I rented Superman Returns again to rewatch those scenes I'm always griping about. The beginning Lex Luthor scene seemed totally fine, not stiff at all. The spaceship landing scene was still a bit annoying. There were some other interesting moments that the film didn't elaborate upon. I liked when Superman was trying to save the plane but he inadvertantly ripped off its wing. It got me thinking that there's a whole vulnerability about super powers angle that would be interesting to explore. There's really only so much one person can do. My Superman movie would be about Superman being callous because there are so many people who need help and he can't do much about it. So he's always making choices and always turning a deaf ear to cries for help. Plus, he's invulnerable and apparently insensitive to pain. So he has a hard time relating to other people. And you think he's kind and gentle but you find out it's all an act. It's like those kids with congenital insensitivity to pain trying to act normal but they start biting their fingernails and before you know it, they've chewed their fingers down to the bone. Or someone saying, "yes, I know how you feel" but you know they don't. So it would be interesting to see a Superman movie about Superman learning to be human. Now that I think about it, it would also be interesting to see a movie about a Superman who was invulnerable but could feel pain. So Superman would get shot in the eye with a bullet and he would be fine, but he would be going "ow ow owwww." I guess that would be more of a comedy.
For as long as I can remember I've been trying to "fix" films, rethinking them, riffing on them, developing them with different assumptions As you recall, noise film started with me trying to create The Matrix around the opposite epistemological assumptions. I tried to share this approach in class once. I showed the class a film (the old version of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) and then we discussed how to "fix" it. What I mostly got was fixing logic errors and making the music and acting better. Having thought about it, I think what I mean by "fixing" a film is trying to anchor it in a more truthful understanding of things. You may have noticed that I watch lots of genre films. I guess my ideal film would be a genre film transplanted into the reality in which I exist. I find this compelling as spectacle but also in the way it serves to underscore meaning. It makes sense that I would like Team America so much because this is exactly what it does. It takes a (certain kind of) genre film then transplants it into a more truthful, ambiguous reality. This is also what noise film tries to do. It takes a genre (suspense/conspiracy film) and then asks the question: but how would this really work? I think this is what I meant awhile ago when I said that noise is a satire of conspiracy films. It's probably not as much a satire as it is a type of grounding in its attempt to redevelop the narrative in a way that seems more truthful.
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