MAN OF STEEL - Grading & Discussion

[Jax]

Donner and Reeve understood this.
Snyder and Nolan didn't.

The original Superman is way way over rated (he turns the planet around to stop time FFS) the 1st half of the movie is pretty good but then collaspes afterwards. Despite the Donner Superman II cut being a really good movie I really find some of the humor in 1 & 2 so out of place, forced and akward. Lex and his bumbling assistant are AWFUL enemies whom I can't take seriously. MoS has been atacked in some sections for being too serious but why the hell should Superman be this grinning idiot, the weight of the world is literally on his shoulders.

I will take this more girtty version any day.

 

[Trekker4747]

Donner and Reeve understood this.
Snyder and Nolan didn't.

The original Superman is way way over rated (he turns the planet around to stop time FFS) the 1st half of the movie is pretty good but then collaspes afterwards. Despite the Donner Superman II cut being a really good movie I really find some of the humor in 1 & 2 so out of place, forced and akward. Lex and his bumbling assistant are AWFUL enemies whom I can't take seriously. MoS has been atacked in some sections for being too serious but why the hell should Superman be this grinning idiot, the weight of the world is literally on his shoulders.

I will take this more girtty version any day.

The Donner movie certainly has its problems, I think it falls apart about the time Lex Luthor and the Bumbling Bafoons of Goofy Theme Music come in, but up until that point it'a pretty solid movie that does have a bit more joy in it than I think MoS does. Mostly in look and tone, I mean there's a lot of fun in watching Superman fly around stopping rather mundane crime and then there's a LOT of fun in his reveal to Metropolis as he saves the helicopter, rescues the plane with the damaged engine, etc. I think that sort of stuff is lacking in this movie.

The Smith podcast does a good job of pointing this out: Where WAS the point where Superman has endeared himself to Metropolis and humanity? It doesn't seam to happen. I'm not going to get on the "he did more damage than good" bandwagon but hardly seems like there's really a moment where he does something in front of a large group of people as they rally behind him and cheer.

I think that's what people get at when they say the movie lacked "joy."

 

[Jax]

Where WAS the point where Superman has endeared himself to Metropolis and humanity?

When he saved the entire planet from invasion, what more does a guy need to do? This seems to be like the whole debate going on with older Trek fans and J.J new Star Trek & fans debate. People want Superman to be their old superman but everyone else has moved on. WB wanted a movie to appeal to a wider audience and it worked.

 

[Trekker4747]

When he saved the entire planet from invasion, what more does a guy need to do?

Problem is we don't see this happen. Which, really, is why Superman should have stopped the Metropolis-end of the World Engine for their plan to work. Because as it is now, Metropolis sees the thing just stop working and then disappear and then some guy and blue and some guy and gray throwing and punching one another into buildings for 20 minutes.

There's no point where Metropolis sees Superman stop something from happening, saving the city/world and then they rally behind him and cheer.

 

[TemporalFlux]

I liked the movie up to the point where Zod's neck was snapped. I did feel a little sick seeing that. As the movie had pointed out several times, Superman is a symbol of hope and an ideal; he's smart enough and clever enough to find another way. What happened in essence is that Zod explained to Superman that a never ending battle with Zod would be hopeless; and Superman agreed.

Of course, the comics dealt with this also in John Byrne's Superman #22:

...faced with a difficult decision of what to do with three depowered evil Kryptonians who committed genocide on a global scale, (Superman) chooses to execute them by fatal exposure to Green Kryptonite, watching sadly as all three of them fall.

That storyline led to a Superman consumed with guilt from this act; and he ended exiling himself into deep space so that he could try to cause no more harm in his solitude. Eventually Superman found redemption along with a piece of Kryptonian tech called the Eradicator:

In the distant past, a dying alien race creates a number of containment devices in which to preserve their culture. They send them into space with contact teams, intent on meeting other civilizations. When a small group of these aliens arrive on the planet Krypton, they are met by the militant Kem-L, who kills them and corrupts one of the devices. Its new mission is to preserve his ideal of Kryptonian culture by eradicating all others — and thus the device becomes known as the "Eradicator."

...

On Krypton, the Eradicator does all that it could over the years to protect Kryptonians, even from themselves. When a group of Kryptonian explorers leave Krypton in search of a new planet to colonize, the Eradicator alters their birthing matrices and makes them fatally allergic to lead, thus creating Daxamites. To further ensure that nobody left Krypton, the Eradicator alters Kryptonians by encoding in them a genetic defect so that they will instantly perish if they leave their world.

It is interesting how nicely that folds into concepts introduced in Man of Steel; and Superman The Animated Series already took the step of combining the Eradicator and Brainiac.

Maybe Goyer and Snyder have a grand plan, and Superman killing Zod is the start of it just as it started a saga in the comics. We'll see. But I still felt sick watching Superman kill.

 

[Trekker4747]

Really? Sick?

Look, I'm all for the idea of "Superman doesn't kill" but still there's times when it's called for. And, again, it was a case of what else was there to be done? Say he COULD stop Zod from killing the family and subdue him. Then what? Zod himself said he would not stop until all the humans were gone and Superman (as far as he, and we, know) had nothing else to do with Zod. And, again, he showed REMORSE over it. He broke down and WEPT. It wasn't something he wanted to do or something he liked doing.

I'll take that over Batman's "Well, I won't kill you. But I won't save you, either!" deal to Ra's in "Batman Begins."

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There was no other way for that character at that moment to deal with the situation. The "Superman would have thought of..." crits really consist of "the real Superman would have..." and the fact is that there neither is a real Superman nor has he been consistently written in the comics for seventy-odd years in a way that would satisfy the folks criticizing this movie.

I felt mainly empathy for Clark at having to put down the mad dog, and a little gratitude that Lois was there to support him.

In any event, the Donner movie was a mediocre Hollywood attempt at an "epic" that's redeemed mainly by Reeve's performance - very shakily supported by a script that takes nothing seriously. Man Of Steel is a far superior film in every respect.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, Supes breaking down in a "human" moment to be then comforted by Lois was great.

 

[Jax]

liked the movie up to the point where Zod's neck was snapped. I did feel a little sick seeing that. As the movie had pointed out several times, Superman is a symbol of hope and an ideal; he's smart enough and clever enough to find another way

In Superman II he takes away their powers making them human and then throws Zod down a hole to his death, thats way worse than Mos as Zod was no longer a threat. He had NO choice unless he wanted to see an entire family burn and potentially more humans could of followed.

This whole Heroes don't kill NO MATTER WHAT is a pathetic childish fantasy.

 

[TemporalFlux]

In Superman II he takes away their powers making them human and then throws Zod down a hole ot his death, thats way worse than Mos as Zod was no longer a threat.

That's also not what happened; it's just the assumption you make. The full cut shows Superman turning over all three phantom zone criminals to police custody after the events in the fortress. This was even broadcast on the ABC television version in the '80's.

This whole Heroes don't kill NO MATTER WHAT is a pathetic childish fantasy.

Well, I am sorry to insert fantasy into your fantasy movie.

 

[Trekker4747]

The full cut shows Superman turning over all three phantom zone criminals to police custody after the events in the fortress. This was even broadcast on the ABC television version in the '80's.

TV cuts are padded to fit timeslots. The official release of the movie does not show the Kryptonian Criminals getting arrested. (IIRC, doesn't this scene also show the FoS being destroyed which is still present in the other Superman movies?)

 

[Jax]

TemporalFlux, Please explain to me how you would of stopped a genocidal GOD like villian like Zod from killing that family and prevent his warpath to wipe out Humanity that didn't involve killing him?

 

[Dream]

The full cut shows Superman turning over all three phantom zone criminals to police custody after the events in the fortress. This was even broadcast on the ABC television version in the '80's.

TV cuts are padded to fit timeslots. The official release of the movie does not show the Kryptonian Criminals getting arrested. (IIRC, doesn't this scene also show the FoS being destroyed which is still present in the other Superman movies?)

We didn't see Zod's broken body in a pool of blood either. We don't know how fall those pits go. They probably hit the ground sometime after being thrown and ended up being injured though.

FOS was only in the first two movies, not in the third or fourth. I'll treat Superman Returns as its own thing since they had completely new writers/producers/actors.

 

[Trekker4747]

^
^ Please explain to me how you would of stopped a genocidal GOD like villian like Zod from killing that family and prevent his warpath to wipe out Humanity that didn't involve killing him?

I have no problem with Superman killing Zod.

 

[Jax]

^
^ Please explain to me how you would of stopped a genocidal GOD like villian like Zod from killing that family and prevent his warpath to wipe out Humanity that didn't involve killing him?

I have no problem with Superman killing Zod.

I was asking "TemporalFlux" you posted before I did so I added the double ^^

 

[the G-man]

TemporalFlux, Please explain to me how you would of stopped a genocidal GOD like villian like Zod from killing that family and prevent his warpath to wipe out Humanity that didn't involve killing him?

Send him back to the Phantom Zone. All it would have taken is restructuring the final act so that Zod was in a position--like the rest of the Kryptonian criminals--to be banished.

 

[Trekker4747]

TemporalFlux, Please explain to me how you would of stopped a genocidal GOD like villian like Zod from killing that family and prevent his warpath to wipe out Humanity that didn't involve killing him?

Send him back to the Phantom Zone. All it would have taken is restructuring the final act so that Zod was in a position--like the rest of the Kryptonian criminals--to be banished.

Yes, of course, I forgot about Superman's ability to re-write the script of the movie he's in.

 

[Jax]

Yes, of course, I forgot about Superman's ability to re-write the script of the movie he's in.

 

[stj]

The movie's thesis that humanity is so fearful that Jonathan Kent would sacrifice his life to keep Clark's secret is a fairly grim one. It really isn't believable when someone insists there's nothing intrinsically darker about this version. And this is especially true if somehow the argument that the earlier Superman was too comic or unserious is regarded as somehow acceptable. If someone can't accept the thesis (admittedly the clumsy writing of Kent's martyrdom doesn't help,) then they can't. The notion that they are not allowed to reject the thesis is wrong.

If you can take the movie on its own terms (I did myself,) it was a much more enjoyable experience. But it should be obvious to anyone that if you couldn't, it would detract from the entertainment. How this is offensive to anyone but stockholders is anybody's guess.

What isn't so obvious is how someone can simultaneously hold two contradictory opinions. The movie benefited tremendously from the plot making a certain kind of sense, in which the villain actually had a reasonable motive and practical method. The mad dog Zod is the opposite. Somehow seeing no difference is pretty uncritical. If being whipped was going to unhinge Zod, you'd think he'd have gone nuts on Krypton. The Kryptonian Zod probably would have started planning another Phantom Zone escape. Hence the creation of the new personality. Well, if they insist, but no one has a right to insist that the audience must let the makers have it both ways.

The heroism of killing is also not so obvious. In Hollywood movies it is all too commonly a childish fantasy, a way to get off on the thrill of the kill while pretending to be realistic. The new Superman's playing around with this may be nastier than the old Superman but fundamentally it's just as unserious.

PS I'd post a link if I remembered where I saw it, but I ran across an estimate of 150 million plus for marketing. It is very likely that the movie will need to gross in excess of a billion for a quick official profit. Given creative accounting and later income it is of course already a guaranteed moneymaker. But true stockholders' greed knows no bounds. It is possible they will be disappointed at waiting for the gravy.

PPS Cross-posting is confusing. It does seem a few people seem to think that Zod really did of his own volition escape the Phantom Zone. It was of course Goyer and Nolan who (clumsily) wrote him as somehow escaping, just to set up the kill. A movie is what it is, and the script said that Zod escaped and conveniently for the bloodthirsty went mad. But this doesn't fit the rest of the script. It is rather uncritical not to notice a problem. It is one thing to accept it regardless but to insist others must as well? Extraordinary.

 

[Triple-F]

Yes, of course, I forgot about Superman's ability to re-write the script of the movie he's in.

Priceless.