Man of Steel - quick review (1 Viewer)

[Quentin]

He's 33 years old, and has the strategic capabilities of a 13-year old most of the times. They (the writers/producers) really stripped him of any appreciable foresight or care for human collateral damage (are we to assume that everytime Clark punches the other Kryptonians through buildings, he makes sure that building is deserted of people?). Frankly, the level of non-care for human casualties before the Zod moment makes the actual Zod moment laughable in many respects.

33, 25, 13...it's all arbitrary and it's all moot. The fact is this is the VERY FIRST fight he has EVER been in! He has literally never raised his fists in anger against anyone his entire life. He's never had to defend himself. He has no fighting style. He is sloppy and he gets punched around like an amateur...because that is what he is. This is not the Superman that has been in 5 movies and a thousand+ comic stories. He has not fought hundreds of villains and monsters. It's his first fight!

He doesn't know what taking a punch will do to him nor what his punches will do to them. He is purely fighting to stay alive and stop the bad guy. Fight or flight. Pure instinct. So, any arguments about how he could/should have reduced damage or casualties or how he should have taken the fight out of harm's way are, in my opinion, nullified. No argument.

The only thing I would have liked to have seen was 1 or 2 scenes where he destroys something and sees some people in danger and helps them before re-entering the fray. This would show his compassion, heroism, as well as how hard it is to be a protector of mankind against a foe like this. But, I don't think such scenes are REQUIRED to show us Superman cares. He is fighting for mankind. That shows he cares.

 

[Quentin]

Talk about "cart-before-the-horse" storytelling:

http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2013/06/18/nolan-opposed-man-of-steels-controversial-ending-spoilers/

The comments are hilarious.

I don't know how that is cart before the horse. It's exactly what I've been saying (and others). It's a formative experience. This is the very reason he now has a 'no kill' policy. It weighs on him that much.

It's fine storytelling. It's just not something you like.

 

[Simon Massey]

33, 25, 13...it's all arbitrary and it's all moot. The fact is this is the VERY FIRST fight he has EVER been in! He has literally never raised his fists in anger against anyone his entire life. He's never had to defend himself. He has no fighting style. He is sloppy and he gets punched around like an amateur...because that is what he is. This is not the Superman that has been in 5 movies and a thousand+ comic stories. He has not fought hundreds of villains and monsters. It's his first fight!He doesn't know what taking a punch will do to him nor what his punches will do to them. He is purely fighting to stay alive and stop the bad guy. Fight or flight. Pure instinct. So, any arguments about how he could/should have reduced damage or casualties or how he should have taken the fight out of harm's way are, in my opinion, nullified. No argument.

To me that describes the purpose of the fight in Smallville. Why repeat this? How much better would the film have been to show the human cost there and allow Superman to develop and realise the potential damage he will cause? There was absolutely no purpose served in the final battle with Zod until the final moments except to showcase effects, which by that time the film had already delivered. Why not threaten Lois instead? She was right there with Perry.It's not fine storytelling at all. There may well be a "plot" explanation that somehow works, but when you reduce the central character you are supposed to care about to a battering ram for repeated scenes of destruction, without showing some sort of cost, eventually it gets tiresome. Everyone knows he can't kill Superman so you have to show the cost in some other way

 

[John Doran]

Let me keep it brief, sure, it's Goyers/Nolan/Snyder's choice to take the Man of Steel into this lose-lose situation, because, you know, it's such an interesting take on the character. Not. I realize they've said that their use of this moment was to be the catalyst for "no more killing" in the myth of Superman. Am I to assume that Clark won't kill another Zod-like threat again in the future? Yawn? It also takes the Super out of Superman. Superman always finds a way. That's a nostalgic throwback, forgive me, I know. This guy, this Clark Kent guy on-the-screen was written so dumbly. It pained me to watch all these choices he makes. Maybe if he was 20-25 years old, I'd forgive the choices. He's 33 years old, and has the strategic capabilities of a 13-year old most of the times. They (the writers/producers) really stripped him of any appreciable foresight or care for human collateral damage (are we to assume that everytime Clark punches the other Kryptonians through buildings, he makes sure that building is deserted of people?). Frankly, the level of non-care for human casualties before the Zod moment makes the actual Zod moment laughable in many respects.

So, wait - am I to assume that you're yawning at the tiredness of the trope of "having a no killing policy develop from the horror of killing someone"? But the fact that, historically, Superman "always finds a way" isn't tired?

And which of his choices were dumb? I guess you have an array of superhuman powers you've kept secret all of your life that influence every choice you've had to make, and which gives you special insight into the intelligence required to choose "correctly" with regard to them and their exercise?

Quentin has already nailed the "strategic capapbilities of a 13 year old" statement; I would only add that - as I have already pointed out - if Superman stopped during his fight to save even one person, the Kryptonians would have killed ten or a hundred more; taking a break to hold up a falling building for the 5 seconds it took to allow a few civilians to get clear while the other Kryptonians used that time to collapse 5 more buildings would have been the dumb strategy of a 13 year old.

Look, when a group of beings with the powers of a superman tells you "for every person you save, we will kill a million more"; when their leader reveals his plan to kill every living thing on your planet without exception, then every second you spend directly engaging them and keeping them from carrying out that plan just is to save everyone you can, it just is to care for everyone.

 

[John Doran]

To me that describes the purpose of the fight in Smallville. Why repeat this? How much better would the film have been to show the human cost there and allow Superman to develop and realise the potential damage he will cause? There was absolutely no purpose served in the final battle with Zod until the final moments except to showcase effects, which by that time the film had already delivered. Why not threaten Lois instead? She was right there with Perry.It's not fine storytelling at all. There may well be a "plot" explanation that somehow works, but when you reduce the central character you are supposed to care about to a battering ram for repeated scenes of destruction, without showing some sort of cost, eventually it gets tiresome. Everyone knows he can't kill Superman so you have to show the cost in some other way

But we did see the human cost - my breath was taken away by the number of casualties that were incurred during the Smallville fight (and later during the initiation of the gravity-well in Metropolis). And of course Kal saw the potential damage his combat with the Kryptonians would cause, but what else could he have done once it became clear that Zod wanted to kill everyone on earth? Once Zod states his goal is nothing short of the genocide of the human race, what is Superman supposed to have done? Just stand there and let Zod kill humans until Kal could come up with a plan of non-lethal restraint? Or just sit there and let Zod pound him into the dirt?

 

[Simon Massey]

John, I'm not denying that the plot may well have explanations you can come up with that explain why each character acted in the way it did, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a complete disconnect with the audience once you start showing scenes of devastation unless you actually have some connection with the characters being affected. Otherwise the human cost you saw is little more that people running away from green screens or pyrotechnics. Even Snyder realised that a little by including the scenes with Perry and Jenny and the soldier Superman saved in Smallville, but for many, me included, it wasn't enough.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Yeah, some are swept away by the visuals, I was bothered by the story mechanics while viewing it for the first time.

Again, just one dumb thing he did, which I've already pointed out:

"I suspect Clark was not taught the game of chess by Pa Kent. Clark is never shown to think 1, 2, or even 3 steps ahead. Did Clark not realize that punch-plowing Zod into the corn fields left his mother with Faora and the other military dudes? Did he think they'd be playing tiddly-winks with Martha? So dumb". What if Faora and the rest just killed Martha on the spot while Clark is punch-plowing Zod in the cornfields of Smallville? If I were Faora, I'd done it without blinking and then go and find Zod. Clark should be getting Ma Kent out of harm's way. WTF????

My group of friends had a good laugh when Clark is walking down "Main Street" in Smallville, telling the good citizens to "get inside, it's not safe.", and then Snyder cuts to a person locking the door. LOL funny.

 

[Patrick H.]

• Why would Zod, the General, abandon his crew to go get the settlement ship right after the terraforming process begins? He doesn't need it yet -- Kal-El is neither in his custody nor dead at this point, so why does he want to get his test-tube baby lab right then? Just so he can have one more scene opposite Russel Crowe, which falls kind of flat anyway? Or was it a lame excuse to get him off of the main ship so he wouldn't be sucked away with the rest of his crew, in order to set up The Major Final Battle? Either way, it's kind of stupid. Either Zod should have been onboard the main ship and died with his crew -- which would have ended the film 15 minutes earlier, or so, and neatly avoided Supes having to break Zod's neck (I didn't have a huge issue with that, by the way). Or if you want some sort of final battle, find another way to get Zod off his ship before the Phantom Drives collided. Then, Superman could have lured Zod to the other ship in the arctic in order to protect civilians, and find some sort of way to defeat Zod using the Phantom Drive there. That would at least preserve that ship, even if the drive no longer worked, to serve as the Fortress of Solitude in future installments.

I had a problem with this as well. It was a lot of invented business to set up a big final fight, and it just dragged the movie out even more. In discussing it with a friend after we saw it, I contempated that maybe a better ending would've been to have Zod, the semi-honorable general and true believer in his cause, be the one to go down with his ship, with his openly "amoral" lieutenant Faora left as the last one standing (since she was technically off-ship at the time). She'd already been established as the principal physical antagonist for Superman in the Smallville fight, as well as perhaps a more "evil" character than Zod himself. Of course, that would've culminated in the spectacle of Superman snapping a woman's neck, and I can only imagine the shitstorm that would've caused...they probably would've had to figure out another way to handle it. Still, the way Faora goes out in the final movie is slightly unsatisfying considering how much weight they'd given her as an antagonist in earlier sequences.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Too bad they didn't want to go down the road of negotiation: Clark gives them the codex, and Zod and company take it and go start up New Krypton on another planet, with the understanding Earth is off-limits. Easy-peasy, it's now a 100-minute movie.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Great Rao, this is hilarious:

http://io9.com/the-most-important-scenes-from-man-of-steel-as-i-remem-516405346

 

[John Doran]

Too bad they didn't want to go down the road of negotiation: Clark gives them the codex, and Zod and company take it and go start up New Krypton on another planet, with the understanding Earth is off-limits. Easy-peasy, it's now a 100-minute movie.

you know what would have been even better than that? if j'onn j'onzz showed up with an army of green martians and martian technology as soon as the kryptonians entered the solar system. then the martians would have fought and defeated the kryptonians without loss of human life, and then imprisoned the kryptonians in negative space.

hey presto, it's now a 45 minute movie!

 

[John Doran]

I had a problem with this as well. It was a lot of invented business to set up a big final fight, and it just dragged the movie out even more. In discussing it with a friend after we saw it, I contempated that maybe a better ending would've been to have Zod, the semi-honorable general and true believer in his cause, be the one to go down with his ship, with his openly "amoral" lieutenant Faora left as the last one standing (since she was technically off-ship at the time). She'd already been established as the principal physical antagonist for Superman in the Smallville fight, as well as perhaps a more "evil" character than Zod himself. Of course, that would've culminated in the spectacle of Superman snapping a woman's neck, and I can only imagine the shitstorm that would've caused...they probably would've had to figure out another way to handle it. Still, the way Faora goes out in the final movie is slightly unsatisfying considering how much weight they'd given her as an antagonist in earlier sequences.

he left the ship with the genesis chamber because he's the general, and he takes care of the Most Important Thing while his foot-soldiers do the foot-soldiering. it makes perfect sense to me: remove the genesis chamber from the main ship in order to provide a smaller and secondary target - i.e. to divide the attention of any attackers.

i think that faora was only the "principal physical antagonist" for Superman because she happened to fight him first, and in the first major set-piece; and she wasn't any more "evil" than zod - she was simply the mouthpiece for the philosophy of moral indifference to human life, shared by all of the kryptonians (or at least by zod.)

 

[Cinescott]

What's up with all the "shaky cam" work in this movie? Are dolly tracks extinct? I don't mind a bit of shake to add some realism and effect, but it felt like this whole film was hand-held and intentionally moving all the time to avoid being 'boring." It's difficult for the eye to focus on anything. Maybe it's easier to hide CGI mistakes that way. Slight of hand.

The desaturated look is getting annoying as well. Whatever happened to full color? I'm sure it's chalked up to "artistic creativity," but 95% of the films out there today seem to be making the same choice. Full color seems like a no-brainer choice for Superman. Bright-red cape, blue suit? Instead, everything gets a lifeless look. Baffling to me.

And yes, the product placement was the worst I have personally ever seen. "How does The Man of Steel shave?" Why, with Gillette Steel Razors, of course! This is made painfully clear BEFORE the movie even begins, in an annoying 60 second commercial prior to a feature I paid $9 to see. Not happy with that. The other painfully obvious inserts of iHOP and Sears were icing on a tasteless cake. I don't mind a bit of realism with every-day logos, etc., but in this case the camera lingered on them just a touch too long.

I also noticed many blatant ripoffs from other movies:

Did anyone else get an "Alien" (i.e. Ridley Scott) vibe from Krypton? What about the "pods" or whatever they were? Matrix, anyone?

The whole "singularity" thing was from Star Trek 2009.

The ship lingering over Metropolis brought me right back to District 9, not to mention the "drill" from Trek.

Etc.

MOS left me cold, and I was in the frame of mind for something different. This just wasn't it for me. Costner and Lane were good and well-cast and that was about it for me. The rest was a CGI orgy-fest.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I happened to have time-shifted Superman Returns (from FX) and watch it last night, it was really jarring to see that kind of movie-making in contrast with MoS's hand-held, "modern", camera-shooting style. I prefered the SR style.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Honestly, I have zero issue with the "shaky" cam (which I really didn't think shook all that much) or the color palette. Stylistic choices rarely bother me in films, though.

 

[Simon Massey]

Talking of homages I was half expecting Faora to yell to Zod, "Good call, my young Padawan" when Zod told them to concentrate their fire on the door at the beginning. Would be interesting to know how many felt this was a better film than Superman Returns. Whilst I enjoyed SR much more, I know the film had a lot of detractors.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I didn't call it "shaky" cam, just "hand-held", it's definitely a director's choice in using "hand-held" vs. the more conventional style of movie-making. I do notice it as the camera operator has to move around to get the footage, sometimes it's okay, other times it's a little distracting with the bumps as the operators moves the camera around.

 

[Cinescott]

Personally, I liked "Returns" better, even though it admittedly has its own problems. I suppose I coined the word "shaky" for MOS because the energy of the movie is amplified with a lot of intentional, quick camera movement. They should have a disclaimer for people with epilepsy. The "quieter" scenes seemed hand-held to me, but the CGI had a lot of camera shake added to modify the explosion and damage effect. Artistic choice and sometimes effective, but hard to watch for 2.5 hours, simply because there is so much of it. They could have easily cut a half hour out of this and come out with a better movie, IMO.

I'm a big Donner Superman fan and that fact likely skews my comparison of MOS and Returns, but i did go into this with an open mind and a "let's see what they can do" attitude.

I have little doubt MOS will do well and be a big-seller on physical media (another corporate tie-in before the show started, encouraging the audience to pre-order the disc at Wal Mart. Also a first for me. The pre-orders are now being encouraged before I have even seen the film once.)

I have nothing against people who like MOS above all other Superman iterations; I'm an older guy and kind of set in my ways, but I doubt I'll get this one on Blu-ray. I certainly don't think it would fit into a box set with the other 5 films. Radical departure and I suppose the filmmakers ought to be applauded for that.

 

[Tino]

Talking of homages I was half expecting Faora to yell to Zod, "Good call, my young Padawan" when Zod told them to concentrate their fire on the door at the beginning. Would be interesting to know how many felt this was a better film than Superman Returns. Whilst I enjoyed SR much more, I know the film had a lot of detractors.

I watched Superman Returns the other day and man is that a mediocre film.As has been mentioned before, pretty much all Superman does is some heavy lifting. The plot is so weak and apart from Brandon Routh who did an admirable job as Superman( although I much prefer Cavill) I thought the film was very miscast, especially Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. Bryan Singer recently said that Returns was "geared more to be romantic than an action packed dark edgy summer flick which was probably a miscalculation " and that it had a nostalgic whimsical tone that not everyone responded to. I thought the effects were hit and miss with some really bad cgi. And the whole tone of the film is uneven. IMO, Man Of Steel is superior in every aspect. A true Superman film. Btw, MOS will have out grossed SR by the end of this weekend.

 

[Simon Massey]

I think it was the romantic element of the film that worked the strongest for me in SR. I don't mean the romance between Superman and Lois, but the romantic and nostalgic view of Superman as a character that the film tried to tap into.

Still this is an MoS thread so will try not to derail it. Just wondered how people felt this compared to it.