Originally posted by IolantheAlias:
2) Right after SM has taken Lois flying, and Clark comes to her apartment to pick her up for his date. Lois is puttering around in her bedroom, and for a minute Clark looks in the mirror, takes off the glasses, and stands up straight. Suddenly you could actually believe that everyone at the Daily Planet would be fooled by a pair of glasses.
This is my favorite part of Christopher Reeves' portrayal of Superman - he makes it believable that no-one realizes who Clark is. Clark doesn't necessarily have to be as bumbling as he portrays him, but there's a significant difference between the voices, the stances, the way he carries himself, and the way he talks in the two personas.
It's been a while since I've seen Superman Returns, so I don't remember how Clark's presence comes across. In Man of Steel, Clark is just always Clark. He hasn't come up with separate personas yet, which I think is a problem.
I see Clark as needing to have two personas long before he actually becomes Superman. He has his real self, which he lets out when he's at the farm around his parents or by himself. Then he has meek, nerdy, glasses-wearing Clark that he puts on when he's at school and around other people. He does this to make people not notice that he's invulnerable, untiring, and super athletic. He pretends to get winded during PE. He fakes a cold now and then to avoid having perfect attendance. He's occasionally clumsy. He tries to appear physically ordinary. Then, when he gets home he can be perfectly graceful and at ease. His public Clark persona needs to be in place
before he becomes Superman, or else it won't work as a disguise. Argue all you want that "he's really Clark disguised as Superman, not the other way around," but he can never
really be himself in public. Both Clark and Superman need to be masks to some extent.
As to which movie I like better, I'm not sure. There are plenty of things I like about both SR and MoS, and plenty of things that I don't like about both. SR felt much more like a Superman movie to me. I can't stand the premise, though. Superman leaves Earth for 5 years, comes back, and finds that Lois is raising his son with her fiance? Who came up with that?
When I saw SR, I didn't like the muted color pallet. After having seen MoS, SR seems vibrant by comparison. It's a superhero movie. It's supposed to be bright and colorful. (There are exceptions, of course, like Batman, but come on. It's Superman. He's the king of primary colors.)
