MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

That's one of the things I love about John Williams and Michael Giacchino, they both have a style that is recognizably theirs, but at the same time they can change enough elements of it that it fits the movie/TV show they're working on.

 

The same thing happened on Superman Returns. The suit looked beautiful in reality, but the final grading on the film made the suit (and everything else in the film) look dingy.

 

Confused Matthew's review is finished. It's very funny. Link

He makes a valid point that it makes no sense for Zod to complain after his soldiers disappear to the Phantom Zone and he says there's nothing left: he still has a chance to save his people with the codex at that point in the film.

 

From this thread, six months ago:

 

I haven't seen the others but I thought R.I.P.D. was a decently serviceable Men in Black ripoff. It's not particularly noteworthy but Jeff Bridges & Ryan Reynolds bring enough charm to it that it's worth spending a couple hours watching it if you don't have anything better to do.

On the other hand, Man of Steel was just such a downer and so thoroughly missed the point of what a Superman story is supposed to be. It may have had excellent production values but it loses too many points in the plot category/story/character.

 

I popped by a friend's house and his sister was watching it, so I caught a bit from the middle. Maybe I missed something here (or maybe it was the editing, which was pretty awful throughout) but how did Faora get hurt? Here: she beat up Superman, and she took some hits from him herself, and she was able to withstand gunshots galore, yet all of the sudden she gets wounded, is unconscious, and is carried back to the ship by a subordinate. Did the military have Kryptonite in the shells they were shooting at her?? I don't remember Ursa getting knocked out in the original film. I mean, if Faora can give Superman a pounding, what could the military possibly do to her that would render her unconscious?

 

Toward the end of their fight, Superman broke her breathing-mask-shield-thingy just like he did with Zod. Her "you will not win" speech was as it was disintegrating. I guess it's implied that she passed out from being unable to "adjust" to Earth's atmosphere.

 

Ah, thank you. That makes some sense.

But the editing was so erratic. And it caught me off guard that she was invulnerable and then somehow she was incapacitated.

Thanks

 

I never noticed the dingy color but you're right. Compare




Both Returns and MOS look dark and opaque compared to Reeve's costume. A brighter costume would be appreciated.

 

It's almost black, in broad daylight.

 

Yes.

 

Just turn the saturation up on your tele.

 

Jonathan Kent's death ruined the film for me. It's a freaking Tornado. I think you could make the argument that under all the excitement, noise and debris flying all over the place that people what they saw was probably the result of all the excitement. Seeing someone walk to and from a tornado is about as weird as seeing someone just standing there unaffected by the tornado until it completely covers him up.

Also, you're getting no sympathy from me if you think teaching your son a lesson is worth leaving your son guilt ridden and your wife a widow. For a Super Hero movie, nobody seems to give a crap about the life in general. If anything is inconvenient? Screw it. Let's all welcome death with open arms.

 

The film wasn't simply desaturated, it was color-corrected to within an inch of its life. You can't undo it with a simple button push. ...if at all.

And that shot of Returns' suit is a promo, showing it in a good light. Wanna really despair? The doco "Look, Up in the Sky" featured several shots from the then upcoming Superman Returns before they did final CC. Here's an example of the shot from the doco (top), then the shot from the finished film (bottom)...



(Obviously the jpeg quality is not great, but you can see the startling difference. To be fair, the film shot is from the DVD (which has horrible compression) ...the Blu-ray is better than that.

 

^ Aye, I guess Singer was going for some sort of classic feel on top of the sets, costumes, and general production design with those mud-colored filters, but the result is downright garish. And while I haven't seen the full fan edit itself, this color-corrected fan edit preview by one Booshman is a huge improvement over the official film.

In terms of overall color tones, MOS is actually pretty darn close to Superman Returns, but you're right, it's much more color-corrected than it is filtered, so I highly doubt similar results to the above could be achieved by fiddling around with the color balances at home.

 

A couple of Man of Steel questions:

1. How old is Zod? In the beginning when he is on Krypton he looks like he is in his late 30s early 40s. Then when he arrives on earth 33 years later he should be in his 60s! Yes, they do age him a bit but he isn't portrayed as a man in his 60s. So how old was he?

2. We see Clark at age 33 working on a crab ship and then at a bar. We also see him around the age of 12 or so and then again when he was in late teens early 20s around the time his father died. What do you think he was doing in those years from 20 to 33?

 

Re: A couple of Man of Steel questions:

I got the impression that his aging process had been slowed by time dilation during his space travels, he looked to me to be in his late Forties by the time they hit Earth.

Walking the Earth. Like Caine in Kung Fu. Meeting people. Having adventures.

 

Wasn't Zod in the Phantom Zone for quite a while?

 

No. Zod said that the destruction of Krypton freed him and his people.