Getting It

Just because I’m not enjoying your story, it doesn’t mean I don’t “get” it.

Take Man of Steel.  (Don’t worry.  I won’t harp on it too long.)  I get that the filmmakers’ goal was to make a more “realistic” version of a Superman origin and to “humanize” Superman by making him fallible and uncertain.

I just didn’t care for it.  It’s safe to say I thought it was completely the wrong direction, and that it is pretty much the opposite of everything I would want to see in a Superman story.  But the same could be said about James Bond and Skyfall, a movie that received heaps of praise even though I found it plodding and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF ITS CHARACTERS dull and uninteresting.

One guy’s opinion.  Feel free to ignore it.

In both cases, I understood what the filmmakers were going for, and I even understand that they succeeded at least on some level for many people.  But for me, not so much.

But we’re all different people, with different ways of looking at the world, with different emotional needs, and heck, even those needs change on a daily basis.  I can’t imagine ever being in a place where I’m looking for a bleak Superman story, but who knows what I’ll want in five or ten years?

Though I am pretty sick of bleak at this point.  Granted, I’ve never been much of a bleak guy.  I seemed to have never gone through my awkward teenage phase where I yearned to read a story where the Marvel superheroes all become flesh-eating zombies or where the Lone Ranger fights cannibals.  Maybe I just missed it and never caught up with the rest of the world.  Maybe my love of unapologetic fantasy tinged with optimism is the sign of an immature mind.  Heck if I know.

But just because I’m not into grimdark and deconstruction, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.  It just means I find them generally uninteresting, and often, I’m in the minority on that.  That’s cool.  Whatever floats your boat.

It just doesn’t float mine.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee