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“I will find him.”
“I WILL find him!”
“I will FIND him!”
“I will find HIM!”
“I WILL FIND HIM!!!!!”
“I’m Ron Burgundy!?”
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Walking out of 2006’s
“Superman Returns”, the very flawed yet overall enjoyable thematic and
narrative sequel to Richard Donner’s “Superman” and “Superman 2”, I wondered
why director Bryan Singer did not take advantage of the increasing advancements
in CGI technology to showcase Superman fighting
super-powered villains on a grand scale. Fast forward to 2013 and Zack Snyder’s
“Man of Steel” is overflowing…no, overdosing on the very things I thought I
wanted. I guess I should have been more specific in that I expected the basic
core, the heart and soul of Superman, heck, the basic core of storytelling, to
be the foundation for such action.
Now I am a huge comic book
superhero “geek”, so you can easily dismiss my opinion as being biased, BUT I
also happen to be a much bigger story and character development “geek”
regardless of genre. All I ask is from a film, a TV show, a book or a comic is
to make me care about the characters and what happens to them next. With that said “Man of Steel” is soulless,
joyless, characterless, boring, sterile, and mind-numbingly horrible. It manages
to aggressively and intently squeeze out any drop of fun or hope. But wait?!
The movie tells us that Superman’s chest emblem actually means hope! True, they
do TELL us that, it just would have been nice to actually SHOW us that.
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| FIG. 1 |
The only thing that works in
this film is the casting. Here we have fantastic casting choices across the
board (Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner,
Diane Lane. etc) unfortunately this bright cast is greatly diminished by
having nothing of substance to work with. How is it that I’m watching scene
after scene with Crowe and Shannon working off each other and yet I’m beyond
bored? This only made me sad and angry. It honestly felt as though George Lucas
(fig. 1) was directing the acting in this movie.
The writing, directing,
editing and character development is lazy, jarring, and so unsure of itself
that transitions often make little-to-no sense, as if scenes were being
constantly skipped. It’s clear now that the film’s sole credited screenwriter,
David S. Goyer, was the weak link when scribing the Dark Knight trilogy with
co-writer Jonathan Nolan. Goyer’s characters tell us an “awful” lot throughout
the film, yet fail to show us. We are to believe that Lois Lane is a tough ball-buster, because she makes a comment
about a “dick-measuring contest,” yet we are never shown her empowered lovable
bitchiness in order to thrive in a man’s world. The only thing that might
explain people’s enjoyment of this film must be their ability to bring in their
own history and understanding of the characters, because there is nothing on
the screen that does this for the audience.
The only conflict of any
merit seems to be between Superman and his earth father, Pa Kent. Pa is scared
that once the world learns what his son is it will not embrace him. Seriously,
how is it that this film has more of a homosexual coming out undercurrent than
any of Bryan Singers’ superhero films? Yet where Singer excels is presenting
heroes who are out and proud of their powers and willing to save a world that
may fear them, not moping around in the closest cause daddy said so. When Pa
Kent tells his son “You just have to decide what kind of man you want to grow
up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, it’s going to change the
world”, made me scratch my head. Wait isn’t that your job as a parent!? Not in
this film, we are told (once again) that Superman is moral and heroic we are
just never shown how these traits are instilled into him.
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| FIG. 2 |
Everything else in this film
is forced. The “romance” between Superman and Lois is built on zero chemistry
or development. The hard choices that Superman is forced to make when it comes
to life and death are shoehorned on the scale of trying to fit Shaquille O’Neal
(fig. 2) into a pair of baby shoes. Our hero is presented with options A or B by his
loved ones and his arch-nemesis and instead of taking the clearly visible
options C though Z, he allows others to dictate the rules. It is not so much
that I have an issue with A or B happening in the film; it is unclear as to why
these truly are his only options. He, in fact, gives the villain exactly what
he wants at the end in a scene that reminds me of the climax to David Fincher’s
brilliantly dark “Seven.” The film’s last 30 minutes out ranks Michael Bays’ “Transformers” films when it comes to its nauseating
barrage of disaster porn with no apparent regard for human life.
The story and character
development geek in me is sad that people are accepting “Man of Steel” as a
good or even great movie. My lovely fiancé, who very much shares my feelings
about his movie, blames the divide between those who liked it and those who did
not on a generation of filmmakers who have programmed audiences to believe that
spectacle equals story. A generation of filmgoers are led to believe that a
film looking good is the same as being good. I didn’t buy this at first, that
is until I spoke with people who liked the film. When I asked them what they
liked about it, it all boiled down to the aesthetics, “It looked cool!” When I
asked them about the story or character development, they said “the story
sucked” or that it “didn’t really have any character development," but it was
still good because “most movies don’t have those things anyways”. So, yeah…there’s
that.
Christopher Reeve once said
that at his core “Superman is a friend” and comic writer Geoff John’s
wonderfully said for the character “I’d rather good people trust me than bad
people fear me.” To me, Superman has always been kind of like that jock in high
school who would defend the weaker kids from getting beat up, because his
parents raised him with a great sense of
empathy and a strength of character to match his physical strength. It seems to
me that when we are kids we love Superman. When we become know-it-all jaded teenagers we find his power and morality
insulting. When we become adults, and especially parents, we fall in love with
the hope and inherent morality that Superman shines on us and future
generations. When people say they hate the "boy scout” version of Superman,
because they cannot believe that someone so powerful could be so noble, I think
it says a lot more about them than it does the character. Superman is not a
hero because of his powers…it's what he chooses to do or NOT do with them that
makes him a hero. He is a leader, a friend, a big-brother, an inspiration,
something to aspire to and after all this time we are finally on the same
level…unfortunately, we dragged him down to ours.
