10 Weirdest Moments In The Early Days Of DC Movies
5. The Superman Musical
Superheroes and musicals don't mix. The trade papers (and beyond) were plagued with stories about how disastrous recent Broadway show Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark was, even before all of the on-stage injuries thanks to the wire work and stunts required. The songs sucked, the story sucked, it just didn't work as a musical. Julie Taymor and company weren't blundering into dangerous, uncharted territory though. There had been successful superhero musicals before. Not least of all It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman!, which debuted in 1966 and is currently being performed on the West End in London. There's a song called Pow! Bam! Zonk!. In fact, there's a lot of songs, and all of them are gloriously cheesy. The musical reached widespread popularity thanks to an ABC TV movie adaptation, which updated the songs with some seventies funk and changed the slightly racist Chinese bad guys into mafiosos. It's probably the only thing more camp than Adam West Batman.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
