I really need to stop amping myself up for summer blockbusters right before they come out. Last year, I purposely avoided any mention of anything having to do with The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, and walked out of both largely pleased with each film. This year though I bought in to the hype. I did it with Star Trek a few weeks ago and I did it again here with Superman. Perhaps part of it this time around was a private, (desperate?) hope for something better than what we got seven years ago in Superman Returns, a film which while I do like and enjoy is also a film I can recognize for its many faults.
I've always had a personal affection for Superman because of my dad. It's appropriate then that I saw Man of Steel over Father's Day weekend because my dad, the journalist who, for years when we were children would joke with me and my brothers and sister that he really was Superman. And that the comics got it wrong, and Lois Lane was actually a nurse, because my mom's a nurse. As I got older I started to recognize another striking similarity between my father and Superman - both were great men who left their homes and their families (albeit under vastly different circumstances) to start anew here in the US. And so when I think about what the legend and the mythic idea that Superman represents means to me, its easy for me to equate my father with those same ideals. This movie though is not the kind of film that demonstrates those ideals in any way, shape or form.
What is Man of Steel then? Where does it stack up? Let's start at the beginning. There is no joy in this film at all. A teaser that is exhausting and overlong before a midsection that can't decide what direction it wants to zig-zag to anf from, and a overblown final act that that includes an endgame which flies in the face -pun intended- of the very definition of the character of Superman and what he represents. And the worst part about it is that it was entirely unnecessary to the film, included simply for the sake of including it to manufacture the choice that is made.
Henry Cavill makes for a good Clark and Kal-El. Just about anyone could have played Lois, Perry, Jor-El, or Martha based on the way the parts were written here as nearly tertiary characters. And where Benedict Cumberbatch spent the majority of his lines hissing and still making John Harrison compelling in the last Star Trek film, Michael Shannon spends most of his time yelling like a blithering idiot.
What really got me though --and I was genuinely surprised by this-- was that (SPOILER ALERT) the retcon of Jonathan Kent's death actually had me in tears thanks to Kevin Costner's performance. It's something of a Father's Day miracle (and no, the irony that I saw the film the night before Father's Day is not lost on me and probably is responsible for part of that single drop of emotional reaction in an otherwise emotionless film) because I usually can't take Costner seriously in anything that isn't Dances with Wolves or The Untouchables.
Despite talking a good game about the ideals that Superman is supposed represent and what Clark Kent is supposed to grow up to become, there is little to no demonstration or representation of this beyond powerful punches and mass demolition and destruction. Simply put, there is no wonder. There is no fancy at this amazing feat of flight. It's all paranoia and fear.
The Nolan-esque approach to the film is entirely apparent throughout though and where it succeeds immesurably in his Batman trilogy, it fails entirely here. Not because it's a different look or approach to Superman but because it fails to understand who the character of Kal-El, and by extension, Clark Kent and Superman are in the world they are supposed to exist in. Where Bruce Wayne was striving to a goal to rid Gotham of crime by using fear against his enemies, Man of Steel finds Clark aimlessly just stumbling along, doing good where he happens to be and spending half the time wishing he could just be left alone.
More egregious are the high hopes (ha!) the film pins on Jor-El's motivations in sending Kal-El to Earth at the beginning of the film - "He will be a god to them," he says to his hesitant wife, foreseeing a day when their son will save the people of the earth. "With them you will achieve wonders!" he says. And yet later it becomes painfully clear that this isn't film in which Superman is going to be worried about the rest of the world; it's America that's going to be the big benefactor. "How doe we know you're supporting American interests?" A general asks. "I grew up in Kansas!" retorts Superman. It's all glib and relies on the audience to discern that the earnestness, the wholesomeness of Superman is eroded away in favor of snappy comebacks and pseudo-wit.
Zod's plan is based in some sci-fi doohickey that basically amounts to the genocide of the human race if he succeeds. And Zod has a very good reason for wanting to succeed. But again the film skirts around the edge of this moral issue, with Clark right in the center of it but that's all the film does - skirts the issue. There's no accountability, no consequence to anything in the end. You may find yourself wondering
I've always liked that the mythos of Superman is one of hope. And yes it is steeped in classic elements of Americana, in the modern, post-9/11 world Superman has also become a symbol of hope for the entire world. And in case you didn't know that, both Costner and Crowe remind us about it repeatedly. Too, the film sets up Clark and the rest of Krypton in a way very similar to The Doctor and the oft-mentioned Time War over on Doctor Who. But the film itself fails to energize any of its ideals in any meaningful way, preferring to spend its second half recreating every overblown CGI cinematic climactic confrontation from the last 15 years and Superman becomes just another crazy sci-fi punching bag until he finally starts to fight back not with his wits (as the Doctor would) but with his fists, like a superpowered thug.
Even more disturbing is the casual and unimstakeable destruction of an American city on a scale I've yet to encounter in a comic book movie. And like Star Trek Into Darkness a few weeks ago, this cataclysmic reign of destruction and decimation is completely and totally glossed over in the final moments of the film as if it had never happened. No mention is made of the likely thousands of people who had to have perished. If anything it calls to mind those old Power Rangers episodes my brother and sister watched when they were young kids... every time those dopey robots knocked each other over and crashed into a very obviously cardboard "skyscraper" equipped with a squib, the first thing we always wondered was "how is it that that damn town has no casualties when this stuff happens?" -Here now, we see the big budget answer to that exact predicament and let me tell you, it's pretty fucking disappointing to see.
So in summation: Man of Steel is a washed out, colorless, joyless, humorless incoherent mess and indiscriminant assault to the senses. My dad however, has been and continues to be a pretty fucking awesome guy.
Finally: For your viewing pleasure, our family gift to Dad this father's day: a cedar tree - the national tree of Lebanon and which is proudly emblazoned on the national flag - planted in his backyard. A little piece of his home, joined with his his actual home. No cape, but all hero.
