Man of Steel

Been a while since my last post, yadda, yadda... So who here watched "Man of Steel"? This is the new Superman movie (2013) written by Christopher Nolan and directed by Zack Snyder. Christopher Nolan who, of course, made the mostly excellent "Batman Begins" (which borrows heavily from the amazing "Batman: Year One" comic by Frank Miller), the absolutely seminal "The Dark Knight" which was nothing short of a masterpiece in every way, and "The Dark Knight Rises" which had some good as well as many things about it that were just wrong in my mind. So even though I hate Superman (see below), and even though I have never enjoyed a Superman movie, I decided to give this one a go. Here is my review.

So Superman is a superhero that was created when America needed a hero who could stand up to anything; who could be invincible. It wasn't till later that Superman was given some artificial weaknesses to try to make him more interesting. When you see Superman doing his thing he is like a hot girl: he never needs to do much except show up. His one true weakness is how dim he is. He tries to solve every puzzle with brute strength which is, of course, ridiculous. Here is an example: in one scene from "The Dark Knight Returns" Superman comes into Gotham to talk to Batman. There are several panels with him zooming by as a streak of red and blue color. The scene changes to a guy who has fallen on a subway track and everybody is freaking out at the approaching train. Then there is just a shocked guy on the track and the subway has stopped with just this indented handprint on the front. We infer that Superman stopped the train with one hand and saved this dude. Here we see Superman using that brute force and totally screwing things up. How many people were injured on the subway that he just stopped? How much damage was done to the train that he had probably derailed? How long was the line put out of commission? How many people did he inconvenience? The straight-line solution to avoid all these problems would just be to grab the one dude out of the way...

Ok, so Superman didn't really grow on me much as a person during this movie. I did love Kevin Costner's portrayal of Jonathan Kent. I also loved the bad guys, especially Zod. I liked many of the 'human' moments that Clark had to deal with throughout the movie, but when he dons the tights he goes right back to being a giant deuce. The ending especially lost me, and I am really confused (and concerned?) that I haven't heard anyone harping about this but Superman hands-on kills the bad guy by breaking his freaking neck. Now I don't know how you like your superheros, but I thought the classic ones weren't supposed to cross that line. I had the same sort of feeling towards the first Burton Batman movie when the Joker dies at the end as a direct result of Batman's involvement. It just shouldn't have happened. Of course, maybe I just don't know Superman as well as I thought I did. Perfectly plausible considering that I avoid him whenever I can. He did kill Zod and his wingmen in both the comics and the original Christoper Reeves movie, and sure, he killed that Doomsday guy. But there was just something so visceral and hands-on when he ganked Zod in this movie. I guess I can give him an inch here; he was protecting a family of terrified humans, and he was pretty pissed while Zod was deliberately pushing his buttons, but what about all those babies?

What? Babies, you say? Yeah so it is revealed that the Kryptonians are all raised in artificial wombs, and that the Kryptonians have also been sending out colonization ships with a butt-load of babies ready to be born to far away planets - Earth being one such planet. Zod wakes this ship up, ostensibly starting the birthing process for the babies on board, in an attempt to take over Earth and turn it into the new Krypton. Superman will not allow Earht to be taken and so he. Blows. Up. The. Ship. Full. Of. Babies. Let that sink in for a minute... So Superman has qualms letting any human die, but when it comes to Krytonians he is a baby mass murderer. How can this possibly be justified? Now Zod was trying to change the atmosphere of the planet to resemble Krypton to make it less harmful for Kryptonians. Surely some of the babies would have died on Earth, but Superman was a baby when he came to Earth and he survived, so obviously some of them would survive as well. Surely some of them would have grown up to be major d-bags like Zod, but Superman grew up pretty benevolent (to humans anyway) so obviously some of them would have as well. And as for the ones who didn't grow up nice... Superman would surely just kill them then. You know, after they prove their guilt, not when they are innocent unborn babies...

Think about it and realize with me that this movie makes Superman a very, very dark character indeed...

Other than that the movie was pretty much fun. I had a bit of a mental dilemma when Superman was losing his powers as he was fighting the atmosphere-changing machine. So Superman was losing his powers when he was breathing Kryptonian atmosphere. Um, OK, I'll bite... But then there is that one part of the movie where he goes into space without a spacesuit and he obviously doesn't die. So I'm thinking that Superman can hold his breath for a very, very long time. So why didn't he just hold his breath and take that beast out in a second? Stupid. Also, Supes doesn't like killing humans right? But by the end of the movie half of Metropolis is destroyed, some of it directly due to him tossing guys though buildings and such. Seems like a pretty irresponsible way to protect mankind.

Superman is a tool...