I wish that people, be they directors or anyone else, would just stop talking about how serious or realistic their comic book-based movies are.  It’s not only tiring, but it makes no sense at all.  For instance, over at Collider there’s an interview with Zach Snyder, the director of the upcoming “Man of Steel,” and he’s telling us about how serious his Superman will be.

Now, keep in mind that Superman, as he’s often portrayed in comics, is a few steps below whichever deity you chose to worship.  He’s literally that powerful, which makes me wonder if ‘serious’ is perhaps the wrong way to approach the property.

What’s propelling this movement toward ‘seriousness’ are two things:  The first is the underperformance of “Green Lantern,” and the second is the remarkable success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.

It’s as if someone has worked out a formula, with mathematical precision, detailing what it takes for a movie to be successful.  The problem with this type of thinking is that no such formula exists, and, like Marvel, DC Comics has many stories to tell; not all of them being dark and serious.  “Green Lantern” should have worked.  The reason that it didn’t had more to do with a mediocre story, and an over reliance on CGI (did Green Lantern really have to have a computer-generated costume?  I imagine that the money could have perhaps been better spent elsewhere).

There was another film that came out around the same time as “The Dark Knight Rises,” called “The Avengers,” that not only embraced its comic book roots, but did it in such a fashion that acknowledged that a great movie has to bring not only the serous moments, but the humorous and light ones as well.

Hopefully, “Man of Steel” will not pay the price for DC Comics/Warner Bros. learning the lesson.