is a terrific and enormously likeable Superman. I'll also say that I've been there in the front row from X-Men's bleak Auschwitz opening, to Willem Dafoe being crucified against a wall in Spider-Man, to Ang Lee's introspective Hulk, to Batman officially stopping smiling EVER circa 2004. I'm all for it. After decades of campiness and often journeymen directors I fell to my knees and praised the level of talent we suddenly saw attached to these characters I'd loved my entire life. We had legitimisation! We were finally being taken seriously! But Summer 2013 as I sat there on Father's Day and saw Superman beating the bad guy by twisting his neck so hard he broke it and murdered him I really wondered if we'd come to the end of that particular road.

    Now I got the logic of that scene and it absolutely made sense within the context of the movie as the villain had taken down half of Metropolis and killed hundreds of thousands of people. But even so. This was Superman. This was like seeing Sylvester the Cat finally getting his hands on Speedy Gonzales. Elmer Fudd blowing away Bugs Bunny. I loved Superman as a kid not because of his edginess or his potential for a fatal solution, but because he could do anything he wanted and still chose to be nice. This was always the moral of a superhero comic to me.

He goes on to discuss how comic books have been on an every darkening trend since the early 1970s, but wants everyone to remember that superheroes were created to "lift our spirits in the darkest times".

    When things are tough we maybe need a nice, uncomplicated hero a little more and so, like I said, I'm trying this once just to see what happens. As a reader I'm desperate for it. As a writer, it's been a sheer joy. But both myself and artist Rafael Albuquerque have created something we haven't seen in a very long time with our new book and that's a lovely, sweet, Jimmy Stewart/Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg kinda good guy. It's out this week and we called this thing HUCK.

You can read Mark Millar's complete essay at GamesRadar.com.

"Huck #1" is on sale now. You can also read it on iBooks.



2015 Movie News

Listed below are all the Movie News items archived for 2015 organized into various categories:

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” Movie News:

“Justice League” Movie News: “Justice League: Throne of Atlantis” Movie News: “Justice League: Gods and Monsters” Animated Movie News: LEGO Animated Movie News: Christopher Reeve Movie News: Other Movie News:

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