Man of Steel, Script of Kleenex (SPOILERS A-PLENTY)

Sigh, it seems to have become a tradition of late, that each summer contains a pretty disappointing DC Superhero movie; first Green Lantern, then The Dark Knight Rises, now this.  Let me clarify and state that I am not implying all of these films are equals; DKR and MoS are nowhere near the utter clusterfuck that GL was, but they were all to a degree disappointing.  This is the one that really a lot of Warner Bros. hopes of finally getting Justice League of the launch pad are based on, and while financially I'm sure it's going to do well enough to get that ball rolling, given how well it's doing already, the actual finished film though has almost terminal issues that can mostly be summed up in a quote from another Chris Nolan production; "Why So Serious?"

Superman's true arch-enemy!  I'd be impressed if anyone did a cosplay of Nick O'Teen!

The film's biggest issue is one that the Dark Knight movies had; it plain and simple seems to be ashamed to be a comic book movie.  It seems to think that telling a serious superhero story is the same as telling an overly solemn and humourless superhero movie, one that at points needs to apologise for the fact.  Literally, the only time the name Superman gets said, the character who did so said sorry for it.  That's right, a Superman movie is ashamed of saying the name Superman, almost putting in under protest and obligation; that's so telling, it's not funny.  That's not the only part of the lore that seems to be there under a sense of obligation more than anything else; Perry White and the Daily Planet staff don't really contribute anything, and while Amy Adams is an OK Lois Lane, you're kind of aware that she could have been removed from the storyline entirely, and overall very little would be lost or have to change (not least down to her and Henry Cavill having no chemistry at all).  In a film with a bum-numbing runtime as this, that's kind of a big issue.

There's no real humour or joy to be had in the story; in Superman and Superman Returns we see young Clark's sense of wonder and achievement as he begins to master his powers, and finds out what he's capable of; here he's shown as permanently terrified by his strength and abilities, and forever feeling alone and depressed.  This isn't helped by Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner, one of Superman's two Robin Hood dads!) being kind of a dick; he literally says after one rescue Clark should have let the kids die, and he sacrifices himself in one of the most contrived, pointless ways imaginable which only serves to give Clark a guilt complex when a normal person could have saved him, or he could have saved himself fine.  While there's a lot of talk of Superman being a symbol for hope and such, there's really very little sign of him doing that in this film, as he gets no time to properly be Superman before Zod turns up, and he surrenders to the military.  (Wait, a movie in which a lot of the work for saving the world, rather than being done by the alien character we're here to see in action is instead done by the American military who's in it over prominently?  Oh my god, I think they actually were inspired by Michael Bay's Transformers!)

Something truer to the character and more fun than this movie!

This moodiness is carried over to the visuals, which instead of four-colour wonder gives us a really washed-out mostly grey and brown look, and direction.  The action scenes are directed with lots of frantic camera work and CGI, but they ultimately feel pretty empty, especially since having lots of super speed means it's really hard to follow what exactly the Kryptonians are doing quite a lot of the time.  The flying scenes are done in such an heavyhanded manner, with lots of gurning close-ups, sound effects and Hans Zimmer doing that "de-de-dum-dum" score that he does every film that there's no sense of wonder to them.  There're plenty of scenes that have a lot of visual flare to them, like Back-Up Jor-El's explanation to Clark, which are completely pointless and feel arbitrary because they literally re-iterate a lot of stuff we already know and saw, and there's no satisfactory reason why they'd be presented in this way.

I'm also not convinced by the design work.  I'm still not over the decision to take away Superman's pants, doing so actually draws more attention to down there oddly enough.  Also, Krypton looks far more high fantasy than alien technology (especially with the dragon that turns up), which is weird considering they're trying to sell it as a more "realistic" Superman movie.  Not only are parts pretty derivative (That dragon's a reject from Avatar, Russell Crowe goes through part of The Matrix to get one MacGuffin, this film's answer to the Fortress of Solitude looks like the derelict from Alien, even down to the lighting on the floor), but I really don't understand why it's so Freudian at parts.  Seriously, every other thing the Kyptonians made looks like a willy, H.R. Giger would scoff at this; given what we find out about the Kryptonian lifecycle here, I'm guessing they had some pretty big repression issues...

No, he never says this in Man of Steel.  I feel betrayed!

But it's really most of the General Zod stuff where the film's biggest problem's get started.  Michael Shannon's a good actor, but as Zod, he has nothing on Terence Stamp.  Stamp really felt menacing at times, whereas this incarnation of Zod basically comes off as being a bit of a big crybaby, constantly shouting and raising the veins in his neck over not getting his way.  Also there're a lot of plotholes around his storyline, like why did Krypton's elders sentence him to the Phantom Zone when this time they knew for certain that the end was coming?  "Ha-ha, have fun knowing you'll be sleeping past and surviving our horrific firey deaths, that'll show you!"  Also, why's he so keen to terraform Earth when the way it is currently will give him and his crew superpowers (he says he doesn't want to go through the pain of getting them, but after five minutes screentime, he's adjusted to them perfectly well)?  He also gets a really clunky and awkward speech later on that literally spells out his entire character motivation; seriously, that's terrible screenwriting!

But the real issue comes from his attack on Earth and Superman's reaction to it.  When Supes first engages Zod in combat on Earth, he hurls him from a cornfield in Kansas, right into the middle of Smallville, and the entire resultant battle takes place there trashing the entire town.  Later on, as Zod's ship is devastating Metropolis, for some reason Superman takes on the World Engine on the other side of the planet, rather than trying to save Metropolis directly (if there was a good reason why he had to go for the World Engine, it was lost on me).  Finally, the last fight with Zod takes them out of the grey dustbowl that was Central Metropolis, and into the still populated rest of the city, with no real attempt to take this elsewhere.  In all these cases, Superman shows utterly no regard to any sort of collateral damage or civilian casualties, other than telling the people of Smallville to stay inside, right as he throws the attackers right through those buildings and he lets the military bomb them.  Does this really sound like the behaviour of Superman to you?  If you think so...

You Tell 'em Lex!

Superman has first and foremost always been a protector of people, a saviour.  He saves people, and the battles he has along the way have always been specifically to keep himself between ordinary people and extraordinary threats.  He's always been shown as putting other's lives first.  Thus, by having him taking actions that put people in harm's way, and not making a bee-line straight for the most immediate threat to human life, David Goyer, Chris Nolan and Zach Snyder have perfectly proven the point that they don't understand Superman at all.  Even if this trying to be a darker take on the character, what he's shown as doing is really beyond the pale; with the Smallville battle, how hard can it be to find somewhere empty with no-one in the way in the middle of rural Kansas?  There's a touch of the more protective Superman with his early surrender to Zod, but come that final act, it's all superpowered brawling without any worrying about the  consequences.  Also, his final execution of Zod is supposed to be him put into a no-way-out situation and agonising over it, but really there were a dozen ways out of that, he's Superman for great Rao's sake (tilt Zod's head slightly upwards; tell those idiots to run; put your hands over his eyes, c'mon!).  The only times he's saving people are in the early acts, in the school bus and oil rig scenes, and that's before he's properly Superman (he looks more like Wolverine in the latter), and they're over really quickly and unsatisfyingly.

Now all this isn't to say that there isn't some stuff I liked in there, like the cast being all good, Henry Cavill being fine in the lead, and I really like the idea of a version of the Lois & Clark relationship where Lois knows the secret from the word go and is covering for him.  But in the end, this film, like pretty much all of Zach Snyder's films, is terminally flawed in so many areas it ends up far less than what it could have been.  The worst thing about all this is that it tries to fix the franchise in a Batman Begins way, despite the fact it doesn't need fixing; rewatch Superman Returns sometime, I guarantee it's much better than you remember it, and Brandon Routh's a damn good Superman.  As for this though, I actually had far more fun rewatching Supergirl recently than sitting through all of this; it's amazing how they could take a story featuring a whole city pounded to dust by a gravity weapon and make it somewhat lifeless and boring!  Still, there is one good thing that can be said; no giant spiders showed up...