MAN OF STEEL: Another look

Another great thing about that clip is it reminded me to mention the 'wind blowing' sound effect from the Superman TV series revisited for this film.

*cue someone complaining how sound wouldn't work that way at those speeds*

 

And there is nothing really that states he had to be in the fortress all the time for that period. For all we know he could have been traveling the world during those years.

 

He was traveling galaxies, according to the film

 

^ OH NO 9/11 imagery!

And look here, destruction porn!
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BJ1-trrgqc[/yt]

 

It's a sad truth that, post-9/11, no one takes a big threat seriously in an action movie until the villain's killed or critically endangered thousands of people and a lot of infrastructure. What might once have been the climax of a battle is the intro to it now.

 

1. It was an empty city and people did not die
2. The excessive destruction had a purpose -- to show how rash and irresponsible Superman is. To show how he has fallen from the hero that he used to be.
3. The destruction was shown in a negative light and people, such as Captain Marvel, were disgusted by Superman's actions. Superman's actions hurt the reputation of the Justice League and empowered power like Amanda Waller and Lex Luthor to stand against them.

 

Okay, they can make Superman movies only for the preschool and K-12 crowds - the old target audience for comics, back in the day anyway - but they better not spend more than a few million dollars on it, or they'll lose their shirts.

 

I know. I watched the show back in the day. I was lampooning criticisms lobbed at MOS for the mass destruction in the film. When in truth such levels of destruction are apart of the Superman genre and have been for decades. I attempted to find Superman's fight vs Doomsday on youtube, but all I found were amvs.

 

<<Okay, they can make Superman movies only for the preschool and K-12 crowds - the old target audience for comics, back in the day anyway - but they better not spend more than a few million dollars on it, or they'll lose their shirts. >>

He was referring to the Justice League episode which featured an empty city that was being constructed and had not been moved into yet. So it literally was an empty city.

 

Right. It was a ploy by Luthor to discredit Superman. The city (or suburb) being empty makes perfect sense in the context of the episode. It wasn't the typical "Monsters attacking the abandoned warehouse district" excuse that Power Rangers pulled out every week.

 

yes, but, as is said above the episode is basically a 'what not to do' if you're Superman. He comes out looking horribly.

The baby in the video's head would've exploded if they'd showed him the plane sequence from Superman Returns.

 

Superman was a jerk in the episode but he was dealing with one of Luthor's schemes. Earlier in the episode some stole several pounds of weapons grade Kryptonite from Star Labs. Luthor admitting to using it in his reactor to power the city only raised Superman's suspicions. It's not like Luthor isn't a habitual liar. Captain Marvel came off way to naive in this episode. The wisdom of Solomon should've put him in tune with not trusting Luthor at his word. Substitute the Joker in place of Luthor and Batman in place of Superman. If the Joker had stolen materials to make a bomb, and told Batman they were constructed in to a benign generator; do you think Batman would believe him? No.

Point of the clip was to show that when megaton characters fight on Earth everything around them shatters, breaks and crumples. You see this with Superman vs Captain Marvel, Atlas, Hercules, Doomsday, Zod etc. Trot over to Marvel and it's the same thing when Hulk goes at it with Thor or other Hulks, Thor vs Hercules, Thing vs Black Bolt, Colossus vs Juggernaut etc etc. Property damage on a massive scale is what happens when super strong characters collide.


In other news though. Marvel's Editor and Chief gave his thoughts on MOS. Read here.
http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2014/04/28/marvels-quesada-zod-was-the-hero-of-man-of-steel/

This guy is so far out of touch it's not even funny.

 

Comic book author Grant Morrison (All Star Superman, New 52 Action Comics Superman volumes 1-3, 1990's JLA volumes 1-4, Arkham Asylum) has given his own scenario of how MOS should have ended.

"You mentioned Superman earlier, and I just wanted to thank you for that one beat in All-Star Superman where he stops on the building and just hugs a girl who’s about to kill herself. That’s one of the best and most powerful Superman moments I’ve ever seen, and, holy jeez, I’m tearing up right now just thinking about it.

GM: I did as well! What I love most about that is that it’s actually real kids’ lives! You can look this up online. Kids writing in saying ‘I was about to commit suicide and I read that scene and I didn’t,’ and then other people said ‘that happened to me as well.’ For me, that’s Superman! That was how Superman works. He’s not real, he can never be real, he’s never going to break anyone’s neck, but he just saved a kid’s life. A creature of paper saved a kid’s life, and to me, that’s what’s great about comics and about superheroes. They don’t have to be real to be functional.

Speaking of Superman breaking necks, what did you think about Man of Steel?

GM:I try to just take things on their own level. I enjoyed a lot of the film. It’s not my Superman in any way, but I enjoyed a lot of the work. But I just couldn’t buy into snapping Zod’s neck. Superman would have got Zod and flew him to the moon and punched the shit out of him on the moon. Superman thinks ‘Zod’s getting his powers from the sun, but he’s only been here for a few weeks, he won’t be that powerful. So it’s basically my power against his.’ That’s what happens in my scene. Then he hits him to Mars. Then he hits him to Pluto. The two of them punching it out on the barren, black landscape of Pluto.

Yeah, I’d rather have seen that!

GM: Then Zod’s losing his powers, and Superman’s maybe losing his a little bit, so who goes first? That would be my version. To me, Superman’s the one character who solves problems by NOT killing people. Honestly, I think that should be a rule, because there’s no others. It makes you think differently if you’re doing it. You can’t just solve this problem Elliott Ness would solve it or the way Arnold Schwarzenegger would solve it. You should solve it like Superman would solve it.

I don’t know if Arnold Schwarzenegger solves any problems.

GM: (laughs) He causes more problems than he’s ever solved. But just for your imagination, just to allow you to play with that as a concept. But filmmakers have got their own ways of looking at things, and there’s this idea of trying to make everything grounded and real, and so obviously they believe that it’s real that most of us would snap the necks of our enemies, given the chance."

Full article here.
http://www.craveonline.com/comics/articles/732981-comic-con-2014-grant-morrison-takes-on-hollywood-in-annihilator

 

I find it interesting that Morrison would be against it since when it comes to Batman he tries to embrace all levels of comics continuity, and the real Superman in the 80s comics executed Zod.

 

It's the weirdest frakking thing. Grant Morrisson and Mark Waid took issue with the level of destruction and Superman killing in MOS. But in later interviews they said the level of action in MOS was fine but the collateral damage in civilian areas is what bothered them. So it's a matter of venue that rustled their jimmies. Superman and Zod fighting in a city is wrong, but Superman wailing on Zod from Earth, Mars and all the way to Pluto is ok.

Also with the scenario Morrisson outlined, it makes it seem like he's ok with the villain dying, just as long as Superman doesn't kill him. Idk about you but dying of asphyxiation in space would be an ugly way to go. I don't see how Superman comes away more of a hero allowing Zod to suffocate in the vaccum of space than Superman choosing to break Zod's neck in the defense of that family and all of humanity.

 

I'm not really sure why people are just focusing on this episode. There were plenty of others involving Superman duking it out with some supervillain or giant robot/alien monster in the heart of Metropolis, as numerous buildings got either partially destroyed or leveled along the way (and that's not counting the animated movies where they dialed the destruction up to 10).

Granted, it was a cartoon, and far less grounded than MOS purported to be, but it still makes it clear that this is something pretty common in the Superman world.

 

I loved MOS. It is by far my favorite Superman movie. I actually am tired of the Superman caused all of the destruction arguments. I was fine with the level of destruction as it was depicted and feel that Superman ended us saving more lives than deaths that were caused. I also had no problem killing Zod, I am one of those that felt he killed Zod in Superman II. But as long as it was done with a bit of humore people were fine with it.

 

Yesterday, I picked up Man of Steel at Target, and today I watched it for the first time in close to two years.

It has what I would call "pilot problems" -- it spends time introducing us to characters who would probably show up in later films and do stuff, like the Planet staff, when they aren't strictly speaking, necessary for this film. Setting that aside...

I really enjoy this film. The cast is pretty much perfect. The story hangs together. (And the only destruction that can be squarely laid at Superman's feet is Smallville; he was the one who escalated that situation.) It has a fairly strong emotional pull. Zack Snyder basically made a Terrence Malick Superman movie.

I know that people criticize the ending of the final battle, but there's no other way it could have ended. Zod had made it more than clear that he wasn't going to stop his destructive rampage. It was clearly not the choice that Superman would make if he had a choice, but the point was that he didn't have a choice.

The "happy ending" codas didn't really work for me. Not that they're bad; they just feel out of place. A Malick-y flashback, maybe to Jonathan and Martha discovering the rocket, followed by Superman in space watching the Earth and then the fade to credits, would have felt truer to the film for me.

I'm curious how this will lead to Batman v. Superman, and I hope there's a Man of Steel 2 after that at some point. I want to see more of Amy Adams' Lois. Hell, give her a solo spin-off movie.