at the risk of completely derailing this thread (heh, like THAT'S gonna stop me), i went back and re-watched "normal again" last night....whoah, i'd forgotten, it's REALLY dark!....buffy actually trying to murder the scoobies, one of the creepiest bits in the entire buffyverse canon....
anyhow, what struck me this time was another "ftmwhe" parallel: the villain's motivation for disabling the hero with an immersive dream world is, once again, the same in both stories (and "perchance..." too, for that matter)... basically, just to keep the hero out of said villain's way...
...which is actually pretty dumb, when you really think about it! in all three stories, there is a moment when the hero is completely incapacitated, lost in la-la land...c'mon, bad guys, take a moment to KILL the sucker!
you could argue that mongul might be worried that he's just not physically powerful enough to kill superman, i suppose...and tetch, while seriously pissed off at batman, might be just humane enough to stop short of actual murder....
hey, and maxie: as usual, you make valid points, but i'd have to say it all sounds kinda dry and academic....you exhaustively state why "ptd" should THEORETICALLY be the more successful story, but i always follow my gut (sometimes to my peril, admittedly)....again, i haven't seen "ptd" in years, so i'm not really trying to argue against it, but , viscerally, i think "ftmwhe" might just have the edge overall....i grant you, tetch has the more complex personality, and kevin conroy, of course, RULES...but on a purely "craft" execution level -- direction, storyboards, animation, color design, etc -- "ftmwhe" clearly blazes brighter....also, i agree with those who say clark's fantasy family FEELS more "real" than the somewhat stock waynes, so, points for that....
(by the way, we made a conscious effort to make clark's family life not TOO perfect...someone here made a valid criticism of "a knight of shadows", to the effect that j'onn's family was just too idyllic to be at all believeable, and we took that to heart....once again, the internet is your friend!...thus, van's a little bit contemptuous of farmer dad, even talks back a bit ("i know, i KNOW") and dad gets ticked off at him over the krypto-poop incident...jor-el and clark even have a testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"), hinting at some argument in their past....we wanted clark's home life to have as much verisimillitude as possible...it really took some fine tuning at the script stage...for instance, in the first draft, van entered the story by jumping into bed with his parents, merrily blurting "happy birthday!"...it's a subtle thing, i know, but it just didn't feel "honest"...being a husband and dad myself, i KNOW it's not all sunshine and bliss 24/7...also, notice that there's no background score throughout the entire first segment of clark's dream....we were REALLY tempted to play warm, copeland-esque "americana" under it,to establish how happy he was there, but decided to play it "straight", with just ambient bg noise, etc, to immediately immerse the viewer in clark's world....)
and, finally, KICK-ASS fight scenes! ya gotta admit, no contest there....
(and no wicked invisible jet in "ptd", neither
...)
anyhow, what struck me this time was another "ftmwhe" parallel: the villain's motivation for disabling the hero with an immersive dream world is, once again, the same in both stories (and "perchance..." too, for that matter)... basically, just to keep the hero out of said villain's way...
...which is actually pretty dumb, when you really think about it! in all three stories, there is a moment when the hero is completely incapacitated, lost in la-la land...c'mon, bad guys, take a moment to KILL the sucker!
you could argue that mongul might be worried that he's just not physically powerful enough to kill superman, i suppose...and tetch, while seriously pissed off at batman, might be just humane enough to stop short of actual murder....
hey, and maxie: as usual, you make valid points, but i'd have to say it all sounds kinda dry and academic....you exhaustively state why "ptd" should THEORETICALLY be the more successful story, but i always follow my gut (sometimes to my peril, admittedly)....again, i haven't seen "ptd" in years, so i'm not really trying to argue against it, but , viscerally, i think "ftmwhe" might just have the edge overall....i grant you, tetch has the more complex personality, and kevin conroy, of course, RULES...but on a purely "craft" execution level -- direction, storyboards, animation, color design, etc -- "ftmwhe" clearly blazes brighter....also, i agree with those who say clark's fantasy family FEELS more "real" than the somewhat stock waynes, so, points for that....
(by the way, we made a conscious effort to make clark's family life not TOO perfect...someone here made a valid criticism of "a knight of shadows", to the effect that j'onn's family was just too idyllic to be at all believeable, and we took that to heart....once again, the internet is your friend!...thus, van's a little bit contemptuous of farmer dad, even talks back a bit ("i know, i KNOW") and dad gets ticked off at him over the krypto-poop incident...jor-el and clark even have a testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"), hinting at some argument in their past....we wanted clark's home life to have as much verisimillitude as possible...it really took some fine tuning at the script stage...for instance, in the first draft, van entered the story by jumping into bed with his parents, merrily blurting "happy birthday!"...it's a subtle thing, i know, but it just didn't feel "honest"...being a husband and dad myself, i KNOW it's not all sunshine and bliss 24/7...also, notice that there's no background score throughout the entire first segment of clark's dream....we were REALLY tempted to play warm, copeland-esque "americana" under it,to establish how happy he was there, but decided to play it "straight", with just ambient bg noise, etc, to immediately immerse the viewer in clark's world....)
and, finally, KICK-ASS fight scenes! ya gotta admit, no contest there....
(and no wicked invisible jet in "ptd", neither