MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

This is, of course, an awful lot of money and a sequel must be assured. However, if one were a 'glass half empty' type person, one might look at WB's expectations before release. Jeff Robinov had hopes that it would be their biggest ever performer, outdoing Harry Potter or The Dark Knight:

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/w...-priciest-incarnation-of-superman-1200493334/

There's a long way to go before MOS ends its box-office run, but compared to the cash cows above, it's not yet a massive, massive hit.

 

Or, as a Superman fan, he's just happy to see another Superman film.

 

I know he followed X-Men in his youth and in college. Superman though... Outside the Donner movies. I don't think it was really his cup of tea and it was more of a job he netted after making successful X-Men films.

 

I do not think they will use it as heavily as they did in this one (nor that they should), but some flashbacks for Pa Kent are not totally unreasonable.

Simply because COSTNER!!!!!!

I didn't really mind since didn't numb me in the same way that Transformers 3's action did. That was just a constant assault on the senses for a huge portion of the movie, this I actually got involved way more in.

Yeah, I meant that, I just failed at writing in that bit



Actually one thing I didn't mention that deserves mention is Hans Zimmer's score. I'm sitting here listening to it, and while it's granted not the most original thing in the world, it does have some really nice themes and works like gangbusters with the movie. Which in the end is the best thing a score can do.

 

You could be right, he may just be a fan of Superman: The Movie rather than Superman himself.

He did say this though; "I'm very anxious to see the new one. I'm a fan of Zack Snyder, so I'm actually really anxious to see it." If he's not a big Supes fan, but he is a Snyder fan, not much reason for him to cry, surely?

And in 2006 he was philosophical about his place in the chain:

"This torch is kind of heavy. Before being handed to me, it was passed from one talented artist to another - from comic book illustrators, to animators, to musicians, to writers, and other filmmakers - continuing a tradition that was started by two kids from Ohio back in 1938. [...] Eventually it will be passed to someone else, and like me, they'll quickly realize how heavy it is. But also like myself, they'll have the support and strength of not just the artist around them, but all those who came before."

 

Also, again, the rule of thumb is that movies need to make twice the costs in gross revenue before it is assured of making a quick profit on the theatrical release alone. Twice $375 million is $750 million. The movie has had a fairly sharp drop (what's called front-loaded) and there are only Brazil and Japan remaining for the large foreign releases, according to boxofficemojo.

Well, we're talking Hollywood (spiritually, if not physically,) where thumbs are made to be broken. Any film can have a different revenue sharing agreements. Plus, some of the costs are likely creative accounting. It is certain the movie will end up making lots of money. But greed is easily disappointed. A quicker turnover on borrowed money is higher profit. How disappointed with they be? Only their shrinks will know.

 

Bryan Singer is busy directing X-Men: Days of Future Past, surely to be one of the biggest blockbusters of next year, so I doubt he's getting glassy eyed.

 

Yeah it helped that the movie had actually got me emotionally invested in the story by that point, so I cared about what Superman was doing and wanted to see him prevail.

Plus it was basically just Superman vs Zod, so it wasn't THAT hard to follow the action-- unlike the TF movies were there's about a dozen different robots and humans running around and you can barely keep track of who's doing what.

He also had some interesting comments about SR in the EW article a few weeks back. Talking about how it was supposed to be a nostalgic tribute to the Donner movies, and how he realizes now that's probably not the kind of Superman movie people were expecting to see.

 

I just want to preface my review by saying that I loved Superman growing up. I had the action figures, I watched the Kids WB series when I was a teenager, I saw the movies with Christopher Reeves when I was about 5 years old and kept watching them, played the Nintendo video game, and watched re-runs of the television show from the 50s on Nick at Nite. My first dream was to be Superman. I was 5, but that was my career choice at that age.

I thought Superman's origin story was more compelling than the action sequences. It's just my personal taste. They destroyed a city, they destroyed that town in Kansas. They killed people in both of those things. And as man who doesn't look for action films because of the lack of respect for life in them, I found every death except Zod's, his father, and the general on the plane, treated like an action film. I didn't like all the action. Too fast for this old man and too much like a video game. Some of the dialogue is heavy-handed and dramatic, too. That's where my complaints end.

The emotional heart of the film, Superman's origin, coming to understand himself and his place, and whether earth would embrace him was good and I wanted more of it by the time I left the movie theater. I think he earned the reputation he has on earth in this version of the movie. How would we treat an alien from another planet? Look at how we treat aliens from other countries. This was realistic. I think that the acting--from Amy Adams, Henry Cavill, Lawrence Fishburne, Christopher Meloni, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe--is fantastic. This was a compelling movie, even when, especially Russell Crowe's dialogue, was heavy-handed.

I loved this movie's heart. I didn't appreciate the action as much. It was a situation where I felt like I needed Maalox with my popcorn because of the stakes. I wondered how they were going to get out of it. By the end, I realized that Superman could've just killed them all and it would've been a shorter movie, but it's his compassion that allows him to defend, and not kill. Having Superman responsible for the end of Krypton (even though it would kill all humans and life on the planet) was a nice twist and one that could have consequences later on.

All in all, I gave the movie a solid B. I enjoyed it more than Star Trek Into Darkness this summer.

 

If anyone's interested, yet another super-interview:

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=82499

 

I've gone on record saying that the first of the Bay Transformers movies is one of my favorites of the last ten years, but even I admit that they got really messy as the movies progressed. Best thing about Transformers 3 was seeing Patrick Dempsey play a humongous douche.

 

In what I think is the best piece written about MOS so far, Film Crit Hulk totally nails all the things that don't work about the movie: http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/03/film-crit-hulk-man-of-steel

 

Which I am very excited about. It's his chance to right wrongs set by Brett Ratner and X-Men 3. Funny, Singer is in a way responsible for Superman Returns and X3 both rubbing folks the wrong way in theaters.


Also found another MoS/Avengers comparison pic. Have a laugh

 

Keep in mind, it wasn't Loki's aim to destroy Earth or kill anyone (except the Avengers) it was to rule them but first demoralize them by killing off these heroes. Zod's aim WAS to kill people. Everyone, in fact.

 

I liked a lot of things about this movie - especially the Krypton backstory, the exploration of what it was like for Kent to grow up with a super-vision, super-hearing and super-strength and how this made things complicated, and the fact that they've gotten rid of the ridiculous "Lois can't tell Clark Kent is Superman" premise. I liked the way they waited until very late in the movie to use the word "Superman".

On the other hand, I didn't really buy that Clark would let hid dad die and the whole scene felt contrived to lead to Jonathan's death. Then there's the big Superman/Zod fight, which, as lots of people have pointed out, takes place in populated areas and would result in massive civilian casualties, but the movie doesn't even mention anything about that, as if nobody was in danger of dying until Zod tried specifically to kill those few people we saw. The Superman/Lois kiss and relationship talk felt shoehorned, they were attracted to each other and intrigued by each other, but there was nothing else to suggest they had reached that level yet. There's also a bit too much speechifying and declamatory lines, and too little wit. Maybe I just got spoiled by Marvel movies. Poor Henry Cavill in particular got some really clunky lines, especially near the end. "I'm from Kansas, I'm as American as you can get" and the cringeworthy Lois/Supes exchange after the kiss. Most of the few attempts at humor in the movie were pretty bad.

On the other hand, when Zod said "There is just one way this can end, either I'll kill you or you'll kill me (quote by memory), I wished for a moment that Supes would reply with the obvious and logical comeback: "Well, technically, those are two ways". But they set it up and squandered the opportunity.

 

Um, no that's still just "one way". That way being: one of them kills the other.

It would be two ways if he said "Either I kill you... or we stop fighting each other and go out for sundaes."

 

Interesting read, but the idea that people like the movie only because they "don't understand character and drama" is just ridiculous. We ALL have movies that we love that others don't respond to, and vice versa.

MOS obviously has a different kind of plot structure than people are used to, so I can understand why some may have a hard time connecting with it (and maybe the filmmakers should have been more aware that would be a problem). But there were many others who had no problem at all adjusting.

And I disagree that Clark has no character arc in this, or that the flashbacks serve no purpose. Yeah Clark has an innate goodness to him (as he should), but he still goes from being this fearful, uncertain boy who thinks he's a freak, to a man wandering the world looking for answers, to a confident hero who finally realizes his destiny as the protector of mankind. He's hardly the exact same person all the way through.

And the flashbacks do a great job getting us into his head, and understanding why he's so hesitant to reveal the truth about himself (the reaction of the bus children's parents), or why he's so conflicted about what to do with his powers (because so was his father). And when we see the flashback with the bullies, we understand how hard it must be for Clark to actually fight someone for the first time (and yet at the same time how liberating it must feel to finally let out all that pent-up anger he must have).

 

Thanks for this thoughtful reply. I certainly didn't need to read Hulk's screenwriting 101 course--his exposure to film must certainly be limited. I would like to suggest a number of classic films from the sixties and seventies, and directors, who do things contrary to his beliefs.

 

^ Come on now, we're not talking about art films from the 60s & 70s here (and I'm 100% certain Film Crit Hulk has seen his fair share of those, as have I), but about a big, mainstream summer blockbuster. And as such, Man of Steel doesn't really work on a dramatic level.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things about the movie that are quite enjoyable and I actually mostly had a pretty good time with it while it was playing. But it didn't resonate for me beyond the surface level in the way the very best blockbuster movies do and I never really cared about the characters, and that's precisely because of all the things Hulk lists in the article.

 

I guess we have to disagree there. I really enjoyed the movie quite well and liked Kal-El's character arc quite a bit. Apart from that Kevin Costner was the only one of the supporting cast who really had any development.

But on the story side, it was quite refreshing to not get the same old story structure that we've had so many times before. You can make great movies without following the same formula.

I remember Ang Lee's Hulk as another movie that got a lot of similar criticism that I really enjoyed.