David S. Goyer Quotes
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What I really like to do is write 'genre' stories without a cartoonish element. I did the same with 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and I'll do the same with 'Man of Steel.'
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I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history. There's no question that various victors throughout history have flat out lied about certain events or written themselves into things, and then you come along and you find out that this disproves that.
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What Christopher Nolan and I have done with 'Superman' is try to bring the same naturalistic approach that we adopted for the 'Batman' trilogy. We always had a naturalistic approach; we want our stories to be rooted in reality, like they could happen in the same world we live in.
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It's ironic: In movies, the most successful films of all time have been sci-fi or fantasy. By far. But a lot of people won't even read science fiction books.
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I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.
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New platforms are emerging: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Xbox. And film actors are gravitating towards television, because there are basically better roles there. Television is making the kind of epics and genres that the movie studios used to make, and often doing it better with more complex narratives and corresponding budgets.
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I will say that adapting a character like Da Vinci really wasn't that dissimilar from doing Batman or Superman. Because all three of these guys are really iconic figures, and yes, Da Vinci was historical, but there's clearly been a lot of mythmaking about him, and a lot of things have been attributed to him that may or may not have happened.
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I am an artist, and I understand the pros and cons of being an artist, and the pressures of being an artist, and how much being an artist can be torture to people around you; you know, you friends and your family and how material you can be, and how it's hard to take criticism and all the things like that.
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'Batman Begins' came out and it was really successful, and it had gritty naturalism. And suddenly... I can't tell you how many movies I was pitched where it was, 'We want to do what you did with 'Batman' but with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' or whatever.
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I did three or four weeks of work on 'Godzilla;' it wasn't a page-one rewrite or anything like that. The term is 'script doctoring,' is what I did on it.
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There's been a long lineage of a stranger in a strange land, whether it's 'E.T.,' 'Starman,' or other movies about trying to connect with humanity; it struck me that's what a Superman story really is.
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People have a very proprietary relationship with Superman. It's important to respect the iconography and the canon, but at the same time, you have to tell a story. Once you land on who you think the character is and what his conflicts are, you have to let that lead you.
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It took a while for the first 'Blade' to get made, and Marvel decided they liked the Whistler character so much, when Blade guest starred on the 'Spider-Man' cartoon, they put Whistler on the cartoon, and the movie hadn't come out yet.
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I think there's really only been one successful video game adaptation, and that was probably 'Tomb Raider.' Whether or not you thought it was a good movie, it was successful financially.
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I think Wonder Woman is a very difficult character to crack. More difficult than Superman, who is also more difficult than Batman. Also, a lot of people in Hollywood believe that it's hard to do a big action movie with a female lead. I happen to disagree with that.
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I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds.
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When Superman was originally created, by Siegel and Shuster, they were two Jewish immigrants that were desperately trying to assimilate into America. They were having a hard time because they were Jewish. They wanted to get in to mainstream publishing but they couldn't. That's why they, and a lot of Jewish guys, went into comic books.
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I relate to the feeling that Da Vinci was often plagued by the idea that what he did wasn't good enough, that he was his harshest critic. He'd sometimes destroy what he was working on.
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'Call Of Duty' initially cut its teeth on World War II simulation stuff, and then we gradually advanced to the end of the Cold War, but you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. And I think that because 'Call Of Duty' cut its teeth on presenting 'realism,' in quotes... verisimilitude.
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I think if we ever encountered aliens, even communicating with them would be really, really difficult.
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Superman is not as innately cool as Batman.
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I love casting against type and doing things you wouldn't expect, because I think you get more interesting performances that way. Hollywood loves to pigeonhole people, and there's nothing an actor loves more than to do something different.
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Once we start seeing video games that have more memorable characters, you'll see better movie adaptations.
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Superman has evolved continually in the comic books over the course of 75 years. He couldn't even fly for years in the original comic books. Kryptonite wasn't added until the '60s. All sorts of things like this. If a character is going to remain vital, he does have to change with the times.