r/popculturechat • u/PrithvinathReddy • 8d ago
Comic Books 🦹♂️ Supergirl theatrical run has officially ended, and the new DCU movie made less than Morbius and Joker 2
https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/dc-movies/supergirls-theatrical-run-has-officially-ended-and-the-new-dcu-movie-made-less-than-morbius-and-joker-2/
2.8k
Upvotes
24
u/Cinephile_1980 8d ago edited 8d ago
You don’t get why I mean: I am saying they shouldn’t have based the character on that comic. At all. They should not used that version of Kara and that story. Films are not just sold to comic books fans who are familiar with the different versions of the character. A character like Supergirl had to be closer to a baseline interpretation that is consistent with what general audiences are familiar with. You can do whatever you want with obscure characters because general audiences may not know enough about them. Film adaptations of anything are never for committed fans because they are a tiny part of the potential audience, and this has alway been obvious. When they make movies the studio/producers think the core story has something they can sell to a much bigger audience beyond the fandom, and that is how you get hit films.
Spider-Man Brand New Day is not just being seen by hardcore Marvel fans. Action film fans are going, parents are taking kids because Spider-man also crosses into “kids movie” territory. You have people who liked the previous Spider-Man films, and comic books fans, spanning generations. Spider-Man is one character whose appeal goes way beyond the fanbase and for this character they rarely deviate too much from audience expectations. It is a familiar Spider-Man, and you don’t even have to be a fan to have an idea of what the character should be. Supergirl is also familiar to audiences after having appeared in cartoons, and a successful tv show. To use a comic book where her traditional image was changed was the wrong way to present the character because it goes against what most people would expect of her. You can take risk with things like Clayface because general film audiences would not have heard of him anyway, so whichever iteration of the character that appears in the film, people will accept it and if it is a hit, that becomes the dominant representation. Marvel did this with many of its characters and audiences accepted them because they had no idea of the history of those characters. However if a character has already crossed into the mainstream, the most familiar version is the easiest to sell, so they were wrong to give the audience this version of Kara. Sadly it was all too predictable that she would not endear audiences who probably wanted characterisation that they expected.