June 15: #17, Man of Steel
By the way, when Superman flies, it's really just telekinesis
With fan reaction (if not critic reaction) having been
positive by the time I saw Man of Steel yesterday, I figured I
would end up liking the movie. After all, I generally like superhero films, and
I’m one of the few that actually liked Superman
Returns. What I wondered was whether the film could live up to the promises
delivered by the trailers, which showed a subtle, personal take on Superman’s
origin story.
For the most part, the answer was “yes”.
To me, the most interesting parts of the movie were in the
first half, when Clark Kent was not yet Superman and instead was drifting from
place to place, unsure how to life his life and occasionally having flashbacks
to the even earlier times of his childhood. Kevin Costner is perfect as a
Kansas farmer and Superdad who imparts the values in Clark that he’s known for
almost as much as his superpowers.
Diane Lane is great too, although to me, she still looks too
good to be a simple farmer’s wife who’s supposed to be pushing 60 by the time
the story starts picking up in the modern day. That’s Hollywood, though, where
men get to play a decade younger and women have to play senior citizens by the
time they hit their mid-40s.
The action sequences are amazing, which we all expect by
now. Warner Bros. spared no expense, either, with very liberal amounts of
flying, fighting, and fiery explosions throughout the movie. Whether young
Clark is lifting a bus out of a lake, young adult Clark is single-handedly
holding up an oil rig to allow workers to escape, or Clark has become Superman
and is battling Zod (played mostly effectively by Michael Shannon), everything
is top-notch and often jaw-dropping.
In fact, one of the questions left behind by Man of Steel is how quickly the actual
human beings inhabiting Earth could trust or forgive him after the billions of
dollars of wreckage that is caused by his battles with Zod in the film. After
all, while Zod clearly isn’t someone who can be trusted, the fact is that if
Superman hadn’t landed on Earth, Zod wouldn’t have followed and knocked over a
dozen skyscrapers years later.
Where Man of Steel falls
short of earning elite status among comic book superhero movies is the rivalry
between Zod and Superman. If the pacing feels off, it’s likely because the
moment that Clark dons the iconic cape, Zod shows up and demands he turn
himself over to them. Though Zod claims that he will not harm anyone if
Superman complies, Supes doesn’t trust him. Why? We don’t know. He’d known him
for all of zero seconds at that point and had only discovered his own true
origin just before Zod showed up.
Zod was himself sentenced to what would have seemed to be an
eternity’s worth of imprisonment, and I’m not entirely sure how he escaped in
the first place. Anybody who knows anything about Superman knows that his home
planet explodes, but Zod’s escape is kind of glossed over. I believe the escape
had something to do with Krypton blowing up, but they knew Krypton was going to blow up. By sending Zod off to the
Phantom Zone, they actually allowed him to live while all of the law-abiding
citizens of Krypton died. Now that’s being tough on crime, right?
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| Let's be honest: it's kinda hard to follow TERENCE FUCKING STAMP, though |
Another problem with Zod’s quick arrival is that the
predictable romance between Clark and Lois Lane seems very forced as a result.
Ultimately, it’s just kind of a shame that once we get deeper into the film,
the personal element of the film is ditched in favor of action set piece after
action set piece.
I’m nit-picking, though. What doesn’t bother me is the end of the film, which I won’t spoil on
the off chance that you haven’t seen it yet. Suffice to say that we’re
back in the same old argument about what a superhero who’s been around for
decades “would” or “should” do, with comic book fans crying foul about one of
their icons acting in a way they deem to be incompatible with the character
himself.
Well, deal with it, fanboys. Interpretations of characters
change, and there are dozens of examples I don’t even need to cite here,
including plenty of changes that have been made to Superman himself over the
decades. Ultimately, I had no problem with that, although Clark showing up at
the Daily Planet with glasses and a bad haircut hardly makes sense. Isn’t there
supposed to be at least a half-assed explanation of how people magically can’t
recognize Clark as Superman or something? Instead, someone who would have been
the world’s most famous person after the events of Man of Steel walks around anonymously because he puts on some glasses. Still a great
movie, though. Grade: B+
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