Man of Steel

 

I never want to see a Superman movie like Man of Steel ever again.  Superman is not a special effect.  He is not personality-deprived.  He is not a depressing bore.  He is not a mindless action hero.  He is not humorless.  And he is most certainly not a dreary and tortured soul.  Superman has never been any of these things, until this movie.  The filmmakers must realize what a great disservice they have done to an American icon.

So, the last film, 2006's Superman Returns, was a great big love letter to the original 1978 movie by Richard Donner.  Unfortunately, even though the film made money, it wasn't enough for Warner Bros.  A new direction and a reboot for the franchise was called for.  I have no problem with that notion.  My problem is the direction that Zack Snyder (Sucker Punch) has taken things.  This is a drab, joyless, and mostly humorless film.  The small bits of humor that do sneak through seem awkward and out of place in this unnecessarily grim and gray-looking movie.  The actors don't seem to be having any fun.  Neither is the audience.  How can we be when the movie is constantly assaulting our senses with endless explosions, implosions, gunfire, military vehicles rumbling, spaceships roaring, mass destruction, people fleeing in panic, and enough grand destruction to fill three Michael Bay blockbusters?  On the subject of Bay, if Man of Steel is inspired by anything, it's not the Superman comics or movies, it's the endless and soulless special effects of Bay's Transformers series.

Where to start with a movie that goes so wrong?  How about the beginning, where we get a bloated and extended prologue sequence on the planet Krypton, where Superman's father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) does battle with the evil General Zod (Michael Shannon), and sends his infant son rocketing off into space in order to give him new life when their planet starts to die?  This sequence gives us a sinking feeling right off the bat, as it not only feels like it goes on too long, but it is essentially one, big uninspired special effects sequence.  They're not even original effects, as a lot of Krypton's technology seems to have been borrowed from The Matrix.  So, the infant Kal-El lands on Earth.  But, rather than focus on his youth, we immediately flash forward some 20 years, to when he is a toned, muscular drifter (now played by Henry Cavill) living under the name of Clark Kent, and moving about, working odd jobs, like being a waiter at a bar, or working on an oil rig.

We witness some flashbacks of random moments of Clark's childhood on Earth, where he was raised by his loving human parents (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane, both very good here), and told to keep his strange powers and abilities under control and a secret.  These flashbacks are supposed to fill us in on Clark's past, and how he ended up being a wandering drifter, looking for purpose in his life.  However, these glimpses into the past are far too fragmented and random to provide the emotional resonance they're supposed to.  During his travels, Clark encounters a reporter by the name of Lois Lane (Amy Adams), who has gone from plucky reporter who will go to any lengths to get her story, to constant damsel who seems to walk blindly into danger at any opportunity.  Lois quickly suspects that Clark is not from around here the very first time he saves her life, and starts to dig up information on the guy.  As they spend time together, we're supposed to witness the beginning of one of the great relationships in the history of comics.  Instead, we're witnessing just how cold and artificial this movie is.

We don't believe their relationship for a second.  Cavill and Adams have no chemistry, and seem to be at a loss on what to say to each other.  Remember the witty banter that Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder shared in the earlier movies?  There's no sign of it here.  There's no sense that these iconic characters are growing closer together, even though that's what the movie is going for.  I don't necessarily blame the actors, as they do what they can with the little they're given.  I prefer to lay the blame at the feet of screenwriter, David S. Goyer, who is much more interested in blowing stuff up and having Superman destroy public and private property, than in exploring these characters.  Once General Zod and his army of survivors from Krypton arrive to make Earth their new home, all character development and dialogue is pretty much thrown to the wayside.  Instead, we get a series of battles that look like they were designed to look good in small snippets in the trailers, but when they make up over an hour of an actual movie's running time, they get tiresome quickly.

This is when Man of Steel stops even attempting to tell an origin story for Superman, and instead becomes an endurance test of noise and bloated spectacle.  We get scene after scene of Superman battling Zod and his followers as they punch, throw, and blast each other through every building imaginable.  And while the technical craft behind these battle scenes is impressive, that's all it is - technical craft with nothing behind it.  There's no tension.  How could there be?  We know that Superman can brush off being knocked through a building no sweat.  Yet, the villains keep on trying it, thinking it will somehow net a different result each time they try, I guess.  What I found amusing is how the film works in its product placement.  Just before someone is thrown through a building, we get to see the store's logo, such as Sears, I-HOP, or 7-Eleven.  And then, when Superman exits the ruins of the building, we get to see the store logo again behind him.  I'm not sure how it's an incentive to make people shop at your business when you're portrayed as a flaming rubble, but I guess any publicity is good publicity.

Speaking of the battles, why doesn't Superman just lead Zod and his followers away from the innocent people, instead of intentionally causing hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage to the people of Metropolis?  We don't get to see any innocent civilians get killed, but judging by the endless amount of destruction on display, you know that there has to be a large number of casualties caused by the actions of Superman during the course of this film.  It's not just the characters getting pummeled in these fights, it's the sound system in the theater.  I'm not usually sensitive to loud noises, but the endless chaos and destruction, and the barrage of explosions and crashes took its toll on me.  If theater owners were smart, they would hand out free samples of Tylenol to the dazed and weary patrons staggering out of the cinemas showing this film.

Man of Steel exhausted me to no end.  It is an abuse of style over substance to the point that we feel like we are being physically assaulted.  It mistakes Superman for being a walking special effect who does nothing but fly around and punch things.  Even worse, it turns his world into a gray and dreary place by shooting mostly in dull or washed out colors.  There is one moment that the movie gets right, and captures the innocence and joy that this character is supposed to have.  That is the scene where Superman flies for the first time.  There is a sense of exhilaration here that the rest of the film lacks.  Once it's over, we're back to the gloom and doom.  What a pity, and what a tease for the filmmakers to give us a brief rush of joy, only to send us crashing back into the doldrums of this movie.

 

I don't know what happened here.  All I know is that I never want to see Superman treated like this again.

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