Hey Internet, it is MovieDragon009 back again with a new blog post.
It's been a while since I last wrote or posted, hasn't it? First off, I want to apologize for the lack of activity here; not a lot has been going on in my world, other than readjusting to life at home after another semester at BYU-I. I also want to apologize for the lack of art on this blog; I'm currently lacking a suitable scanner at the moment, but I figure that I should be able to take some photos of what I've been working on and post them here later as a sneak peek.
But that's not the reason I'm writing this blog; tonight, I've finally gotten the chance to view the reboot to the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, and I present to you, oh so patient audience, my thoughts on it after waiting so long to see it. Normally I'd be doing this as a video, but if you've seen my Desolation of Smaug review, you'll know why I didn't.
First of all, this movie was not what I had expected, and I don't think anyone was expecting either when it came out; I mean, YEESH, the advertising made this seem like the greatest superhero film to hit theaters since The Dark Knight. Let me tell you, it sure as heck got me excited (you can see the videos I posted on YouTube for proof of that), and while a ton of situations got in the way, I looked forward to being wowed by it.
Now that it's come out now, people either seem to love or hate this movie; it's a very divided group. Some people shout out, "This is the greatest thing ever!", while others shout out, "This is TERRIBLE! How could Zack Snyder do this to my hero?"
Me? I'm kind of in the middle ground between the two extremes.
Let's talk about the plot first (SPOILERS AHEAD); obviously it's the story we've all heard for years and years, so the basic premise hasn't changed so much; Krypton is dying, and Jor-El and his wife manage to send their infant son to Earth before it explodes; on Earth, Cal-El, or Clark Kent as he becomes known, comes in touch with his super side and takes up the red cape to defend the planet as Superman. You know it, I know it, we all know it. But then there's the extra stuff that they add in there to make this story distinct; apparently there's a big military coup led by General Zod towards the last days of Krypton right as Jor-El is about to rocket his son away, PLUS he manages to insert this Codex thing into the very cells of Cal-El, preserving the genetic material of Krypton and ensuring its survival. This factors later in the movie when Zod escapes the Phantom Zone with his lackeys and heads to Earth with the intent to terraform the planet to become a new Krypton. On top of that, apparently Kryptonians have been genetically engineered to fit a certain role in society with no love-making between individuals involved (how in the heck did they enforce that??), but Cal-El is the first natural-born Kryptonian, making him extra-special and all that stuff.
So, with Zod ready to destroy Earth as we know it, Superman must rise up to stop him.
That's about as much of the plot as I can surmise, but you can probably look it up on the Wikipedia article. The best parts about the movie is when they are showing Clark Kent's childhood, and what it must be like to grow up with his super powers. Maybe they should have kept in that direction and, instead of throwing him straight to the lions, just have him start out small and work his way up...or at least they could have if Smallville didn't already exist.
I like the ideas that David S. Goyer, the writer, puts forward, but he seems to be just that: an idea man. Many of the things they bring up, unfortunately, seem to be brushed aside rather quickly in the name of big action (I'll get to the action later), which is rather disappointing; I feel that if they had simply decided to take their time and actually talk about these ideas, such as freedom of choice and responsibility, the movie probably would have benefited enormously. However, there's also a lot of plot points that made me scratch my head and say, "Why in the world would they do that??", the no-sex ruling being among them. For example, there's a scene where Zod is telling Superman his evil plan to wipe out mankind, and to illustrate it the scenery around them shows a huge wasteland filled with human skulls. Why did that seem like a good idea? Why would you show the guy who's lived on earth and considered himself one of us the end result of genocide? It's a good visual, but terrible thinking on Zod's part (or rather, Goyer's part). Earlier, when Superman is surrendering himself to Zod's minions, Faora demands that Lois Lane come with them; why? They explain later that they look into her mind and find out important information, but couldn't they have done that with Superman, as they VERY CLEARLY SHOWED THEM DOING?? Come on, at least make your villains intelligent.
There's also the execution of the ending; if you've seen it, you'll know that, in order to stop Zod once and for all, Superman has to break his neck and kill him. That, I don't have a problem with; again, it's a good idea for the plot, to show that there are difficult choices where the only option is the lesser of two evils, and that sometimes there are choices with no easy answer. You'd think with an outcome like that, the ending of the movie would show Superman dealing with the ethical and emotional ramifications of his actions, and they do...for a few seconds. The rest of the movie, it seems like he completely forgot all about that (along with the major destruction and loss of life, but we'll get to that later)! You just killed one of the only two members of your species left! I think that would deserve some closure! But nope! The movie's just like, "We'll that's over with, we'd better get to the other stuff, now."
And then there are issues with the plot just in and of itself as a whole; first of all, why do Kryptonians have to be the bad guys in this movie, and not a second one? I haven't seen the original Superman movies with Christopher Reeve in them, but from what I understand, they introduced Zod and his minions in the first movie, and then had them take center stage in the second movie. That I understand; the first movie pitted Superman against Earth's worst, to show that he could stand up to anything we could throw at him, and then the second movie raised the stakes to show he could take on anything his own homeworld could throw at him. Here, taking down Zod first just shows that he's pretty much invincible; who would try taking him down after he took down his own equal? Anything the sequels try to do will pale in comparison to this (unless they introduce Doomsday...). And of course, if you've seen How It Should Have Ended on YouTube, you'll know about the other plot holes, such as why didn't Superman just throw the black-hole thing into the enemy ship in the first place, and of course Zod should've just colonized Mars.
A lot of people criticize the good majority of Superman's actions in this film, but as far as I'm concerned, this is Superman starting out; he's going to make mistakes, but he'll probably learn from these in the future, so I'll forgive them.
Now let's talk about the acting; I think that each and every one of the actors in this movie took their job dang seriously, and that it shows in their performances. Henry Cavill does a great job in this movie, and I don't think a lot of people can pull of what he did and still make it feel like Superman, so I applaud him. The rest of the cast does a good job too, but the guy playing Zod, I feel, seems to go a little over the top with his performances at times. There were also times when it felt like some of the actors, namely Russel Crowe as Jor-El, didn't really seem like they were giving it their all or giving the right reaction that they should have been (Come on, guy, you got stabbed! Flinch a little!). Other than that, the performances didn't bother me at all.
I also like the look, design, and effects of the movie; I'm glad that Krypton doesn't look like a sterile world of crystals, and that it's clearly a world capable of supporting life (up until it explodes, of course). The tech that the Kryptonians are carrying also looks pretty darn unique and awesome; especially the particle-assembled holograms and stuff. They very clearly worked their butts off to make Kryptonian technology very distinct from what we've seen before. With the costumes, I get a very Neo-medieval vibe from them, with everyone running around in suits of armor, which is pretty cool. A lot of people complain that the movie looks too dark, especially given that this is Superman we're talking about (seriously, the Dark Knight trilogy had brighter colors than this), but while I was watching, that didn't really bother me; I get that the filmmakers were implying that this is a much more serious version than before, and I'm willing to go along with that.
Of course now we have to talk about the action, and good-golly wally, Zack Snyder has a violence issue; I think that even Michael Bay would be having an intervention with this guy, and he's pretty destructive! It starts out pretty cool, but as the movie builds and builds to the climax, it just gets more and more obnoxious and ridiculous at times, and really makes you question how one indestructible person could be capable of causing this much damage (seriously, he manages to topple an entire building just by being thrown through it! You'd think all that would do is result in a big hole, but no!), not to mention the obviously huge amounts of loss of life that must be going on during one of these battles. Seriously, don't make everyone duck and cover; have the entire city evacuated before you let loose one of these raging cannons! Again, this is Superman's first time as being Superman, so initially I can forgive him, but come on, Snyder! You don't need to have them trashing an entire town to have an action sequence! But all this damage, including the loss of life, seems to be swept aside and forgotten about by the movie along with Zod's death; not ONE mention, not ONE scene where it would imply that Superman dealt with the consequences of such actions, not even a scene showing him helping to clean up the mess he made. Again, I really doubt that if Superman existed he, or any other members of his species, would be capable of doing this kind of damage in real life. But, who knows? Maybe I'm wrong (but I hope not).
I haven't seen any of Snyder's other work, but after watching this movie, I get the very strong vibe that he's more of a visual kind of guy; a lot of the shots look awesome (just refer to the trailers), but the execution doesn't quite pan out. Maybe he should stick with art direction, cinematography or something, I dunno, because from what I understand, he's clearly not a writer guy, and probably shouldn't be behind the camera (he really likes to zoom in at really obnoxious moments). But it's very clear that he's very passionate about his work, I'll give him that; what's weird is that Chris Nolan, who was one of the producers on this film, didn't take him back and say, "Now now, let's just chill for a little bit and think this scene through..." You'd think that would have an influence, but nope! What's even weirder is how much Snyder and Goyer are trying to make it look like a Chris Nolan film with the non-linear storytelling; they are very liberal with how many flashbacks they sprinkle into the story, and it gets kind of out of hand.
Well, that's enough ranting for one night; let's have the final conclusion. Is it a fantastic movie? No, at least not the one that I was expecting. Is it a terrible movie? No, it has it's good points. I think that its a situation similar to what must have happened with the Star Wars prequels, with a lot of good ideas and passion being put into it, but without the right execution to pull it off. And hey, with the Superman/Batman movie coming out in 2016, maybe Snyder will have learned his lesson and toned down for that. But we'll just have to cross that bridge when it gets there.
This is MovieDragon009 signing out.
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