MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A+

Astonishing.

Man Of Steel isn't a perfect Superman movie, I suppose, but there hasn't been one that's even a close second to it. They absolutely nail this as an re-introduction to the character for the current day. The Reeve movies were pretty good in their time.

And some people need to fucking look up the word "genocide." The only character in this movie who comes close to accomplishing that is - surprise! - the bad guy, Zod. His intent is to kill seven billion people, give or take.

Clark destroys a lot of data and apparently some 18,000 year-old Kryptonian fetuses, if that's what was in the birthing matrix. Oh, wait - the data's in his cells, so he doesn't even destroy that.

Brilliant. Loved it. There were moments that I was just giddy watching.

Everybody doesn't like anything. So nu.

It's dearly to be hoped that this movie influences the Superman comics a great deal, not to mention the little matter of setting the pattern for any other future Warner Bros superhero movies.

As for the boring horse race, I imagine this one is good for 300 million domestic.

 

[Hambone]

D. Below average.

I was really, really disappointed in this movie. I wanted to like it, since I'm a huge fan of Superman. If you took a room full of bored 13-year-old boys, gave them $225 million and told them make a movie, this is probably what they'd come up with.

This movie had absolutely no heart. I didn't care about any of the characters. It was as though three movies were crammed together into one, and all the best parts were left out. During the umpteenth fight scene I was looking at my watch and muttering "Enough!" You can't buy the audience off with CGI effects, especially when they don't move the story forward. The movie could have been 45 minutes shorter without any loss.

More than anything, it reminded me of Peter Griffin fighting the Giant Chicken on "Family Guy".

 

[Nerys Myk]

I was really, really disappointed in this movie. I wanted to like it, since I'm a huge fan of Superman. If you took a room full of bored 13-year-old boys, gave them $225 million and told them make a movie, this is probably what they'd come up with.

.

Nah, their movie would have a lot more boobies.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They're doing an extraordinarily good job of "buying the audience" this weekend, so you're mistaken. To be accurate, of course, the audience is buying them.

 

[Hambone]

They're doing an extraordinarily good job of "buying the audience" this weekend, so you're mistaken. To be accurate, of course, the audience is buying them.

I'm not saying people shouldn't see the movie, or even that it's a bad movie. That's not for me to judge. I just didn't care for it. That's okay, because I love lots of things other people can't stand.

Popularity is no indicator of quality.

By that reasoning, Justin Beiber is the best musician alive and Pabst Blue Ribbon is the greatest beer in the world.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

By that reasoning, Justin Beiber is the best musician alive and Pabst Blue Ribbon is the greatest beer in the world.

Don't care. This is the best Superman movie ever.

BTW, no problem with Superman snapping Zod's neck at all. As others have pointed out, this isn't novel for Clark - he killed Zod and two other Kryptonians he didn't think he could contain back in the Byrne era, as I'm sure Goyer was fully aware. And in the movie he clearly acted decisively in the only effective way that he could to save innocent lives in that instant and untold more in the future. Zod had made those stakes unequivocal and plain throughout their final duel.

As for the inevitable insistence "why didn't Superman do this?" or "if I can think of that then surely Superman could - " he's unmistakably expending every ounce of his strength and focus in that scene merely to prevent Zod from turning his head a fraction of an inch to incinerate human bystanders. There's no reason to doubt that if Zod were to break the headlock he would continue in that kind of random slaughter for as long as he could.

You know, it is almost too cute how Clark transforms into the more traditional image of the character in the last two scenes - bantering with the General about "where I hang my cape" and the way he introduces himself at the Daily Planet.

 

[BillJ]

A-

Damn near a perfect movie, though it could've used a few witty one-liners and a better score.

My wife hates Superman and says it's an 'A+' in her book.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Anyone else get a Bizarro vibe from the look of Zod? The Frankenstein hair and rough blocky features made me think of the character.

 

[Trekker4747]

I just got back from seeing it again and I still largely stand by my thought/opinions I had following last week's screening I went to. It's a good movie but I think flawed in many ways. (I think some of the action scenes pile on too much and get to be tedious.) And it's certainly not what I would think of as a "perfect" Superman movie but, then again, I'm not sure what would be. But I still really like and enjoy and it look forward to more installments. Amy Adams is a great Lois Lane, loved her in the part and actually liked Crowe more as Jor-El on the second viewing. I hope we get more of him (and maybe Lara as well) in a FoS in any sequel down the road.

Again, not perfect and I certainly have my complaints but it's still a pretty damn good movie. (I sort of wish, however, there was a title card at the beginning of the movie, perhaps following the Krypton segments.)

I do think a lot of the product placement (IHOP, 7-Eleven, Sears) was over the top. Hell, I live in a major suburb of Kansas City and I can think of only one place there *might* be a Sears but I haven't been there in a long time. I doubt a small town in the middle of Kansas is going to have one.

But, still, good movie. Still same issues around Jonathon that we've discussed and stuff we'll go on to discuss but, really, this is a good Superman movie that beats the socks off S:R.

 

[davejames]

Yeah I've been a Supes fan forever, but I have to admit the "Superman never kills" conceit has always seemed a bit silly to me-- much like the idea that "Batman never kills".... even though in the real world his severe beat-downs would almost certainly cause severe brain damage or result in quite a few deaths along the way (something I kinda wish the comics would be more honest about).

With all the immensely powerful beings and creatures Superman goes up against, and the threat they pose to humanity, it's only natural that he would occasionally find himself in a situation where he had no choice but to kill that being or creature in order to stop it.

He's not going to be able to magically pound it into submission, sap all it's powers, or send it off into another dimension like we see in the comics or at the end of every episode of STAS. In the grittier world of MOS, the only way to truly stop Zod was to kill him, like it or not.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And Clark is devastated and traumatized by his split-second and necessary choice here.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The town I live in has a Sears, but it's small mail order store, not a big department store. The Sears in the film looked the same. Like Smallville, my town is located in a mostly rural area.

 

[gblews]

Saw it this morning. Pretentious, stilted, humorless, emotionless. I had expected the movie to double down on Superman's powers the way Superman Returns did. Instead, because so much time was spent showing angsty, brooding, trying-to-find-himself Clark, we never got to see just how "super" Clark was compared with normal humans. Instead, most of the examples of his power had to do with his ability to simply survive fist fights with Zod's crew -- and he did, barely.

One of the things I didn't want to see in Nolan's "relatable" Superrman was a tamping down of his invulnerability and sure enough, by having him fight villains who were just as powerful as he (actually, they seemed more powerful), Superman was made to look more like "Averageman". One of the things SR did correctly was put Superman in situations where his uncanny super powers looked incredible. In MoS we see Superman get his ass kicked by a woman, and then explain it away by saying it has to do with Supes' moral standards. This was not good.

One of the critics I read follwing a link from this thread said that MoS was full of emotion. I totally disagreed with this assessment. I found the movie cold and lacking in any warmth. What the critic thought was emotion was just Cavil making faces and screaming a lot.

I liked Amy Adame but when did the love connection happen? I assumed that this reboot was just going to ignore the romance until the next movie but they managed to bum rush it into the movie before the credits rolled.

Maybe I'll like the sequel better. On the positive side, there was a lot of good action.

I give it a C-.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

This was unmistakably the most emotionally engaging Superman movie to date.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Reflecting on the movie some more, I think that I like the film that the first half of the movie was trying to be, and would like to have seen more of that. It's not that the film didn't have any warmth, humor, or heart, and it had plenty of good ideas...but all of that was overwhelmed by the relentless spectacle of the second half. They should have found an excuse or two to allow for some pauses in the action to better follow through on the things that had been started in that other film that we'd just been watching....

 

[P0sitr0nic]

I could watch a whole movie on Krypton...

 

[The Old Mixer]

Now Krypton...they almost did what I'd advocated doing several years back. They could have started this film on the fishing boat and allowed the audience to only learn of Krypton when Jor-El told Clark about it, flashing back to the part that we saw at the beginning of the film.

 

[sojourner]

I just love the wide range of the reviews.

 

[DaveyNY]

I just love the wide range of the reviews.

I wonder if there is any kind of age relationship to them...

Younger fans as compared to older ones.

There definitely seems to be a Classic to New Age preference theme, running in them.

 

[Gojira]

And as for Superman killing Zod, he did the same thing in Superman II, didn't he?

Eh - no.

Well, we don't know. But Zod, Ursa and Non all fell down a crevasse in the Fortress of Solitude after the Red Sun radiation de-powered them. Now in the Donner Cut I believe we see them being escorted away by the police (and even in the TV cut of the movie) but in the original, "official" version of the movie the fall down the crevasse never to be seen again. It's probably "safe" to assume they were killed considering, but...

That's that way I always took it. The three were killed in the fortress of solitude...but in a very PG way.