More reactions, written live as I watched the film tonight.
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I'm gonna get this out of the way: I hate this film's color palette. Superman should not live in this morose, dreary, grey world where there's no real color.
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“Everyone on Krypton is already dead.”
“What about those guys on the rig?” “Forget them! They’re already dead!”
God I hate this nihilistic recurring theme in Snyder’s work. (Literally, he uses that line all the time in his films.) I’ll give him some credit and acknowledge that Clark rejects that concept when he saves the guys on the rig (though, again, the climax of that sequence should have coincided with the climax of the film). But he embraces it whole-heartedly in the Krypton prologue, turning Jor-El into an action hero who doesn’t get to show tenderness to his son because he’s busy being a badass and then dying a macho death.
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The very first time we see Lois Lane meeting Clark Kent, he of course rescues her from danger. After Clark has destroyed the security robot that attacked Lois for boarding an ancient Kryptonian ship, however, the scene becomes more disturbing. First Lois is depicted as being overcome with fear, and Clark decides to physically overpower and restrain her. Then we get a plot contrivance to justify a deeply disturbing image: the robot had struck Lois with a tentacle, and we see her bleeding from an abdominal wound as she lies prone before Clark. He declares that she is bleeding internally and the wound must be cauterized or she will die. He warns her that this will hurt, and then uses his heat vision to cauterize the wound. The plot contrivance turns this into an act of mercy, but as the camera pans away, it is hard not to see this as a symbolic act of sexual violence. I cannot help but think someone wanted to find a plot excuse to justify seeing Clark Kent make Lois Lane scream in agony as she lay prone before him.
And he never asks her permission.
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When Perry White refuses to public Lois’s account of discovering an alien ship and being rescued by Clark, she leaks her story to a website notorious for publishing what we would today call “fake news.” I can only hope this dude isn’t supposed to be the DCEU version of Alex Jones.
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I like the pseudo-art deco Kryptonian aesthetic. The whole “Kryptonians are genetically coded for their jobs/Clark is their first natural birth in centuries” thing is… fine. I’m not against it but I’m not convinced it was necessary except as a plot device to make Zod want to find Clark and kill him.
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I love the ominous Hans Zimmerman score but wish it weren’t associated with the Kryptonians and plaid the first time we see the Superman costume.
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I hate this whole recurring element where Clark is always this alienated, disaffected, persecuted loner wherever he goes. That’s not who Clark Kent is. The best version of Clark is that he’s not the kid who got called a freak at school -- he was the kid who fit in, and who made friends with the kids who were called freaks, and who got the bullies to back off. There are good versions of Clark where he’s a bit alienated, left behind -- not called a freak but maybe lonely and ignored, but not angry and resentful. He still goes home to his Pops and Ma and feels connected to them. Snyder’s Clark is an incel in the making.
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I do love this scene in the Arctic where Superman flies for the first time. It’s wonderful. And yes, Jor-El’s voiceover about Clark helping humanity accomplish wonders is good. I don’t really like the Snyder version of Jor-El, but that part is good.
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I don’t like this thing where Lois immediately figures out that Clark is a superhero right off the bat. It gives her some interesting business in THIS movie, but it leaves her with nothing to do in subsequent films.
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C’mon, Zack Snyder. That is NOT what Diane Lane looked like in 1990 and you know that as well as I do.
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I really hate how the Kents in Snyder’s version are these misanthropic jerks who think Clark doesn’t have a moral responsibility to help people. We DO get a glimpse of Jonathan as selfless near the end of his life, where he risks his life to protect humans and animals in the tornado. But the whole bit where he’s ready to sacrifice innocent schoolchildren undermines that. As does Jonathan and Martha’s shared that humanity would reject Superman.
The bit where Clark lets Jonathan die was stupid because there are too many scenarios that are too easy to imagine where Clark could have saved him without exposing his secret. (Hell, “Clark saves people without exposing his secret” was the plot of every Smallville episode for ten years!)
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This whole thing where Lois follows a trail of stories to dig up the truth about Clark makes it hard to believe that he gets to keep his secret identity later on. Though I suppose I like the idea that the entire town of Smallville is collectively in on his secret and keeping it for him. Makes it hard to imagine people in all those other places wouldn’t expose him, though.
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Zod’s Kryptonian forces are nicely creepy, particularly their introduction, their disruption of the North American power grid, and their communication signal on all the world’s TVs. This sequence takes a lot from horror films. I do really like that.
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Channel Awesome’s parody of Man of Steel hits the nail on the head in its take on the Clark-visiting-a-priest scene, with the words slowly becoming more and more audible of someone saying, “I. Am. Jes. Us. I. Am. Jes. Us. I. AM. JES. US. I. AM. JES. US. I! AM! JES! US!”
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This probably exemplifies in one little nugget what I hate about Snyder’s version of Superman in general. In the church scene, Clark has told the priest that he’s the Kal-El that Zod announced to the world he’s searching for. (Why Clark is in a Catholic church when he’s coded as a Protestant in most versions is a nit-pick I’ll only note in this sentence.) The priest asks him what his gut says. Clark replies, “Zod can’t be trusted. But that’s the problem: I’m not sure the people of Earth can be trusted either.”
This. Just… This. It’s the anti-Superman ethos. Superman is, above all, a man of the people -- he’s supposed to be someone who loves and believes in humanity. Not a misanthrope who doesn’t believe people can be trusted.
The movie tries to make up for it by having the priest say, “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith first. The trust part comes later.” But that’s just not something Superman should have to learn. That should already be in his DNA.
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Also, the idea that the people of Earth cannot be trusted never gets followed up on in the film. There's no moment of humanity doing some wonderful thing that makes Superman realize the people of Earth can be trusted. It's lazy to drop an important theme like that and then never pick it up again.
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Continuity nit-pick: It’s a little weird how Perry White and Jonathan Kent and everyone acts like the world would totally freak out if they found out aliens were real, when Wonder Woman 1984 reveals that the world pretty much already learned about supernatural/fantastical events 29 years earlier. But maybe they’re thinking specifically of all the riots from the third act? And of course, it's not Man of Steel's fault what a movie made seven years later did.
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The Superman-in-handcuffs scene is good. No complaints here. This is one of the few times pre-Justice League I feel like Superman is actually Superman.
Well, okay, one complaint. It’s petty, but I don’t think Superman should say, “You fear me because you can’t control me. You can’t and you never will.” It’s TRUE, but Superman wouldn’t say that. He would say something like, “I understand why you’re afraid of me. But I am not your enemy.” He wouldn’t feel the need to spell out “You fear me because you can’t control me” because that’s just being kind of a dick. Superman would be emotionally secure enough not to need to establish his dominance that way.
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I like the business where the other Kryptonians get messed up because they haven’t adapted to Earth’s environment like Clark has. The bit where Clark starts coughing up blood is a bit much though.
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The similarity between Zod’s Kryptonian crest design and a hammer-and-sickle is a bit offensive.
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I like that Zod’s whole motivation is an understandable desire to resurrect Kryptonian society coupled with genocidal imperialism. It’s a very relatable set of emotions and certainly evokes more than a few parallels to settler-colonialism.
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Superman buried in a field of skulls is a bit much.
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Ghost Jor-El the action hero. Sure. Fine. He overshadows Clark just a little bit but then this movie has a weird thing with dads.
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Man, IHOP sure paid a lot of money to get its logo in this film.
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Listen, I understand reacting angrily to Zod threatening his mother, but God do I hate this whole thing where Superman actively destroys buildings to defeat Zod even though that endangers innocent people. That kind of callous disregard for collateral damage is exactly NOT what Superman is supposed to be like.
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Meanwhile, I just do not believe that there’s any real possibility Clark has kept his secret identity after Zod and his crew target Smallville. Even if the town of Smallville is keeping the secret, how could there not be five million journalists descending upon Kansas, walking up to the Kent Farm, and asking, “Hey, so, why did General Zod target Smallville? And why did he target YOUR HOUSE in particular before hitting the rest of the town?” It would be next to impossible to keep people from putting two and two together.
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“And if history has taught us anything, it is that evolution always wins” is the dumbest fucking sentence in the entire movie.
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Sears paid some logo money too I see.
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This movie is a combination of implicit anti-militarism subtext in the Kryptonians (particularly the way their uniforms literally evoke death itself) and explicit pro-military imagery in the depiction of the U.S. Armed Forces.
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Superman is incoherent. Textually, he wants to save everyone and that’s why he tells the residents of Smallville to flee and tries to save U.S. soldiers. But we also see him deliberately lead the Kryptonians into heavily-populated areas to do battle and make no effort to lead them out from Smallville or Metropolis.
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The Kryptonian World Engine is a nicely creepy threat. I like the use of the Ominous Kryptonian Theme with it. And the name is an awesome bit of reto-futurism.
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But, the framing of the Kryptonian ship that descends upon Metropolis uses a LOT of 9/11-imagery. Twenty years after the attacks I’m still not sure how I feel about the use of 9/11-style imagery… though I’ve long felt that the explosion of superhero movies since 2001 is a direct reaction to 9/11.
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Jesus Christ, does this movie love to jack off to U.S. Air Force planes or WHAT?
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My objections aside, Superman is fighting the World Engine, Lois is trying to drop the science bomb on the ship in Metropolis, and I am finding myself loving this movie a bit in spite of his flaws. Its characters have clear objectives and motivations, and its thematic content once the present-day plot kicks in has been mostly unobjectionable (graded on a curb for U.S. military idolization). And Superman saving the world from Zod’s imperialism is a genuinely thrilling opening story.
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I say that, and then they immediately turn up the 9/11 imagery to overload, and this pisses me off and is honestly kind of offensive.
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But Perry White gets to be heroic and I am here for it.
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Superman has destroyed the World Engine in the Pacific, but now we’ve reached the point where the destructive imagery in Metropolis can only reasonably be described as apocalypse porn, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
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“If you destroy this ship, you destroy Krypton!” “Krypton had its chance!” Jesus, Clark, social darwinism much?
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More apocalypse porn. It’s really too much for a film that children ought to be able to watch with their parents.
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Military dude destroys the Kryptonian ship and sucks all the Kryptonian ships except Zod by… 9/11-ing the alien ship with his airplane.
Jesus, Zack.
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“A good death is its own reward.” That’s uh. That’s a little fashy there, Zack. Little death-cult-y.
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The kiss scene is good. I like it. Also, Perry White must know he can never assign Lois to write about Superman after this.
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Zod’s monologue is good. Delusional but good.
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The Superman/Zod final showdown. Just turns the apocalypse porn up even further and it’s just Too. Much. And once again, Clark making no effort to lead the fight away from Metropolis!
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“Either you die, or I will!”
Listen, this whole thing where we need to “justify” why Superman doesn’t kill, to establish that it’s because he had to kill once and it was so terrible he realized he must never do it again, is just… gross. The idea that you need a JUSTIFICATION to not be willing to kill people is deeply disturbing.
It’s also just a bad way to do Superman, because Superman is supposed at its core to be an optimistic children’s story about a morally just Apollonian hero who defeats Dionysian forces. It’s not supposed to be a morose, nihilistic story about a good man’s original sin for which he must spend his life seeking redemption.
There are two ways to do this story, then. In the first, Superman just does not kill, and he finds a way out of making that choice.
In the second way to do this story well, Superman WILL kill a villain if it’s impossible to avoid, but it’s not framed as a moral defeat or as something for which Superman must seek redemption. It’s not a thing where he does it, saves people, but then the “be disturbed and unsettled” music plays -- it’s a thing he does that the narrative does not frame as a failing.
Either of these two options are valid ways to do Superman. But this whole “we need to justify why Superman doesn’t kill so we’ll have him kill Zod to save innocent people but frame it as a moral failing from which he seeks redemption” is just… gross. And it plays into a nihilistic idea that there’s no such thing as true goodness.
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Clark destroying the drone was cute.
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This whole thing where child-Clark puts on a red towel and pretends to be a superhero would be great in another story. But it’s so meta that it undermines verisimilitude -- how could there be red-caped superheroes for Clark to imitate in the early 1990s if he is Superman??
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Clark getting a job out of nowhere at the Daily Planet is not super-believable… unless you assume that Perry White put two and two together after reading Lois’s leaked story and saw the Smallville attack, and already knows Clark is Superman.
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Overall, much better than I remembered it being! I did enjoy it in spite of its flaws. This is probably the least Zack Snyder-y of all his films. Clark is the closest to his recognizable self here, the villain’s motivations and plan actually makes sense, and the narrative frames most people sympathetically.
Clark MOSTLY feels like Clark in the present-day scenes, but that’s because the present-day plot is working against the characterization established for him in the flashbacks. His flashback self is all about feeling angry and resentful and alienated, about only helping because he’d feel guilty not to. His current-day self wrestles with whether or not to turn himself over to Zod at first, but once he does he’s fully committed to the idea of doing what he can to save the world. Even before he turns himself over, we don't get a sense of present-Clark as angry and resentful or alienated -- even though the Clark-at-restaurant flashbacks had him as all of those. There's no real sense of why Clark started being less anti-social between the flashbacks (even the recent flashbacks) and the present-day sequences; it's just a fiat accompli.
This is good insofar as Superman should be fully committed to the idea of saving the world and being heroic. It’s not as well-executed as it ought to be, though, because, again, the flashback sequences establish this tension over whether or not he’ll Do The Right Thing, but then resolve that tension very quickly. Those flashbacks should have been more interspliced with the present-day plot, and either should have been resolved when Clark commits to turning himself over to Zod or when Clark defeats the World Engine in the Pacific.
There are also some definite Snyder-isms that creep into this film that hint at the nihilism toxic masculinity that will reveal themselves in Batman v Superman: a preoccupation with (bordering on fetishization of) extreme violence that goes right up to the line of being inappropriate for a movie with a significant child audience; subtexts of sexual violence against women; the appropriation of deeply-disturbing real-world imagery vis-a-vis the 9/11 allusions; characters whom the narrative expects us to agree with depicted as casually endorsing horrible beliefs (letting a bus of children die, humanity as too inferior to accept Superman, social darwinism justifying Kryptonian extinction, imagery idolizing the military, a fashy death-cult celebration of “a good death”).
Again, I return to the death of Zod and the way the narrative frames it. This just isn’t how you ought to do a Superman movie. Either, the narrative should depict Superman as refusing to kill and finding a way to stop him without it; OR, the narrative should depict Superman as willing to kill bad guys in extreme, unavoidable circumstances, and should frame it as something that is okay in those circumstances rather than as something that tears Superman apart with guilt.
Because at their core, Superman stories are stories for children about having morally righteous power. There’s nothing wrong with deconstructing that idea -- Batman v. Superman tries but fails to deconstruct Superman and would have done better if it had done so on those terms -- but that deconstruction should probably be done in either smaller stories aimed exclusively at teen and adult audiences, or should be done in Superman-pastiche stories. Doing it in a big-budget, this-will-be-a-definitive-version-of-the-story-for-millions-of-people movie is just the wrong way to adapt an icon; it sends disturbing messages, particularly to children, that I'm not sure the creators even understood they were sending.
And running with this idea that Superman is NOT wholly righteous in his power but is instead a deeply flawed person who needs redemption for this terrible thing he did… is not true to the spirit of Superman.
In fairness, Man of Steel does not linger on Zod’s death. It moves on pretty quickly once his neck is snapped. (Again with the extreme violence!) In most of the present-day scenes, Superman is just Superman.
But when you combine that “Superman as guilty for killing Zod” concept with the earlier scenes of Clark as morose and resentful and alienated… I’m sorry, but it 1) creates an incoherent character, since he’s so much more well-adjusted in the present-day scenes until he kills Zod, and 2) leaves an impression of an angry, alienated, guilty character who lives in a defeatist, nihilistic world instead of an inspirational, life-affirming hero.
There’s a lot here I like in spite of all that, but that stuff does weigh it down. B+ on the strength of the rest of it.
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Tomorrow, Batman v. Superman. Ugh.
