MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

My gut reaction is to say go Hobbit, but the CGI in Elysium was incredibly realistic. It truly looked like those locations existed in real life with depth and weight.

 

I'm not surprised Man of Steel didn't get nominated. It didn't look that great, and all the elements in it have been done before. In fact, Man of Steel made me think that today's summer blockbusters are written by ILM. "We have building collapse simulations from Transformers. Let's collapse buildings in STD and Man of Steel. We have water simulations from Battleship, let's have a flying aircraft carrier in Avengers and the Enterprise rising out of the waters in STD." Etc...

Well deserved. After having read about the production process, I also hope for Best Director and Best (Supporting) Actor. Because Gravity is an entirely different beast of filmmaking. And the end result is marvellous.

 

In other news, Man of Steel nabs the #4 spot of The AV Club's Worst Movies of the Year list, beating A Haunted House and Planes. Justice is served!

 

By whose lights?

 

That's just dumb. Yes, Man of Steel sucked, but it was a relative level of suck. Great acting, competent script, fantastic special effects, and exciting action scenes. Man of Steel nailed the basics and no film that does that should end up on a worst film of the year list. Worst film of the year that grossed over $100 million domestic? Maybe.

 

Agreed. MoS might not have been the greatest thing I ever saw, but it certainly didn't suck. I thought it was fine.

 

The AV Club gave MOS a C+ in their review, but year-worst lists are a time for score-settling and entertaining writing, not an objective and fair collection of the lowest grades or most wanting production value assessments.

 

Eh, I thought Man of Steel was okay but I wasn't wowed by it. I felt a little numb after the last 45 minutes of seemingly non-stop action. I think I would have liked it more if it had more of an emphasis on story/character as the trailers sort of suggested.

 

I can understand if MOS just didn't grab you or interest you for whatever reason, but by no means does it deserve to be on any "Worst Movie of the Year" list. Not when there were movies like RIPD, After Earth, Scary Movie 5 and Grown ups 2.

 

Just as an FYI, the Blu-ray is $9.99 at Best Buy right now:

Best Buy Link

And Amazon is price matching.

 

"Worst Movie of the Year" lists are always dumb, because chances are the actual worst movies of the year haven't even been seen by anyone. The movies that end up on those lists are usually high-profile disappointments, which is why "Most Disappointing Movie of the Year" would probably be a better title.

For me, the most disappointing movie of the year was Star Trek Into Darkness, but I would never argue that it's actually the year's worst. The same goes for Man of Steel. Both movies are technically impressive and very competently made in many ways, but just happened to treat their source material in a way that upset a lot of fans (myself included).

 

Disappointment requires expectation. I've seen many films this year without knowing what to expect, and they were just bad.

 

Agreed about STID being most disappointing. As a huge fan of the first film and the reboot idea, I was really looking forward to seeing the followup... but the final product was so generic and derivative that it just killed my interest in the new universe completely.

And I can understand fans being similarly disappointed with MOS, but for me edgier real-world approach was exactly what I had been wanting to see from a Superman movie for years, so I had no problem with it at all.

 

Yeah, I was going to wonder if the AV's list really wasn't a list of the Worst Movies of the Year [That Anyone Actually Gave a Sh*t About]... but I've only ever heard of three of the other candidates.

I like the AV Clubs' commenters, though. A rare example of an article like this online where the comments are actually entertaining and not an endless parade of butthurt and counter-butthurt and racist / misogynistic slurs and non-sequiturs complaining about liberals-and-Obama. One guy puts the "disappointment" angle that AvBaur mentions nicely:

Excellently captures why I'm more troubled by the AbramsTrek films -- though they didn't suck for me as much as TDKR sucked for this guy -- than I would have been if they'd simply (with a few tweaks) been sold as Star Wars or Buck Rogers films. By contrast I liked MOS just fine... but then I had no particular expectations of it beyond that it deliver some good superhero beatdown action.

 

I thought that the cinematography and soundtrack of Man of Steel ruined the feeling of the film a great deal.

 

Okay, I'm biased since I wrote the book, but I loved the look of the movie. It looked completely unlike any SUPERMAN movie I'd ever seen before, which was kinda the idea.

At times, it looked like an Alex Ross painting brought to life. Or maybe a Superman movie filmed in the style of a paranoid conspiracy thriller or alien invasion flick. Gave the movie a whole different feel than, say, the Christopher Reeve movies or Lois & Clark or whatever.

 

This sums it up for me as well (well, all except writing the book part ). I can understand why this film did not appeal to everyone (for a host of reasons that need not be rehashed here) but I applaud the filmmakers for doing something different (I tend to applaud such initiatives even if I don't like the final result--though I liked this film just fine).

 

Agreed. In fact, my biggest gripe against Superman Returns was that it copied TOO MUCH from the Chris Reeve films, right down to the dialogue, which was intended to be homages. Which, while in the Reeve movies was fine, but in Returns, came off as non-sequiturs.

That said, while I enjoyed The Man of Steel doing it's own thing, I was really disappointed in the soundtrack. It sounded too much like the recent Batman films which was not at all appropriate for Superman. But then, it was the same filmmakers, and the same composer, so what do you expect?

 

Agreed. I thought the stark and gritty cinematography was one of the strongest parts of the film, and really helped ground a lot of the fantastic stuff happening in the story.

Although that being said... I can't help but wish the new Superman costume looked half as good in the movie as it does in the behind the scenes footage on the blu-ray, before the colors got muted so much in post-production.

It's an absolutely stunning suit to look at in natural light, and it's a shame so much of that got lost along the way.