SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

Well, it was a struggle, but I managed to find a poster for this film, that didn't look like it was put together by the Graphic Designer's 12 year old kid.

            Spider-Man: Homecoming is so called, not because of the Homecoming Dance that features briefly in it; nor is it so-called because the story features a major “there’s no place like home” revelation.  It is called Homecoming as a knowing meta-narrative nod to the audience, that the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has returned to the Marvel fold after decades in the wilderness.

            Spider-Man is their Mickey Mouse, he’s their Superman; he’s the flag-bearer for their entire business and, anachronistically, because of difficult financial decisions made decades ago; they haven’t been able to use him.  But now they can.  This was the chance for Kevin Feige to roll up his sleeves and say “Right, this is how you’re supposed to do a Spidey movie!”

            What’s at stake, then, is whether Marvel can weave its magic over its own characters, when they have been damaged whilst on loan.  Fox keeps managing to pull the X-Men’s asses out of the fire.  For every desperately poor Wolverine (2009), there’s a surprisingly rich First Class (2011), for every Apocalypse (2016), there’s a Logan (2017).  And then, of course, there’s Deadpool!  But The Fantastic Four, bless them, they have enjoyed no such success; each of Fox’s FF films has dug a deeper hole in the affections of the audience than the one before it.  But, despite that, it has become abundantly clear that Fox will never return them to the fold.  So, Marvel is moving on without them.  Ramping up The Inhumans as replacements for the X-Men; going cosmic without the need for the Negative Zone and Galactus.

            But Spider-Man is different.  Apparently, so the story goes, Raimi wanted to continue his old-school approach to Spidey by having his third film feature The Vulture.  Along with Doc Ock and Green Goblin, he was one of comic-book Spidey’s longest serving adversaries (first appearing in issue 2), and one that the fans were desperate to see brought to the screen.  However, this decision was overruled and, instead, Sony decided to go with Venom - a character from a very different period in Spidey’s history, with a very different fan-base.  Well, we all know how Spider-Man 3 (2007) worked out.  But that was nothing to the delights which lay in store when the franchise went ‘Amazing’.  I gave a fair and balanced viewing of that debacle, here.

            So, Sony realised that its (galactically stupid) decisions were losing it profit.  Years of back-room shenanigans ensued and, finally, they struck a deal with Marvel to return the character, at least in part, to the MCU (that’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, in case you haven’t been keeping up with your Three Letter Acronyms).  This complicated process has led to no fewer than twelve credited producers and six credited writers.

            So, what we have here is what’s now referred to as a soft re-boot.  We don’t get Uncle Ben again, we don’t get the spider bite (although it is mentioned), we don’t get the Spider Sense, or J. Jonah Jameson; but we do get Peter back at school, navigating the corridor politics of bullies and girls and tests.  We also get The Vulture.  Point made, Kevin; point made!

The 'If This Be My Destiny' story (it's not actually called The Final Chapter) is one of the most famous episodes from the early Lee/Ditko comics, and is now brought to the screen, as are many other careful references to the source material.

            The film heaves with smart acknowledgements to the original 60s comics; for those who are familiar enough to spot them.  It still irks, mind you, that the creators behind a lot of these moments, aren’t credited among those six writers.  Lee and Ditko are, but the others, John Romita, Don Heck, Brian Michael Bendis and the rest, they have to wait for a ‘based on characters created by’ acknowledgement at the very end of the credits.  ... After Robert Downey Jr’s Hair Consultant.  But then, I suppose they can’t all have cameos.

            Like the original Lee/Ditko comics, this is as much a High School coming-of-age story as it is a superhero adventure.  Yes, Tom Holland is 21 playing 15, but he actually gets away with it.  Unlike Andrew Garfield’s turn in ‘Amazing’, I can actually buy Holland as a kid.  Not too nerdy (not as socially inept as Tobey Maguire’s version), but not obviously too fit, too tall and too cool for school (as Garfield was).

            Holland’s Spider-Man is clumsy and confused and over-excited and sometimes scared.  He is, in other words, a teenager!  That works for the demographics of the Marvel movie audience, but it was also key to the character from day one.  As a comic-reading friend of mine once noted ruefully, back in the 90s: I remember a time when Peter Parker was older than me.  But the key to him is that he’s a kid, a kid given extraordinary powers that shift his entire world.  And he isn’t a billionaire or a god or a world-renowned scientist, he’s a kid.  How does a kid deal with the powers of a superhero?  That has always been the dilemma at the heart of the Spider-Man story, that’s the story that this generation of kids deserve to experience. 

            These early scenes fairly echo with the footsteps of John Hughes.  I’m grateful they resisted the temptation to put Don’t You Forget About Me on the soundtrack during the detention scene, and it is forgivable that they give in, briefly, to a Ferris Bueller gag.  But it isn’t all levity.  There is one moment in the movie, above all others, when Peter is alone and in peril and he panics.  He screams for help and, right there, we are forced to confront the fact that, however cocky and sophisticated and knowing and cynical our kids are ... They’re still just kids.

High-School Avengers Assemble:  Iron Man (top), Scarlett Witch (left), Bruce Banner (middle), Black Widow (seated), Captain America (right)

           This also informs Peter’s desperation to please Tony Stark.  He’s subconsciously looking for a father figure.  Shame he picked a globe-trotting billionaire narcissist egomaniac who has serious daddy issues of his own.

            For me, the characters and the small moments are much more impressive than the big set-pieces.  The ferry scene, which features so predominantly in the trailer, feels like a mash-up of the bridge scene in Spider-Man 1 (2002), the train scene in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and, inevitably, the ferry scene in The Dark Knight (2008).  There’s a similar big moment in Washington that also, for me, felt cluttered and confused and overly-familiar. 

            A part of this clutter must be put down to Spidey talking constantly to the AI of his suit.  Essentially, Stark has engineered the Spider Suit as a more streamlined version of his own Iron Man suit, complete with chatty computer interface.  This gives Spidey lots of fun toys to play with, some of which are unnecessary, some of which are just plain dumb; but the main thing is, it gives him someone to talk to.  In the comics, Spidey never shuts up.  He’s trading witty one-liners with whoever he’s fighting (something we’ve already seen in his Civil War fight with Falcon) but also, when he’s alone, he thinks things through or talks to himself.  That’s difficult to do well in a film.  Having an on-board AI gives him someone to talk to which, therefore, gives him a platform to externalise all that teenage angst.

Pfft.  And Falcon thinks his wings are all that.

            At the other end of sci-fi tech scale, we have Michael Keaton’s Toomes.  He starts the film in a flashback, working as a contractor clearing up the alien tech and devastation after the New York fight from the Avengers movie.  He’s a working stiff who gets stiffed by the government, in the form of the all-new Department of Damage Control (how’s that for an oxymoron).  This pushes his business over the edge financially.  So, what’s he going to do?  Well, he has a pile of unrecycled Chitauri tech and an enthusiastic tinkerer on staff; so time to make like Tony Stark and build some weapons.

            His weapons manufacture is all very low tech, though, his  gadgets seem to be being assembled in, essentially, a garage.  He has limited aspirations for his toys; but that’s deliberate, because he wants to stay under the radar.  As he says - when the film proper starts - he’s been doing what he’s doing for eight years, without ever attracting the attention of the FBI or SHIELD or The Avengers.  He’s strictly small-fry.  But, if you push the little guy the wrong way, he can develop big ideas.  This is what took the honest business man and turned him into the gun-runner.  As Spider-Man repeatedly foils his plans, the gun-runner decides to step up a gear ... After repeatedly refusing the call to get properly nefarious, he finally gives in and does what any business man would do ... He steals from the opposition.

Psst ... A little bird told me you'll be playing a different kind of birdman ...

            The key to Toomes - and, no doubt, what attracted a heavy-hitter like Keaton - is that he speaks a lot of sense.  He has been treated badly by a high-handed military-industrial complex.  Tony Stark was a gun-runner before he found he could make more money elsewhere.  The American Dream was built on the belief that it is acceptable to do anything to support your family.  Toomes isn’t a grand-standing psychopath who wants to take over the world, he just wants to put his kids through college.

            There is an electrifying scene where Keaton locks eyes with Peter and calmly explains what he’ll do to stay in business.  No shouting, no histrionics, just one guy smiling while he threatens another.  That’s why you hire someone as complex as Michael Keaton, to get that intensity from a close-up shot. 

            Back in the ’80s, when he was best known for his comedies, there was always a dark edge to Keaton.  Ron Howard saw it first, when he cast him in Night Shift (1982), Tim Burton saw it when he made him Beetlejuice (1988), and John Schlesinger saw it when he cast him as the malignancy at the heart of Pacific Heights (1990).  There was always a recklessness in Keaton’s eyes which made him potentially dangerous.  Guess what:  It’s still there.  

            Of course, Toomes is a villain so, however reasonable his argument, however justifiable his cause, the fact that he is prepared to ignore morality and kill people for it, somewhat undermines his point.

            And Spidey is a hero so, no-matter that no-one believes in him, no-matter that he’s alone and out-classed and out-gunned; he’s still going to try and protect the little guy.  Cos that’s what Spidey always was, back in the early 70s, when four-year-old me learned to read on black-and-white reprints of John Romita and Ross Andru era Spidey .... He was always the little guy, always misunderstood, always struggling to balance the demands of real-life, relationships, work and super-heroing.

This isn't Tony Stark's happy face. Maybe he's just realised how few scenes he's in.

            The early scenes of Spidey keeping himself busy whilst waiting for ‘the call’ from The Avengers, are very reminiscent of Kick-Ass (2010) but then, they would be; that was Mark Millar’s take on an updated Spider-Man ... This is Marvel’s take on the same thing; it’s no surprise there are similarities.

            The film relies too heavily on the Toomes’ henchmen being as ham-fisted as Spidey, initially, is.  Otherwise, he’d’ve been killed pretty much at the start, and then where’s your movie?  But, because Holland is so likeable, and so endearingly clumsy, you go along with the film when it wanders into cliché or the odd page of lazy writing. 

            However, there’s one particular plot-twist that is just way too convenient, and stretches the bounds of credibility too far.  Nothing like the catalogue of contrivances in the last two Spidey films, though, so don’t worry.  It’s just that this film goes so far in making Peter human and fallible, and the world he inhabits, so credible, and the friends he spends time with, so nuanced and detailed and likeable ... That they nearly throw it all away with one plot contrivance too many.

            But - thanks to some classy writing and some brilliant acting from Michael Keaton - they bring it back from the edge in the nick of time.

It's just one of those boy-meets-suit, boy-loses-suit, boy-gets-suit-back-again kinda films

            So, this film isn’t spectacular.  It certainly isn’t amazing.  It is, however, friendly; and it’s great fun to finally see Spidey in Marvel’s neighbourhood.

Written by: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers & Uncle Tom Cobbly
Directed by: Jon Watts
Cert: 12A
Dur: 133 mins

THE AMAZING (sic) SPIDER-MAN

I’m going to try an experiment.  I’m going to see if I can write reviews in less than 1,000 words.  As you’ve doubtless noticed, it typically takes you as long to read my review as it does to watch the damn film.  So I’m going to see if I have any talent for (relative) brevity.

And the first film I am going to try this on for size with is The (so-called) Amazing Spider-Man. 

First off - and just to get this off my chest – I don’t like origin stories.  If origin stories were so important, then every movie would be one.  By which, I don’t just mean every superhero movie … I mean every movie.  But they aren’t, are they?  The rom-coms or zombie holocaust movies you watch don’t spend their first hour telling you the entire life-story of every character, do they?  No.  In fact, most movies don’t bother with being an origin story, it’s something that's almost unique to the Superhero genre.   Makers of other genres have realised that we are sophisticated enough to understand and identify with characters without having to sit through their home movies and baby photos.

Now, I appreciate that sometimes you need to see scenes from a character’s past to understand their personality, motivations, background or whatever … But a pre-title prologue or a couple of informative flash-backs should cover that – if a few simple lines of dialogue won’t.

(Hm. 250 words and I haven’t even got to the film yet.  Not looking good.)

Tobey or not Tobey ... Erm ... Not Tobey.

So, when they announced that The ‘Amazing’ Spider-Man was a re-boot and an origin story, my heart sank.  It’s only ten years since we had to go through all this with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire.  Do we really have to sit through the bullying, the spider-bite, Uncle Ben’s death and yacketty-schmatty, blah-blah-blah all over again?  Yes, it seems we do and we can’t even do it quickly.  We have to spend fully half of this two and a quarter hour movie revisiting familiar ground.

They’ve taken much of their inspiration from Brian Bendis’ ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ reboot of the comic which began to be published in 2000, rather than the Stan Lee / Steve Ditko original which dates from 1962.  Raimi very-much cleaved to the original in terms of tone, so to go elsewhere was a sensible way to push the franchise forward.  Except, since the differences are mostly cosmetic, why bother going back to square one?  That still makes no sense to me.  Can you tell?

Andrew Garfield’s rendition of Peter is quirkier and more physical than Maguire’s.  He’s more temperamental and more argumentative and, therefore, possibly more convincing as the sarcastic wise-cracking Web-Head.  Maguire always seemed too sweet and earnest to do the trade-mark Spidey one-liners I grew up reading in the comics.  But you only get a couple of examples of this humour in this film.  So, not really The Amusing Spider-Man, then.

When he is learning to use his new powers and dealing with his sometimes-sticky, sometimes-not fingers and proportional-strength-of-a-spider (as they used to call it) Garfield is very funny – He obviously has a gift for physical comedy, even if he is a bit to lanky and good-looking to prat-fall convincingly.  But his emotions are on-and-off so quickly, it is difficult to become emotionally involved in him.  This is not necessarily a fault of the performance so much as the frantic pace of the editing and the brevity of such scenes.

Gwen Stacy ... She loves a man to have his heart on his sleeve ... And his blood too.

Then you’ve got the fact that they have decided to have Gwen (played by Emma Stone) be the focus of his affections instead of Mary-Jane.  This is being true to the original 60s comics that they are, otherwise, ignoring.  So why bother making the change?  To be fair to Stone – her rendition of Gwen is far less annoying than Bryce Howard’s was in Spider-Man 3 (2007).  The lengthy scenes with them stumbling through their courtship … Just don’t sparkle.  There is no spark between the two characters.  I didn’t care about them, or their relationship. 

Visually, the film is quite dark, shot mostly at night with deliberately subdued colours … Which are even dimmer in 3D, of course.  I presume this palette and shooting style was part of abandoning the light-hearted tone of the Raimi films and an attempt to make this new rendition seem grittier.  More ‘street’.   However, the frankly lame story contrives to make that seem foolish.

Where the first half was unnecessarily long-winded, the second half leaps from half-formed plot-point to plot-point with scant regard for logic or continuity.  Plot-lines are abandoned or just plain forgotten about, time-jumps occur without warning (Connors all-of-a-sudden has a lab in the sewers) and major details are skated over in a montage (such as the creation of the web-shooters and the creation of the costume and the existence of the Spider-Sense).

Youth perfects world's least impressive high-wire act.

But, beyond that, there are the frequent plot contrivances.  If this is supposed to be Spider-Man re-imagined for a more sophisticated twenty-first century audience, why are we insulted by the sort of lame co-incidences and conveniences that we might have expected to have seen in the 70s TV version of Spider-Man?

Plot Contrivance #1:  Peter investigates Connors, who just happens to be his father’s ex-partner and, it is strongly hinted, is the reason for his father’s disappearance.

Plot Contrivance #2:  Gwen just happens to be Connor’s Intern (that’ll come in useful).

Plot Contrivance #3:  Peter just happens to bump into Mr. Ratha, who just happens to drop a folder containing papers which just happen have the 00 logo Peter is investigating from his father’s notes.

Plot Contrivance #4:  Peter’s father bred the spiders that will turn him into a super-hero.

Plot Contrivance #5:  Connors just happens to have a ‘Ganali Device’ designed to distribute drugs through the air over an entire city.  Well that won’t be turned to nefarious ends at the end of the film!

I could go on and so, since my 1,000^th word happens to be this one, and I have therefore failed, I shall go on!

You've got to hand it to him.  What?   What?  As jokes go, that was fairly armless.

Rhys Ifans plays Connors.  He’s not the most endearing of actors … His characters always seem to be cold and emotionless and that stops you liking them (unless they’re in grubby Y-fronts, of course).  He is to-all-intents-and-purposes playing the same role as Willem Dafoe in the 2002 Spider-Man and Alfred Molina in the 2004 sequel – the scientist driven mad by his own creation.  Boiler-plate Jekyll-and-Hyde stuff, in other words! 

His motives are, essentially, noble, although he has clearly made the old deal-with-The-Devil, in the form of the afore-mentioned Mr Ratha who represents the unseen Norman Osborn.  The Connors of the comics was always a tragic character rather than out-and-out evil.  There is the merest hint of that here, given that his research is primarily a way for him to grow himself a new arm.  Which it does.  But that, of course, is not all he grows.  The first transformation into The Lizard is dealt with well, in the traditional Jekyll-and-Hyde manner, but the creature into which he changes reminded me of nothing so much a Ray Harryhausen’s Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).

The first time he and Spider-man meet – on the bridge – is the stand-out sequence in the film and is the only time Garfield has the on-screen soul that Maguire so effortlessly demonstrated.

So, there are one-or-two laugh-out-loud jokes for the humorously-challenged (the teenagers sitting around me were laughing like drains … I smiled occasionally), there are impressive visuals and one-or-two moments that set the senses buzzing.  But there is also a lot of padding, a lot of problems with tone, a lot of insulting the audience’s intelligence and memory and, ultimately, far, far, far too much time spent showing us scenes we can vividly remember from last time round.

We were promised ‘The Untold Story’.  What we got instead was ‘The Oft-Better-Told Story’.  What they should have done (had they but asked my advice) is go with the Amazing title (rather than Spider-Man 4), cast a new director and a new actor, but carried on.  Sure, change the tone, that’s fine … That happens in the comic every time a new creative team takes over, that’s to be expected … But going back to square one and starting again?  That was unnecessary and foolish … And boring.

"Cowabunga, dude".  Oh, sorry, wrong reptile.

And so, finally, we get to my favourite bugbear … The 3D.  Well, given that the colours were washed out and the night scenes were distractingly dim … I took my 3D glasses off, which immediately improved the colour and brightness I was seeing.  But, interestingly, for the vast majority of the film, this made no difference.  When you watch a 3D film without glasses, it should be blurred.  Unwatchable.  Yet The (self-styled) Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t.  The long-shots were a bit blurred, the fight-scenes and web-slinging scenes were extremely blurred (I put the glasses back on for these) but I’d say that, for a good 80% of the film, watching without glasses made absolutely no difference.  So much for expensive, cutting-edge 3D technology.

There has already been some very detailed analysis of this film and I would point you to the piece, which deals with some of the plot-threads that were left dangling from the film, and uses some of the footage released in the trailers to illustrate that this material was shot, but obviously chopped out.  (Which makes one wonder if we’re going to be treated to a three-hour ‘Director’s Cut’).  Anyway, it is on Badass Digest and you’ll find it here.

Then the second piece I’d like you to read is one of Cinema Blend’s excellent ‘To 3D Or Not To 3D’ columns where they spell out far more methodically than I, what’s wrong with the extra dimension in this film.  You’ll find that piece here.

Right, well that’s 1,600 words of my first 1,000 word review.  Bugger.  Must try harder!

1,600 words?  Hang your head in shame!

SUPERMAN CASTING

One of the things that annoy me about superhero movies is their constant need to start off with origin stories.  Let's face it, an origin story is usually slow and needlessly complicated and very rarely shows the hero in question at their best.

Christopher Reeve - we really did believe a man could fly!

Richard Donner's Superman (1978) needed to be an origin story because it was, essentially, introducing a (then) forty-year-old character to a new medium and world that may well have forgotten or misunderstood his origin.  Superman was the first serious superhero film in a generation; it was a proper reboot and therefore needed to start from the ground up.  There is no denying that Superman is a fine example of the form, epic in scope and groundbreaking in its calling-upon big stars (need I remind you of the god-like awe in which the movie-world held Marlon Brando, never mind the kudos brought by Oscar-winner Gene Hackman?)  The Salkinds were also pioneers in that they had the vision and the finances to make Superman and its sequel simultaneously (a practice I believe they originated with The Three Musketeers / Four Musketeers - 1973 / 4) something that is not even unusual these days.

"Kneel before Zod" ... You know you've said it yourself!

So, Superman had to be an origin story ... But is there anyone who prefers it to Superman II?  Even the diluted version of Superman II which backroom squabbling left us with?  Superman II has the conflict that the first film lacked.  It has the badguys which, let's be honest, you still quote from time to time!  It was more fun, more exciting and a truer representation of who Superman is.  Those of us who read comics at the time were used to seeing city-blocks being levelled by tussling titans that was far more interesting than saving trains and repairing dams!

Jack Nicholson, laughing all the way to the bank with his (reputed) $50 million for three weeks' work

Then, after many, many false starts, along came Batman (1989).  It side-stepped the origin problem by including its origin as flashbacks, but it was still weighed down by the need to turn Jack Napier into the Joker and then ruined by a villain who had infinitely more charisma than the hero.  Again, Batman has one or two quotable lines but is mostly remembered now for Danny Elfman's first standout score and for having been the rehearsal, if you will, for the far more successful Batman Returns (1992).  This film hit the ground running, had room for three villains and hurtled along at a cracking pace.

Okay, so he's too tall and too ... Australian.  But he's still perfect casting!

X-Men, in 2000, was peppered with some origin material, but mostly around Wolverine, leaving a lot of questions unanswered (and thusly paving the way for a steady stream of prequels).  Despite some exceptional casting (better, even, than Donner's Superman) the problem for this film was simply the sheer number of characters with which one had to become familiar.  By the time we got round to X-Men 2 in 2003, this job was done and they could all get on with being useful and interesting (except James Marsden of course, whose Cyclops was, sadly, neither).  One could argue that origins have run through all of the X-Men films and I couldn't disagree but, what that hasn't done, is get in the way of the narrative and conflict.

You'll believe a CGI character can swing between CGI buildings

Spider-Man (2002).  Oh dear.  That origin story seemed wafer-thin back in the 60s when Lee and Ditko first came up with it.  It certainly doesn't stand up to too close inspection now.  Okay, so they tampered with it, adding the extremely-useful 'genetic' catch-all and having him grow web-shooters rather than build them (which always seemed unlikely, one has images of him swinging around with a tank of web-fluid on his back).  Again, it doesn't all really tie-together until Spider-Man 2 where they can just get stuck into super-hero versus super-villain which is, after all, why everyone stumps-up their money.

Press that one to make it go BOOM!

Batman Begins (2005) ... Okay, so, given how spectacularly far off the rails Warners had allowed its franchise to go in the nineties, this series desperately needed a re-boot!  I will therefore, begrudgingly, admit that I enjoyed all that learning to be an ice-skating ninja stuff and the process of finding his cave, developing his suit and, of course, finding his Bat-Mobile.  But, when his past returned to haunt him in the film's third act, the movie just fell apart.  Not so The Dark Knight (2008) which is simply the best, most powerful, hugest superhero film ever.

Hang on ... How much did Nicholson get?

So, you see, I don't like origin stories, they drag a film down.  If they were so bloody important every film would be an origin story.  All characters have origins.  All characters have reasons for being who and where they are.  But, no, most films are content to tell you what you need to know when you need to know it and no more.

And please, don't even get me started on the god-damn Punisher films.

So, despite all my advice, Hollywood has decided to reboot both Superman and Spider-Man.  Oh joy.

And, in both cases they have cast young men hardly able to shave.  Both remarkable actors, I'm sure (I can't lay claim to having noticed Henry Cavil - who is to be Clarke Kent - in much but Andrew Garfield - who is at the moment being Peter Parker - is an actor with considerable range) but they are both kids.  This means we are going to get origin stories.  Again.

Garfield in the 'leaked' photo of him in costume.  Yes, Sony must be livid at the VAST amount of free publicity this leak has got them ...

I still think Warners made a massive error in 1988 when they green-lit Batman, that they didn't hire Clint Eastwood to don the cowl and cape and just put Miller and Janson's genre-defining masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns up there on screen.

Click to enlarge ... And just bask in the magnificence of this - the absolute zenith of the superhero comic-book.

Superheroes typically become more interesting as they develop.  They have more experience, more adventures, more bad-guys!  The dilemmas they face become more interesting, the emotional baggage they carry becomes heavier, they simply have more to lose and, therefore, the stakes are higher!

But, of course, these characters will be older and therefore of less appeal to the all-important 16-24 movie demographic.  Well, ignoring just how patronising an assessment of movie audiences that is, let's look at the facts ... The 16-24s turned out in record numbers to see Up (2009).  They pile into the cinemas to see the mid-life-crisis films of once young (but rarely funny) comedians like Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell and exactly how appealing to a sixteen-year-old would a film called Forty Year-Old Virgin be anyway?  Extremely, it seems!

My point is that Hollywood doesn't have to slavishly pander to its belief that teenagers will only watch films about teenagers nor, for that matter, that teenagers represent the entirety of its audience.  It could, therefore, portray these same characters at later points in their careers and come up with something genuinely different for the movie screen.

Case in point:  Comics readers are, stereotypically, even younger than cinema-goers and yet they can accept stories about characters far older than they are.  Readers and viewers don't need to identify precisely with a character in order to care about them.  Let's face it, what sane person identifies with Superman, anyway?

The mid-life-crisis on infinite Earths ...

Alex Ross has blown away comics readers with his photo-realist paintings of superheroes in action, particularly in his magnificent mini-series Kingdom Come (1996) which is absolutely about older, thicker-set heroes.  He has also done remarkable work with The Justice League - all of which could be filmable because DC doesn't have Marvel's problem of licensing different characters to different studios since they're all owned outright by Warners.  Well, wouldn't it be an idea to see his version of a mature Superman, dealing with issues far larger than how not to let down Ma and Pa Kent.  As for casting, well, it seems obvious to me:  Patrick Warburton.

You will probably know his voice (not least from Family Guy) more than his face (although he was excellent ten years ago in the criminally short-lived The Tick TV series).

Have a look at Ross' now definitive version of  Superman ...

Patrick Warburton

Now have a good look at Warburton and you tell me if that isn't uncanny.

Kal-El

 The campaign begins here: bring on the wrinkly superheroes!  Death to origin stories!  It's the way forward!