The Overdue Man of Steel Review

                                               The Overdue Man of Steel Review 
 
 
 
At the time I’m writing this, it might be pretty pointless to review Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, but like most of us on this wonderful site, we feel strongly about certain characters, or properties, and we eventually have to let out our passion out somewhere, and what a better place, right? It’s been about two years since the film came out, and a little reexamining isn’t exactly too crazy.

I’ve been a fan of the Superman character since I was 10 years old when I saw the much-hated Superman Returns. Sure it was boring, and basically rehashed everything that was in the Richard Donner Superman film, but my 10 year old mind didn’t care. I was just glad that I got to see a Superman movie on the big screen. But of course after years of reading a plethora of superhero comics, and learning more about the character in other forms of media, the flaws in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns became more evident, and we all just had to wait for the (at the time) alleged sequel titled Man of Steel to be better. Like these days, I remember there being a lot of rumors of there being a Superman Returns sequel, (and even a cross-over between Singer’s version of Superman and Nolan’s version of Batman), but it was wisely decided that Superman should get a fresh start in a reboot.

To some degree I was excited for the Man of Steel reboot film, but also skeptical. If my fellow film-lovers, and comic geeks do remember, the trailer for this movie felt the need to paint Superman as a Christ-like figure (Although he was originally created as more of a Moses figure) with its slow piano music, and speeches from Jonathon Kent and Jor-El about Clark being the next best thing since sliced bread. However, as much as fans love to bad-mouth a film based on its previews and trailers, the final product says it all.
My initial feelings after seeing Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was of some odd lacking. I went with a friend of mine to see it, and he said that “It didn’t have enough Superman in it.” To some degree, I agreed. I left that film wanting more, but not in an “Oh man! I wanna see more of this!”, but in that I didn’t feel as if I saw enough of Superman himself in there. Oh don’t get me wrong, the movie is definitely about Superman. His origins from Krypton, his troubles growing-up with powers, his early attempts at the superhero career, all that good origin jazz. But despite all this, there was never a moment of just Clark being Clark. As the Nostalgia Critic said in his stellar review of the film, there were rarely any moments where we the audience got to know Clark as a person. Sure, it’s a reboot of Superman and we’re just supposed to assume that much of his character from previous incarnations remain intact, but the movie has to stand on its own and establish who Clark is.
Being that it was an origin heavy film, there were no Superman defining moments such as him working at the Daily Planet, or his interactions with Jimmy Olson and Perry White, or his romantic rivalry with Lois Lane. Moments like those help show what kind of character Superman is and the kind of world he lives in, and I felt as if that was missing from the film. The one scene I felt showed character on Clark’s part, was the controversial neck-snapping scene that we all make fun of today, rightfully so. After the most epic and destructive fight between two people I’ve ever seen (I’m pretty sure they caused more damage Godzilla fighting King Kong.), it all ends in just one loud neck-snap that could’ve saved a lot of time. But I personally found the scene quite accurate to the character of Superman, particularly from John Byrne’s comic reboot also titled Man of Steel.  

Now if it wasn’t clear, my initial feelings toward the film were very much a mixed-bag. On one hand, the film was lacking in Superman’s character, it was very unnecessarily bleak, there are too many expositional scenes for which character interactions could be replaced with. On the other hand, I was actually liking the more science fiction approach to the Superman mythos. A famous comic book youtube reviewer known as “Browncoat Eric” (Whom is a better reviewer than me) said that the whole film felt like a “pulp science fiction” story, and I can really see that in most scenes of the film. The opening action scene with Jor-El on Krypton, really does feel like something out an L Ron Hubbard novel, with its dragons, blaster guns, elders in weird crowns, and a civil war between two groups of Kryptonians that was well established before the viewing of the film. Krypton also had an odd system of government and eugenics that somehow brought the destruction of their home world, and to me, that whole sequence on Krypton was thrilling. For me the film derailed once we had to deal with boring humans reacting to weird stuff scenes, which is what I expected, but I would have liked that in a more heightened comic book world, not the boring real world.

The film is written by David S Goyer, whom is largely known for being the screen writer for several superhero films including Batman Begins. Naturally with the success of the “Dark Knight Trilogy” (as everyone wants to call it now.) Warner Brothers thought it would suffice to have Goyer also a Superman origin film in the style of Batman Begins. Man of Steel is immensely structured off of Batman Begins, down right to the non-linear story-telling. Also like Batman Begins, the film can be read into for themes and philosophy, even if it is caked over with over-blown and long action scenes. I won’t go into it much here, but there is this interesting article on the website known as www.bigthink.com called Reading Plato with the Man of Steel, in it, writer Peter Lawler delves into how the themes in Man of Steel connect to Plato’s Republic. For those of you who think that Man of Steel is just another Michael Bay-styled action-flick, give this a read, it’ll be interesting.

Overall, I would feel better about Man of Steel if what followed was a better sequel. If this was supposed to be the Batman Begins of the Superman-Nolan trilogy, then the next would be the tremendously good Dark Knight of the trilogy. However, it was because of the latter possibility that I was somewhat disappointed by the news that the film would be followed by a Superman Vs Batman film. To me the world presented in Man of Steel does not seem like the same kind of world where Batman can pop-up in Metropolis and kick Superman’s buns with an elaborate set of plans. It didn’t come off as the kind of universe where the lost city of Atlantis exist. It didn’t seem like the kind of universe where New Gods and White Martians can come in at any moment and invade the earth. Zack Snyder has said in interviews for this film that he wanted to go for a more realistic approach to Superman, and that’s what he’s done. So it just seems a little odd that the next movie is all of a sudden going to have Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and anyone else before they decide to just make it a Justice League film.

 Man of Steel on its own is certainly not the worst Superman movie ever made (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) the actors in it do their best when they’re not in the middle of action scenes, the film could be read into for philosophical themes, and it’s a very interesting take on Superman. I just wish it felt more like a Superman film, than it did Independence Day. 

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