IIRC the battle with the villains in Superman II involved a lot of collateral damage, was at least meant to be a catastrophic and convey that the city was being wrecked, I thought the fighting in MoS was similar in intention and even spirit, and similarly successful. The battle and violence in SII weren't R-rated level of intense and neither were they in MoS.
DC Movies - To Infinity and Beyond
- Thread starter dahj
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IIRC the battle with the villains in Superman II involved a lot of collateral damage, was at least meant to be a catastrophic and convey that the city was being wrecked, I thought the fighting in MoS was similar in intention and even spirit, and similarly successful. The battle and violence in SII weren't R-rated level of intense and neither were they in MoS.
Buildings were collapsing in MoS. People were running for their lives as the city crumbled around them.. Superman and Zod fought on stop of Metropolis that had become dust.
If you think that the battle in Superman 2 (where Superman leaves in order to save lives) is similar to MoS, where thousands probably died, words fail me. We just see the same movie in such dramatically different ways that there's no point in discussing it.
It's fine. Because to be fair, no amount of internet discussion is going to turn me around on MoS. I thought it was terrible when I walked out, and year and years of the internet trying to convince me that I "just didn't get it" hasn't worked either. It was so bad I have successfully avoided Bats V Superman, and I have no regrets.
I should thank MoS, actually. It was a lesson that has saved me time and money.
MoS is like five 9/11s at once.
That fact that doesn't register with people is ... concerning.
That fact that doesn't register with people is ... concerning.
I keep pushing the like button to this post, but, it only let me likes this once.
I haven't. I saw the movie in theaters and once from the library to be absolutely certain it was as bad the second time around (actually it was worse). If the extended edition ever popped up on Netflix or so I might give it a shot to see if it fixes any of my issues, but I'm certainly not going to pay for it.
Also, to be fair, I haven't seen Batman and Robin since the 90s, either, and I mostly just think it would be easier to rewatch because it's so ridiculous you can laugh at the stupidity of it. It's the superhero version of Plan 9 from Outer Space. (Like I said, I haven't seen Catwoman, so no judgement there.)
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In regards to the further discussion going on in the thread I will stick up for Man of Steel. Yes, it was brutal in the damage, but that's hardly a disqualifier in the average action movie and I don't hold Superman responsible for the damage since the whole point of the story is that he's completely new to this and doesn't know exactly how to do it perfectly. But he does still save the entire world even if he can't protect everyone. The movie has a few poor choices at specific points, imo (by far the worst of them being the way the final scene completely and totally ignores the mental, emotional and physical wreckage of the climax), but overall I thought it was a good foundation to build on and an inspiring story of a man learning to believe in himself and trust in others. I think Cavill's character (originally) was almost perfectly encapsulated by Zimmer's theme, with the quiet, extremely hesitant beginnings that grew and grew and gained confidence until finally becoming triumphant, but not without some pain along the way. That may not be what a lot of people wanted out of Superman, but I thought it was a really good character piece regardless, and I've liked it more every time I've rewatched it.
This is also part of the reason why BvS and JL work so badly for me, because that motivation and struggle and gained trust in humanity is just gone in BvS and Clark spends the entire movie just brooding about abstract philosophical issues and focussing on everyone else without even for one second acknowledging his mistakes from MoS and doing anything to try learn from them (which would've been the right way to steer MoS's Clark towards being a more traditional Superman). Then in JL he's just resurrected with a totally different personality just because, which is then also almost immediately replaced with a totally other different personality just because, all while Cavill's performance was constantly undercut by the terrible mustache cgi. But then, as I said, pretty much nothing about JL worked for me, so what happened with Cavill is probably the least of it.
No, the two could not be more different. In Superman II, the focus was on the civilians, on Superman fighting to rescue and protect them and the villains targeting them. Lester remembered what superhero stories are supposed to be about, which is protecting people. Snyder's destruction sequences failed because he had no interest in showing Superman rescue or help people, he just wanted an orgy of impersonal CGI destruction.
Also, the Metropolis battle in S2 is relevant to the plot, in that the danger to civilians motivates Superman to move the fight to the Fortress. In MoS, you could cut out nearly all of the city destruction and it wouldn't have any impact at all on the story. If you read a dialogue-only transcript of the film without having seen it, you wouldn't even know the destruction had happened, because nobody ever talks about it or is affected by it afterward. (You'd know that the Planet characters were running from something and Jenny got trapped by something, but that's about it.) Granted, the S2 Metropolis battle is also overly indulgent, drags on too long, and could be cut down substantially as the "Donner Cut" proved, but it's still mostly an important part of the story. And at least the gratuitous, self-indulgent bits of Lester's cut are still about the effects of the battle on people rather than just buildings, even if it's overly goofy slapstick effects.
Context matters too. For its day, the Superman II Metropolis battle was unprecedented, the first time a comics-style super-battle on that scale had been captured in live action. And it was all done with practical, live mechanical effects and stunts and miniatures and front-projection and hand animation and the like. So it was an impressive, even groundbreaking cinematic achievement and thus worthwhile as a creative and technical exercise in itself. By these days, large-scale CGI action or destruction scenes are a matter of routine to create, so the technical achievement itself is no longer impressive; it only matters to the extent that it serves the story and the characters. But the MoS sequence failed to do that.
Also, Superman II had that great moment where the Metropolitans believe that Zod's trio have killed Superman and they furiously rush them to avenge their hero, even knowing they're completely out of their league. I love it when movies show the civilians wanting to save the heroes in return, like in the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies. One of the strongest bits of Superman Returns is the moment when the citizens and cops and doctors strive to save Superman after he falls lifeless to Earth. The great thing about superheroes is how they inspire the people around them to be heroic. It's that human connection that Snyder doesn't know how to capture, or doesn't bother to try.
That's not a fair representation of Snyder. His movies do have Superman inspiring people.
Colonel Hardy, General Swanwick and Pete Ross in MOS.
Batman and Wonder Woman in BvS/JL. The motivator for those two starting the Justice League. Also sparking Bruce's change of heart. Not only by forming the League but also Bruce buying the Kent family farm back.
Think about the original Superman movies, with Chris Reeve. Supes inspired no one in Superman TM. In Superman II, you can argue the people of Metropolis rallying to Supes' defense against Zod was a moment of inspiration. But that was by Richard Lester, not Richard Donner. In Superman III (also by Lester), Clark inspires Lana to leave Smallville, move to Metropolis and get a job at the Daily Planet. However, since Lana is Clark's romantic love interest in Superman III, it's a partisan example.
In the same way Supergirl, Power Girl, Superboy (Connor), Jon Kent, Chris Kent, Lois Lane and WW are inspired by Superman in comics and other media. But as they're either related to him or romantically involved with him. So they are partisan when it comes to supporting him and being inspired by him.
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I'm not going to get dragged into another fight over this. My point is simply that just because Lester and Snyder both had big city-threatening battles in their movie climaxes, that absolutely does not mean that they approached them in an identical way. What matters is not what a filmmaker does, but how.
Merely pointing out Snyder does have examples of his Superman inspiring people.
Fun exercise. How many examples can you name of Superman inspiring people in movies, comics, shows and other media? The number will shock you with how few examples (genuine cause and effect) you'll find. Despite this being a "pass or fail barometer" recently applied to the character.
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Fair enough, mate. I'm not looking for a fight. I just wanted to bring attention that Snyder did have examples of Superman inspiring people. The omission and exaggeration of the things in Snyder's movies does color perceptions. Just want to get people to think and challenge some of their own notions. You may discover something.
I don't need to "discover" anything. I have actually seen Watchmen, Man of Steel, and Batman v Superman in their entirety (theatrical cuts only), so I'm basing my opinions on direct, firsthand experience, not secondhand accounts.
...yes, but you are debating an extreme point of view, rather than an objective one.
Exactly.
It's highly disconcerting that it goes without comment.
It registered with me. It was so triggering to have reminders of that horrible day blasted in my face for such a long time, with absolutely no story significance or reason to make me endure that feeling again, that I came within a hair's breadth of, quite literally, fleeing from the theater. I have never before or since felt assaulted by a movie.
And it's a shame, because I actually kind of liked the movie up until then, despite its yawning story flaws and the fact that it's basically a movie about the heroic ghost of Jor-El and his underachieving son. But that third act was so offensive and so excessive that it ruined the entire film for me.
Don't watch any Transformers movies... lol
Of course. That was addressing this in a realistic, timely manner, unlike so many other superhero movie and TV productions, where nonsensical crap just happens, like bad 1980s cartoons.
I wonder what your thoughts are on STID's finale. A film released in the same year and the same summer as MOS.
You never heard a complaint about this scene. The biggest complaints about STID were the rehashed elements of TWOK (which ST09 had used as well) and Carol Marucs/Alice Eve being in her underwear for a scene in the movie and a trailer.
2013 also saw Cobra bombing London (GI Joe Retaliation), Khan bombing London, Thor and Malekith wrecking London, and giant monsters and robots smashing up Hong Kong. 2013 really had it out for London.
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To be fair, Marvel addressed the damage of AOU with a whole movie as well...
EDIT: And AOU had the heroes go out of their way to save civilians.
I didn't care for the disaster porn there at all, and the film would've certainly been better without it, but it didn't go on remotely as long or go to the same extremes as the MoS sequence. It's not a question of whether such a scene was included at all, but the specifics of how it was executed. There have been a lot of movies with gratuitous, excessive disaster porn, but none that I've seen have taken it to the same lengths as MoS. The reason nobody complains about the sequence in STID is that the MoS sequence was so very much more extreme that the STID version barely registers in comparison.
I suppose it's possible, though, that part of the reason I was so disturbed by MoS's sequence is because I'd already had my fill of such imagery in STID's climax earlier that year.
I hate it. ID is my least favorite Kelvin film by a large margin. (And I say that as someone who regularly defends the radiation chamber scene.) The Vengence crash was completely unnecessary to the point of being thematically counterproductive.
There was a whole lot of discussion about it in the Kelvin forum at the time.
Well, GI Joe was an underwhelming (at best) film and Dark World is generally considered the worst MCU film. Both of which are pretty forgettable. So people don't talk about the destruction in those films simply because people don't talk about those films. And the decimation of the human race was kind of the whole point of Pacific Rim.
Whataboutism aside, I've been a huge opponent of the proliferation of collateral death in popular entertainment for years. I see it as a systemic problem - one for which Michael Bay was universally panned a couple of decades ago. Now people just shrug it off. And I think it's a minor symptom of a much larger problem. (One that exists well beyond the scope of this forum.)
People hate it because it's one of the most incompetently made "AAA" films of all time. Any said censure to the events of MoS is negated by the awful plot structure of the film - let alone the doubling down on the "justified killing" conceit.