Dear Messrs Goyer and Snyder,

So it seems there is a new Superman movie in the works, to be written by David Goyer. Goyer is the writer of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and err, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (the Hasselhof version)

Also, it was just recently announced that Zack Snyder, director of 300 and Watchmen, will be donning the baseball-cap.

I've been toying with the idea for a Superman movie for the past few years. It's mainly a thought exercise as I read the books ("how would this work on the big screen?" and so on) but I have the bare bones of a plot in my head.

Seeing as how the makers of the new movie haven't called me yet, I've decided to stop keeping my ideas to myself.

The Pyramid of Villainy!

There are only three types of villain in movies and comic books.

Let me clarify that by defining what I mean by "villain". Every movie has protagonists and antagonists. Protagonists are your main characters: The guy you root for and who - in Hollywood at least - wins at the end. Antagonists are the guys who don't win. The ones who try to stop the protagonist achieving his goals. They're usually dead by the time the final credits roll and they have many different motivations, depending on the plot of the movie. But not all protagonists are Heroes and not all antagonists are Villains.

Oceanography.

As an experiment, I recently sat down to watch Ocean's Eleven, and then immediately afterwards watched Ocean's Eleven.

Comparing a movie to its remake is an interesting exercise. It's not like comparing a book or play adaptation, or even an early draft of a screenplay to its finished version. You get to see exactly what the writer based the remake on, and compare the director's choices to his predecessor. This includes overall style, cinematography, casting, hell even the music choices can be compared directly.

I hadn't watched either film in years, and certainly never both in a short period of time (let alone the same evening) and what I found was something unique - something I didn't expect to see at all.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

So I watched "Flatliners" a few days ago. Those of you born after the cold war have probably never heard of it. Quite successful when it was released in 1990, it promoted its then B-list stars into the heady stratosphere of B+.

Basically the movie is about how Kiefer Sutherland's character - a med student crazier than a jacuzzi full of weasels - ropes four of his fellow students into an illegal and highly dangerous experiment to see what happens when you clinically die and are then brought back to life.

To the power of four.

Sequels! They're great, aren't they?

(By the way, this will be my geekiest/nerdiest post yet. I might have to find a couple of Julia Roberts' movies to rant about next, just to balance out the scales a bit)

But back to sequels, and how great they are. You get to see the characters you know and love face new and exiting villains in new and exciting situations.

What's that you say? Movie sequels are generally crap? A desperate attempt by the studios to wring every last nickel out of its fans without having to generate any original ideas or display any sort of creativity?

Oh, you. You're such a cynic.

Of hobbits and wizards and things that go bump in the plot.

I was trying desperately to come up with something to say about Back to the Future, part 3. I can’t possibly make fun of it or poke holes in it, I love it too much.

So I turned to another trilogy. A small series of indie movie you may not have heard of called "Lord of the Rings".

I watched these a while back. As the hobbits went from where they lived to where they were going, to do the thing they needed to do (admittedly, I may not have been giving it my full attention) I started thinking about what all the Hobbitses have done since.

Consider Back to the Future (part II)

Right, last time I talked about the diverging time-lines of "Back to the Future", and how the movie finished with a sort of loose end, if you analysed it to a stupidly obsessive degree.

With the sequel, there are no such loose ends. It's a perfect harmony of looping causality, dovetailing together with no problems whatsoever.

What I will talk about is the fact that the "future" they visited is 2015. That's only five years from now.