MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

[Turtletrekker]

...and if a building collapsed in The Avengers, I don't recall it.

*pulls out Avengers Blu-Ray (as if I needed an excuse...)*

At 2:01:16, right inbetween Widow and Selvig discovering Loki's scepter and Stark asking J.A.R.V.I.S. if he is familiar with the tale of Jonah. You see a Leviathan plow through a building while chasing Thor and you see the building begin to collapse, but the scene cuts away before it collapses completely.

 

[Mr Light]

Surely the moment the alien ship appeared approaching Metropolis everybody started evacuating the buildings. I watched it again last night and I didn't see signs of anyone IN the buildings. When Supes and Zod crash through them they're empty. I *did* see streets full of cars though.

 

[JD]

The movie was fine, but

Snyder's addressed the criticism before, claiming the implied massive casualties of the Metropolis sequence were meant to give the film a "mythological" feel, and to give American audiences a sense of the power of the myths of ancient Greece, which were used to "answer unanswerable questions about death and violence."

that's just a pile of bullshit.

When the topic came up at the fan event, though, he took a different path, first offering his own estimate of the Metropolis body count, and then claiming that another superhero hit -- Joss Whedon's The Avengers -- was less sensitive about its city-destroying violence than Man of Steel.

“Probably 5,000 people [(died from the Metropolis attack]. For me, that was part of it. No, there’s real consequences … Not to compare, but if you look at ‘The Avengers,’ they trash the city and nobody thinks about how many people are dying.” Snyder said. "There’s a sadness at the end of the movie ['Man of Steel']. That’s a thing that weighs on Superman.”
​

That's an even bigger pile of bullshit. First, Man of Steel ends in the Daily Planet and everyone acts like nothing at all happened. Second, Avengers was a lot more concerned with the people in comparison. Almost everyone of the Avengers is shown to help innocent bystanders, and at the end of it all, we see a montage of interviews with New Yorkers. And New York isn't even trashed as much as Metropolis either.

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but yeah, he's full of crap there. The end of Avengers definitely dealt with the aftermath of it's battle a lot better than Man of Steel.

 

[DEWLine]

Interesting bit of trivia: I'm watching the DVD as I type this, and with a bit of freeze-framing caught the latitude and longitude for their version of Metropolis.

LAT: +37.1237 LONG: -76.3196

Google Earth puts it between Virginia Beach and Newport News. So, a little ways south of the position Snyder stated in news reports in Chesapeake Bay.

And the footage shows no time for evacuation orders to go out at all when Zod gave the "go" order.

 

[DEWLine]

For the southern hemisphere: -77.0000 + 37.8300

Subject to correction, obviously.

 

[Mr Light]

So in the movie, Metropolis is on the east coast and not in Kansas? I always get so confused about that.

 

[sojourner]

I forget, do we know what day of the week it is when Zod attacks? Maybe it was a Sunday and most of the buildings were empty?

 

[Saga]

I forget, do we know what day of the week it is when Zod attacks? Maybe it was a Sunday and most of the buildings were empty?

 

[TemporalFlux]

I forget, do we know what day of the week it is when Zod attacks? Maybe it was a Sunday and most of the buildings were empty?

You do being up a good point. There was a big deal about the alien invasion before this (television broadcast; ships in the sky). Do we expect no one to panic? Even Independence Day showed a spontaneous mass evacuation of the cities except for a few crazies (likely including journalists trying to get the story of the century).

A shame Man of Steel didn't show us this; but people wouldn't just go about their business and stay inside the big business buildings at their job.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

^ That is a good point. I forgot about Zod's broadcast. Listening to it again, and thinking about it in the context of the movie DCU (treat things like they're real). Found it on Youtube.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnNsIqc3EYQ[/yt]
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciwPv5vodmM[/yt]

If I saw this I would have freaked shit. Lois Lane and the people of the Daily Planet you can imagine would still be working because they're a news outlet. Most of the buildings in the final Metropolis fight were empty. All the people seemed to be out on the street in cars trying to get away.

 

[Turtletrekker]

So the collapsing buildings fall on them in the streets and kill them anyway. And don't think for a minute that there would be any kind of calm exodus. Panic in the streets would just cause gridlock and nobody would go anywhere.

 

[CaptainCanada]

So in the movie, Metropolis is on the east coast and not in Kansas? I always get so confused about that.

That's where Metropolis normally is -- it's a stand-in for New York. Some versions, particularly the TV shows, like to have it within a day's travel of Smallville, but that's atypical.

 

[Mr Light]

Isn't it also sometimes on the Great Lakes?

 

[Ovation]

Like most fictional locations, it's exactly where the story needs it to be.

 

[TheSeeker]

It's always been my understanding that Metropolis is an east coast city. When Smallville placed it in Kansas I was perplexed.

 

[Skywalker]

It's always been my understanding that Metropolis is an east coast city. When Smallville placed it in Kansas I was perplexed.

Same here. But when I went and looked it up apparently that wasn't the first instance of Metropolis being located in or near Kansas.

It doesn't really work for me. I've always pictured Metropolis on the East Coast, not terribly far away from Gotham City.

 

[sojourner]

I've always pictured Metropolis as New York and Gotham as Boston.

 

[Gojira]

Despite how much I like Man of Steel I still think my favourite Superman moment is from Superman Returns when he rescues the space shuttle and plane from crashing. The first thing I thought of when I saw that was the space plane scene from John Byrne's Man of Steel mini-series.

I agree! I loved Man of Steel but the rescue of the space shuttle and the plane is my favorite scene from any Superman movie.

 

[kirk55555]

I saw this last night. This was a fairly mediocre movie. I didn't hate like I thought I would, but it had a lot of problems. I'm not going to go into all of my problems, because a lot of people have brought up the same big problems I have with it. It had some stuff that was even stupider than I expected, especially Johnathon Kent. He was a complete moron, and just really annoying. The product placement for places like IHOP and Sears was hilariously blatant. Cavil was pretty bland as Superman, and Amy Adams was just ok as Lois. There were also a few poorly explained parts. I was really surprised to see Clark in the arctic when Lois was there. I don't think they ever gave an explanation as to how he knew that ship was there, and if they did it must have been glossed over. I didn't even know how he got there immediately, until I realized that the jobs and hitchhiking must have been to get to the ship. The "phantom drives" were also kind of confusing, as was the fact that krypton used to have space travel, but then stopped for no real reason (except they kept a few spaceships around to keep their prisoners ). You think anyone as smart as the Kryptonians would have realized the dangers of running out of resources and would have stayed in space to help their planet with that.

One thing I am wondering is how much time passed between his first talk with Jor-El and Clark putting on the suit and flying. It looks like it took him about 5 minutes to talk, put on the suit, and than fly. Why did he need the suit before flying? Is it some BS about his Dad's pep talk giving him the idea that he could, and before that he never thought of trying to fly? Whatever the reason, it was pretty stupid that a pep talk was all he needed to fly. I will say they actually used the flying in a way I've always wanted to see. Several times he just hovered instead of falling in a hole, and he even got up off the ground with just his ability to hover/fly, which I actually thought was pretty cool. Usually flying guys seem to only use their powers for flying of dramatic hovering, so seeing it used a bit differently was nice. Zod wasn't horrible, but he's no Terrance Stamp. I didn't find the destruction as unsettling as some. It was overkill, and there is no way that only 3,000 died, but I do have to say that Clark was probably responsible for less than a fourth of the stuff in Metropolis (although Smallville is more his fault). Zod's death was stupid. Clark should have been able to physically move Zod's body from the way he was holding him, or at least Zod's head.

Overall, this wasn't horrible (its much better than TDK or Rises) but its pretty mediocre. Maybe its sequel will be better. If Afleck's batman is written completely differently from Bale's and has some personality and charisma to make up for Superman's lack of charisma, I could actually see a decent movie coming out of this franchise. I'd also like to see more personality from Clark (and Lois). It could go either way, but I think there is hope for the Superman/Batman movie.

I voted for a D rating.

 

[sojourner]

I didn't hate like I thought I would

I am shocked! Shocked! to learn that preconceived notions didn't stand up to experience!