I got to see the ‘Man of Steel’ during the Friday afternoon showing of its Premiere. A previous attempt to attend the special opening last week with my twin bro and his wifey didn’t work out because tickets were sold out way in advance.
Anyway, I braved the bad
reviews (truth be told, critics don’t usually favourably review
B-movies) to watch this new version of Supes; I definitely did heed
the warning about how post-processing washed out the colours in this
movie in the 3D version, and decided to watch it in traditional 2D.
[Disclaimer: Two
super-hero movies that I actually enjoyed (but got panned by critics)
will inevitably end up being part of this conversation: Ang Lee’s
HULK and Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS. It was to be expected
once we ended up in reboot land]
The film gets off to a
good start with an expansion of the world of Krypton. Like one critic
had mentioned, a whole other movie could have been based entirely off
the visuals presented in the first 20 minutes. I certainly enjoyed
the new take on Jor-El.
After that, we dive
into the ‘second movie’, with its quite jarring non-linear
narrative. Don’t get me wrong, non-linear narratives can be pulled
off well. ‘Batman Begins’ (my best
movie in that trilogy) did a great job with a non-linear narrative,
but that movie was presented as an Origins story. Why it failed in
this case is because we have Zack Synder and Co. trying to give us
this new version of Superman without giving us a detailed history
(…because that’s what causes Origins stories to drag out so
long); hence, in essence, we are supposed to believe that this is a
totally new take on Superman, but where the production and script
fail to give us any guidance and direction we are supposed to
recollect upon Superman-lore and fill in the gaps.
This new take on
Superman makes him look particularly weak, and nothing exemplifies
this more than the ‘Jonathan Kent incident’. By trying to make
Pre-Superman Clark more restrained in the use of his powers, they
insert one of the most half-hearted attempts at a noble gesture by
Jonathan Kent – death by tornado (the traditional heart-attack
wasn’t good enough anymore, huh!). Not only was Daddy dearest the
wrong person to be risking his life needlessly in that situation (God
Complex!), the object of his sacrifice is no less than the family
pooch. Don’t get me wrong, I love when animals survive. Why, I just
remember that part in INDEPENDENCE DAY when the alien ship is
annihilating a bunch of humans on the highway, and Vivica Fox (with
child in tow) finds some form of shelter in
a tunnel, and their lovely dog races against all odds to find shelter
in the same tunnel. Sure it sucks, but seeing animals (dogs in
particular) survive is uplifting. Not so much in this movie; by
trying to distance Clark from his SMALLVILLE interpretation or
anything else currently out there, we are treated to the weakest most
impotent version of Superman ever portrayed onscreen. Before Superman
could FLY, before he could even LEAP over those tall buildings, he
could at least RUN… and RUN VERY FAST he could! Unless running fast
seems like a stupid power to show off in this Pre-Justice League
Universe that they’re setting up (which includes a hero, THE FLASH,
known for just that), there was no reason for that whole scene; it
diminished the movie with all its talk of a Superman Unbound with
regards to showcasing his powers. All they succeeded in doing here
was flipping our notion of Clark’s two fathers: Jor-El is a true
warrior in this one, and Jonathan Kent is the troubled overbearing
father who gives Clark one heck of an outsider’s complex.
Next up, Lois Lane!
Ben, a good friend of mine, reminded me that this is possibly a less
stuck up version of Lois who won’t fawn over Superman while
mistreating Clark as was the case in the days of old. But nothing in
this whole production convinced me that she was a Pulitzer Prize
winner. Bryan Singer and Kate Bosworth’s
version of Lois may not have been liked, but now, even 7 years after
watching it, I can still remember why she was a Pulitzer Prize
winner: ‘The World without Superman/Why the world doesn’t need
Superman’ story, which was key to the events of SUPERMAN RETURNS.
What do Snyder/Nolan/Goyer put out there that makes me believe that
this Lois is a laureate besides what she claims? Nothing at all!
The dearth of
characterization with regards to Lois seeps into the supposed
Superman-Lois chemistry. Let me clarify that there isn’t actually
an ADULT Clark Kent in this movie. We get a view of baby Clark
through to Teenage Clark, then we skip on
over to the ‘drifter/hobo’ characterization in which he uses
falsified identities. The only time we kind of get a glimpse of ADULT
Clark is when he is with Martha Kent, his adopted Mum. So, going back
to the Superman-Lois story, in this movie, Lois only interacts with
Superman. She knows nothing about his earthly background, she only
knows of his godhood. Hence, by trying to get rid of the
Superman-Lois-Clark love triangle, they’ve actually only left us
with the Superman fan girl (groupie) version of Lois. I challenge
anyone to show me how she can possibly connect with the angst that
Superman feels about the great big No No that he commits in this
movie. Heck, I can’t even see why she kissed him (unless we're
talking about ‘Groupie’ Lois).
Alright, enough
Lois-bashing! Back to Supes! Bryan Singer gets a bum rap for SUPERMAN
RETURNS (yeah, yeah! Kryptonite and no super baddies to fight it out
with), but he showed us something that Superman is really good at
doing: Saving people, and saving them in really spectacular ways
(from a plummeting plane, from a sunken ship, from falling glass,
from the Daily Planet’s Globe, from an
explosive gas leak, from Lex’s expanding Island, from gun-toting
thugs, etc.). This time around things couldn’t work out this way
because of the scope of the movie and its penchant for destruction,
but it is certainly insulting to have Superman save a
terminal-velocity Lois for the second time and then indulge in
kissy-face as if he just won an Oscar. OK, I get that we can’t
return to the silliness of having Supes reverse the earth’s
rotation or ‘pound on the walls of reality’ to reverse the
carnage, but please, don’t try to give saving hapless Lois a
gravitas that it does not deserve…unless you’re trying to tell us
that the more realistic-darker version of Superman is a sadist. New
Supes can’t even save his Mum properly: notice that when he begins
to put a pounding to Zod for threatening his Mum, he’s already
miles away, but has left his mother in the clutches of
2-equally-murderous super baddies. Luckily for us, the story played
out like bad A.I. from a computer game and all the baddies chased
after Supes without frying his Mum for her impudence.
Oh the scope of this
movie! It got too big for even them to handle. Bigger
doesn’t necessarily mean better. Richard Donner must have known
that, and thus wisely chose to split this whole Origin-Zod Saga into
two complete movies. Even the idea of ‘adding a super baddy to
pound the heck out of’ doesn’t necessarily save your movie. Case
in point: Ang Lee’s HULK vs the reboot INCREDIBLE HULK. One scene
in particular takes the cake – THE DOGFIGHT. The intensity Ang Lee
put into that one scene made it a truly visceral experience. That
mere dogfight trumped the big (?) Hulk Vs Abomination showdown in the
reboot by a mile. Goes to show that you can often do More with Less.
I’m not averse to enjoying a good punch-up onscreen (actually been
craving a good one for some time), but this movie left me craving the
levity and heroics of SUPERMAN RETURNS.
Last gripe, that’s
one heck of a bland super suit? Sure, new Superman, no undies on the
outside, Darker Supes for the new generation … Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Okay, I get the Siegel/Shuster court-ruling kinda put a lock on the
old design. (DC, just pay up and help redeem the back-story to this
whole Superman creation affair). Back to the movie then – I get
that the suit is Kryptonian-ish, but why is it Red and Blue? There is
no basis for those colours this time around. This time, because there
isn’t an Adult Clark-Superman dichotomy, Superman merely wears the
suit because Daddy gave it to him (maybe this was a way to explain
why the suit is as durable as Supes is without that projecting a
‘protective aura’ explanation). The whole “Mother sewing up the
suit/Baby Blanket as Cape/Concealing Identity” angle works far much
better.
Superman for the new
generation certainly left me feeling a bit
marooned. This is not the Superman I know (felt more like Superman from Earth-Two). Actually, no one could
really know this Superman because he just isn’t fleshed out. Heck,
some producer could just have likely substituted Will Smith’s
HANCOCK character for Supes in this movie and we would have had a
great HANCOCK 2: BATTLE OF THE GODS.
I recommend that you
go watch this movie for the spectacle it is, then go back and watch
SUPERMAN RETURNS and appreciate just how much Bryan Singer got right
(…and apologize to him if you were mean to him
God Bless.