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Worlds Without End Blog

Man of Steel – Review Posted at 12:06 PM by Jonathan McDonald

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"Seriously, put your underpants back on."

“Seriously, put your underpants back on.”

How can you judge a film like Man of Steel without comparing it to all the various media adaptations of the Superman character that have come before? The character has been around for 75 years, and he’s appeared on radio, television, and film almost non-stop ever since. As such, any reboot made with the intention of doing something brand new with the franchise is more than a little naive. That being said, Snyder, Nolan, and Goyer have fashioned a Superman story that is fresh, interesting, exciting, and quite a bit more mature than most adaptations that have come before.

For many fans, the greatest Superman actor was Christopher Reeve, who embodied the iconic character with a down-to-earth charm. They consider his portrayal to be something like the Platonic ideal of the character. Other actors like George Reeves and Dean Cain approached the role with a bit more irony and self-deprecation. Some others went at it with a kind of studied blandness, like Tom Welling and Brandon Routh. British actor Henry Cavill rather gives us a Superman who is young, unpracticed, and unsure of himself, but who is not unwilling to jump into the fray when the need arises. The only other role of his I can recall watching was Theseus in Immortals, which was not a film designed to let actors show off their abilities. Even Man of Steel is limiting in the range of emotions it asks Cavill to exude, but there’s enough grist for the acting mill that I feel confident in his ability to portray a maturing character as the series continues.

So let’s talk about the story. I’ll try to avoid excessively explicit spoilers, but I must admit that those are some of the most interesting parts. The story begins on Krypton, as is only reasonable. Superman’s father Jor-El knows that the planet’s core is unstable and likely to explode soon, but that’s the least of his worries! He also must contend with the social suicide he and his wife have committed by procreating via a natural birth, rather than through the usual medium of artificial, genetically engineered bio-pod wombs. Not only that, but General Zod is taking advantage of the political instability caused by the planet’s impending death to stage a coup, and Jor-El has to take him down with the help of his trusty dragon steed. Are you interested yet?

"Me and Ma went back and forth about this for months."

“Me and Ma went back and forth about this for months.”

Obviously there’s a lot going on, and the entire movie is packed to overflowing with ideas and stories. If there’s any unambiguously legitimate complaint to be made about the screenplay, it’s that there is so much happening that the film feels cramped even at its hefty 2 1/2-hour running time. As with the first film of every superhero franchise, Man of Steel tries to combine a detailed origin with a battle against a major antagonist. Superman: The Movie handled this problem by making the film episodic, and there is a clear break where the origin ends and the antagonist battle begins. Screenwriters David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan use the same trick they pulled in Batman Begins by making the film’s antagonist essential to the themes of the origin. In Superman’s case, he has problems of identity to sort out, particularly between the duties to his planet of birth and his planet of adoption.

In my opinion, Batman Begins felt too didactic because of the complexities of theme and action. There was an excess of moving parts. Nolan and Goyer had too much going on, and their Batman reboot didn’t truly take off until the second film. Whereas their Batman defined himself as the opposition to the training and philosophy of Ra’s al Ghul, their Superman is a troubled young adult who desperately wants to understand his origins and is revolted to find that his surviving fellow Kryptonians are genocidal terrorists. By the end, Superman isn’t even sure that the plans his father had for him are ones he ought to pursue.

The moral development of Clark Kent and choices he makes are causing no small amount of fervent discussion among critics and fans. The formation Jonathan Kent attempts to give his adopted son is fraught with difficulties, something hinted at in an early trailer when he tells Clark it might have been better to allow a bus full of school children die rather than risk exposing himself to the world. The event which leads to Jonathan’s death is even more troubling, because of the choice he made and the choice he forced Clark to make. When you combine this with what is certainly a controversial choice at the end of the film, we are left with a story that is morally complex but not at all clear-cut. At any rate, these aspects (along with occasional vulgar language) make Man of Steel inappropriate for a pre-adolescent audience, which is unfortunate but understandable for the filmmakers who want to present a more mature take on the character. (For what it’s worth, I consider Jonathan Kent’s advice and decisions to be misguided and verging on reprehensible, whilst the choice at the end of the film is perfectly justifiable and even laudatory. The fact that the latter does not conform with shallow, popular ideas of how Superman should act is just a sign of critical immaturity, in my opinion.)

And what of the action? Does Man of Steel live up to its promise of showing us superpowered beings duking it out in ways never before seen on film? Does it ever. This is what Zack Snyder is best at, and the film truly soars once the soul-searching winds down and the gloves come off. I was laughing with glee multiple times in the last half of the film. While I don’t think that the slow and emotive Superman Returns is entirely without merit, Snyder fills in the gaps left by Bryan Singer with aplomb, and I doubt that anyone watching this will leave feeling cheated in the action department. Snyder is not quite so good with the emotional origin aspects of the story, and I couldn’t help but feel that the shaky-cam he uses throughout was his way of expressing impatience for more fisticuffs. I don’t entirely blame him. I was worried about the choice of Snyder to direct, but he has shown himself to be more capable than I thought. He is a director who puts style over substance, but it is never style without substance.

"Guess what I'm not wearing?"

“Guess what I’m not wearing?”

References to previous media adaptations and comic book stories are numerous, and I’m afraid I will be exposing an embarrassing amount of Superman-related knowledge by pointing out a few of them. The interpretation of the “S” symbol as one of hope, and the theme of identity crisis, are both heavily drawn from Mark Waid’s origin story Birthright. The portrayal of Krypton as a cold society with a genetically engineered procreative system comes in nearly equal parts from the 1978 film and the 1986 reboot comic series Man of Steel by John Byrne. The hints in the film of Lex Luthor as a business tycoon also have their roots in the Byrne reboot, with assistance from Marv Wolfman, and it’s an idea that has been used in such media as Superman: The Animated Series. (Certainly Luthor as tycoon is more interesting than him as a foppish, would-be real estate mogul.) Zod’s invasion of Earth and attempts at reviving Krypton are two parts Superman II and one part Superman: Last Son of Krypton, which was co-written by Richard Donner himself. Some of the utopian language heard from the mouth of Jor-El’s holographic ghost is directly from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, widely considered to be the best comic-media Superman story in many years. An artless bit of Christ imagery in a church scene is apparently an homage to the religious symbolism soakingĀ Superman: The Movie andĀ Superman Returns. While Man of Steel is clearly a hodge-podge of ideas from and references to earlier stories, I can’t argue much with the way it is constructed into a new whole.

The other actors are generally quite good in their roles. Russell Crowe is great as “Action Jor-El,” quite a departure from the philosophically rotund Jor-El of Marlon Brando. Michael Shannon plays a very different Zod to that of Terrance Stamp, and is good with the character’s complexity. I was never a huge fan of Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, but Amy Adams oddly has less to work with, despite being more crucial to the plot. Laurence Fishburne plays the newly black Perry White (oh, the irony), which is not a demanding role, but he plays imposing authority figures well. Newcomer Rebecca Buller has very little to do as Jenny Olsen, but since the Jimmy Olsen character that she is based on was always a rather useless cog in the narrative machine, that’s not necessarily any judgment against her ability. Kevin Costner is fine as Jonathan Kent, but I dislike the character’s choices enough that I have a hard time deciding whether or not I liked the acting. The biggest disappointment for me was Michael Kelly as Steve Lombard, a character who is traditionally an arrogant blowhard sports writer, but here becomes a socially awkward loser.

Some of the film’s other themes might be worth deeper consideration after I have had time to process them. What are Goyer and Nolan trying to say about our civilization’s turn towards procreative technology and genetic engineering? About utopian schemes that require the death of many for the supposed greater good? About the proper use of violence in extreme circumstances? About the decision between keeping our talents to ourselves or risking injury by using them for the common good?

About the need for pants...

About pants styles…

There is some small amount of setup for later films and a larger common “Justice League” franchise, ala Marvel’s Avengers-related films. Lex Luthor is referenced clearly a few times, though never seen. A Wayne Tech satellite appears as a stepping stone during the climactic battle. Groundwork is laid for the planet Daxam to be used in future sequels. I didn’t notice references to other Justice League-related franchises like Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, but it’s possible I missed a few things. In any case, Snyder and Goyer have mentioned the probability of other superheroes existing in the world of Man of Steel, so we can probably expect more references in the next film.

So yes, I definitely recommend Man of Steel, even to a popular, non-nerd audience. Its flaws are the flaws of films like Batman Begins and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, so they should not be considered damning in and of themselves. I think MoS handles these limitations better than many of its counterparts, and I expect even greater things from the inevitable sequel.

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