Man of Steel: Attempting the Improbable

Before jumping into the review, an introduction:

Out of all the super heroes in existence, Superman is by far the least interesting. The man is literally invincible, kryptonite being his one weakness. Superman is what all super heroes should be: a paragon of justice, never kills, always saves the day and never breaks his moral code. I say this having a limited knowledge of Superman comics because American comics are a giant mess of alternate universes and that sort of nonsense. Because Superman is the “Jesus” of all super heroes, it is hard to make him an interesting character.  Decades of comics are a testament to DC’s failures in this regard. The existing Superman movies also fail to make Superman more than an immovable object. However,  Man of Steel is a game changer — if you squint hard enough.

Info:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTzq730Vvvh1pw5AB3HjyoQtBpAJKI0omc_3MYp3X7MA8l-7lzfd00lDEb7vU2_49KSNXiN3vFvN-6kFVW3Jjn3li1rnM3uwjXY5bEhj_P3ie3r0YXSHEFPWNEIY3l5ZIMlDPdYU7dezc/s1600/Man_of_Steel_9.jpg

IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770828/

Rotten Tomatoes - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/superman_man_of_steel/

Genres: super hero, alien invasion, science fiction, romance (sort of).

Concept:

This is a reboot movie. We don’t see Superman in his traditional garb until easily half way through the movie.  I believe this movie attempted to “Nolenize” Superman. Similar to the new Batman movies. We get a reboot that doesn’t start with Superman saving people from natural disasters. Movies involving Superman saving people from natural disasters are boring and stupid. In the early comics he did that stuff because superheroes were a new thing, but it’s 2013, not 1938. Instead they went with the Zodd storyline, not original, but still a fantastic choice.  Superman is more human and vulnerable in this film. His role as the protector of Earth still exists in the gray.

Characters:

Cal-El/Clark Kent:

 We all know who Clark is. A good kid from Kansas with super powers. His character has not changed, but the movie presents him in an believable way.  Man of Steel shows a Clark that struggles with his identity, who fears to use his powers around others humans. Despite his father’s fear, Clark’s nature encourages him to help people. He does not help them as Superman, simply as a ghost or a phantom. Clark develops into Superman versus starting out as him. It still kills me that the people of Metropolis can’t tell that Clark is superman. Yes, glasses and a timid personality are the perfect way to hide your identity.

Lois Lane:

She takes a more direct role in this movie. Lois chases the ghost-like Clark across the earth and learns about his true identity almost alongside him. I have been told that traditionally Lois Lane isn’t aware of Clark’s real identity. I thought it was a good choice to have a Lois that is aware. This creates a different romantic tension. Lois has always been portrayed as a strong, independent women, but Man of Steel gives Lois a third trait: survivability. She is resourceful and quick on her feet. She is also plays a fundamental role in the battle against Zodd. By making Lois a stronger, less informational ignorant character; Clark is more vulnerable.  Also Amy Adams was well chosen for the role.

Jor-El:

He is Kal-El’s original father and part of the Kryptonian noble house of El. He is the colony ship’s A.I, a “shadow” of Jor-El’s former conscious. Yet, it has the ability to think on its own and analyze situations like a person would. It’s like Jor-El didn’t really die on Krypton. He is one of the film’s larger failings. 

General Zodd:

He is the supreme commander, one of the last surviving Kryptonians and the main antagonist of the movie. Zodd is a fantastic villain because he genuinely believes his actions are right. Evil that believes it is just is far more compelling than Evil that knows its own falsity. Only from a human perspective are his actions wrong. This creates a nice moral ambiguity. This also compounds Clark’s identity crisis. Thus, Zodd is one of the better parts of this movie.

The Kent Family:

I decided to combine Mr. Kent and Mrs. Kent because they fulfill the same purpose in the Superman Universe. They are the human element in Clark’s life and help him resolve his alien versus human crisis.  

Plot:

Nothing truly original has been made in a at least a couple thousand years. It is unfortunate that this movie is a carbon copy. The story is taken straight from Superman II. In many ways the plot is this movie’s biggest failing and strength. Way back in the day, on Krypton, Zodd revolts against the existing government. He and his followers are caught and banished to an alternate space realm called the Phantom Zone. Krypton’s eventual end frees Zodd from the P.Z. and he begins the search for a new home. Through a series of events, Zodd finds his way to earth. Thus beginning the conflict between him and Clark, etc.

The Zodd plot is a solid way to start off a Superman reboot, unfortunately the movie fails on delivery. The whole first half of the movie has too much going on. For reasons unknown to me, the movie spends at least twenty minutes on Krypton. The slight expansion of Clark’s origins were interesting, but unnecessary. Jor-El tries to warn the Kryptonian government of Krypton’s impending doom. Zodd and Jor-El have a confrontation about the future of their race—blah blah blah. Why do the viewers need to see this? Is this information essential? No. Clark is sent to earth in his pod. A dramatic imagine of his mother being consumed by Krypton’s death throes is shown. Since the audience knows nothing about Jor-El or his wife, their death’s create no dramatic tension.  I can understand the need to frame the conflict for the movie, but it is only necessary if the narrative is completely new.

Flash forward to Clark being an adult. He looks like a hobo and drifts from place to place saving people in need. I like this because Clark’s inherently good nature is revealed in a non-contrived way. Kent Senior’s ideals are embodied by him: save people, but never reveal your powers. Vignettes of his childhood are revealed every time he closes his eyes. This is a fantastic way to show Superman’s past without burdening the viewer, expect that it had to be rushed. I didn’t get a full understanding of Clark’s childhood because the vignettes were too disconnected. Why was Clark remembering these memories specifically as he was traveling? The movie does not provide an explanation beyond: you, the audience, need to know. Not good enough. One Vignette was done very well.

Kent Senior’s death is powerful. He is killed by a tornado when trying to save the family dog. Clark could save his father, but risks revealing his powers. Kent Senior lets the winds take him to save his son’s idenity. That’s drama, probably one of the toughest scenes in the movie. Unfortunately, the sparseness of the vignettes does detract from the weight of this scene.

There was not enough time to really flesh Kent Senior out.

Clark’s reasons for constant travel are unknown until the U.S army finds a Kryptonian ship. Clark manages to steal it from human hands. While in the ship Clark meets Jor-El and gets a crash course on his origins. This was too easy. Not only does Clark get Kryptonian history in five minutes, but meets a shadow of his real father. Except that the “shadow” is basically Jor-El in the flesh minus actually being alive. The conversation went something like this: “Ok, Kal. Well Krypton screwed itself over that’s why we sent you to Earth. Behind door number one is our hope for you and behind door number two is your mission to save humanity from itself. Any questions?” “Golly gee, dad.” *arms swing in that annoying 1950’s Leave It to Beaver fashion* “That’s amazing. I’ll get right on it.”

Due to the time constraints, we don’t see Clark process any of what he just learned. To move Superman away from the Jesus of all Superheroes, the audience needs to see him struggle with this. I have to project Clark’s process into the movie which is bad writing. Furthermore, Jor-El continues to play a significant role in the movie.  To the point where he becomes fundamental in the fight against Zodd.

Zodd’s crew is going to exact the codex form Clark. The Kryptonian ship’s atmosphere weakens Clark to human levels of strength. Through the El House Key, Louis brings Jor-El onto Zodd’s ship. He proceeds to change the atmosphere of the ship to Earths and saves Louis.

  After that I thought, “Bro, you’re dead. Stop showing up with your Deus Ex Machina bull crap.” Louis or Clark should have found a way out on their own.

As one might guess, Zodd shows up to earth and demands Clark’s immediate surrender or he’ll blow Earth into space rocks. Clark does, stuff happens and both of them have an epic battle in New York.

Now Zodd’s master plan is to terraform earth to the exact environmental specifications of Krypton. The machine is called the World Engine which is hilarious because he says, “Release the World Engine” and it made me think of Davey Jones releasing the Kraken in Pirates. Then he would use the Kryptonian birthing matrix to rebuild his race. This puzzled me greatly because Zodd must have seen how strong Clark got under earth’s sun. Why didn’t he skip the terraforming process and make superhuman soldiers to take over the universe? They shoot lasers out of their eyes! How is that not awesome? He is a compelling villain, but I feel like this is a huge oversight on his part.

  I am forgetting something—oh right, the codex.

The codex of Krypton is Man of Steel’s biggest plot hole. The audience learns about the codex way back in the first twenty minutes of the film. Folks on Krypton no longer feel the need to reproduce naturally and rely on a birthing matrix, basically a huge tank of water with little disgusting gray fetuses floating around. The “codex” holds all the genetic information for their entire race from noble houses to peasants. Each Kryptonian is born for a predestined purpose. Jor-El has the bright idea to put the codex inside of Clark. I have no idea why or what kind of implications that action has. The movie doesn’t go into it at all. Does that mean Clark’s children will have the same genetic code as the first born of the noble houses on Krypton? No idea. Does it matter at all? Apparently not. Jor-El could have just placed the codex in the pod, but no he put it is inside Clark. So Superman is his own race--well that’s just sad. The codex is a maguffin to bring Zodd into conflict with Clark. It serves no other purpose.

Despite some of these problems, the atmosphere in the second half redeems this movie. The people of Earth dislike Clark because he is a Kryptonian, one of “them.” Even after the movie ends the only person who seems to genuinely like Clark is Louis. Looks like Kent Senior was right. The earth people’s reaction seems more realistic to me. Superman could subdue every nation and only break a mild sweat. Folks aren’t going to welcome such a creature with open arms. The conclusion to Clark’s fight with Zodd made an impact.

During their fight, Zodd evolves the same powers as Clark, but with a greater swiftness. The longer the flight, the more advantage Zodd has. At the apex of the fight, Clark has to decide whether to kill Zodd or let him roast some humans. He offs Zodd. So in addition to destroying the birth matrix, Clark ends the life of the last known Kryptonian. That’s heavy stuff and Clark visibly suffers from it. We see a Superman that fails to uphold all of his moral code. This makes him real and human.

  

The romance between Clark and Louis is another problem. It didn’t feel forced, but the plot moved too quickly for me to believe it. Action was the focus of the film, but a few romantic scenes with them together in a non-official capacity would have sold it for me. Honestly, they should kept it more ambiguous and saved the passionate kiss for the second movie (if there is a sequel planned at all). A quick side note: they did not introduce kryptonite into this movie which was awesome.

Special Effects:

Like most modern blockbusters, Man of Steel has above standard special effects. Aesthetically speaking this movie has a lot going for it. Every thing about the Kryptonians looks strange and unfamiliar. Despite looking human they seemed like aliens. Their suits are in the same vein. 

Now that's a Badass

Unfortunately, the cg could have been better. It becomes overwhelming as Clark and Zodd tear through Metropolis. In fact the latter half of the movie suffers from it. If excessive cg doesn’t bother you then you will love the fight scenes. Just to clarify, I am not saying the fight scenes weren’t awesome. Believe me, they were. Just a little cheesy at times. The move to darker colors for Superman’s outfit was a good idea; another form of Nolenization. Red and black give a more sinister vibe which reflects the reaction of people to Clark’s super human abilities.

The cosmetic changes are small, but gives Superman an edge

Score:  6/10

Man of Steel was an attempt to make the most boring superhero more interesting and relatable. In good conscious I can’t rag on that too much. The over-used Zodd storyline and poor execution dragged this movie down. Plot holes and unanswered questions make this reboot hard to defend. If the writers had taken a little more time to smooth out the minor details and get the pace under control, this film would have received a higher score.  The foundation was there, but the building on top was sort of rubbish. Hopefully, Superman movies of the future will learn the good qualities of this movie and never repeat the mistakes. At the end of the day, watch it. It’s a decent action movie that doesn’t totally suck.

Was it better in the Old Days?

All of us have watched movies for a very long time. Forgive me, my powers of observation are incredibly astute. However, I have always held a certain belief about the quality of modern movies. Rarely do I go to the theater expecting to see an excellent movie. My expectations have been driven so low that it practically don’t exist, this includes the ones I am excited about. I came to a conclusion: in the 21st there are far more bad movies made than good movies. The gap is wider than it has ever been before.

A good friend of mine, who shall hence forth be known as Liberating Panther, takes the opposite opinion. The gap only seems to be worse because we are living in it right now, but in reality the gap has remained roughly the same, no matter which movie era we are in. This argument has passed between us multiple times and we have never come to a conclusion. To clarify, here are some of the reasons for my stance: Technological advancements allow anyone to produce a film with no regards to quality, audience tastes have drifted towards flashy cg and special effects at the expense of plot and characters, and movie makers stay in their comfort zones to earn more money. Of course, nothing is inherently wrong with any of these reasons. Film producers make a movie to entertain an audience in hopes of making huge profits. Yet, the movie industry seems to prefer quantity or quality. Instead of doing a review, I decided to do a little experiment to determine which one of us was more correct.

The International Movie Database is the largest collection of information on movies that I know of. On the site users can rate movies on a scale one to ten. One being the worst and ten being the highest. For my experiment, I looked at three different years. I divided movies into three categories: good, mediocre, and bad for each year based on the user scores. After counting out the total movies movies made in a specific year, I calculated the total and transformed it into a percent. Below is the data I gathered:

1935: 1,627 movies were made. 731 have a user score (will be used as the total).

# of good movies (7 or above): 109

# of mediocre movies (5 or 6.9): 540

# of bad movies (4.9 or below): 82

# of movies with without a rating: 896

Good movies as a percent of the total = 109/731 = 14.9%

Bad movies as a percent of the total = 82/731 = 11.2%

Mediocre and bad movies = 622/731 = 85%

1960: 2,215 movies were made. 1005 have a user score (will be used as the total.)

# of good movies: 158

# of mediocre movies: 614

# of bad movies: 233

# of movies without a rating: 1210

Good movies as a percent of the total = 158/1005 = 15.7%

Bad movies as a percent of the total = 233/1005 = 23.2%

Mediocre and bad movies = 847/1005 = 84.2%

1982: 2619 movies were made. 1603 have a user score (will be used a total).

# of good movies: 245

# of mediocre movies: 867

# of bad movies: 491

# of movies with no rating: 1016

Good movies as a percent of the total = 245/1603 = 15.2%

Bad movies as percent of the total = 491/1603 = 30%

Mediocre and bad movies = 1358/1603 = 84%

2009: 6,781 movies were made. 4379 have a user score (will be used as total).

# of good movies: 363

# of mediocre movies: 2,370

# of bad movies: 1,646

# of movies with a no rating: 2402

Good movies as a percent of the total = 363/4379 = 8%.

Bad movies as a percent of the total = 1646/4379 = 37.6%

Mediocre and bad movies = 4016/4379 = 92%

2012: 8,490 movies were made. 4306 movies have a user rating (will be used as total).

# of good movies: 595

# of mediocre movies: 2150

# of bad movies: 1561

# of movies with a rating: 4184

Good movies as a percent of the total = 595/4306 = 13.8%

Bad movies as a percent of the total = 1561/4306 = 36.2%

Mediocre and bad movies = 3711/4306 = 86%

I added 2012 in just to see how much percent variation there in a small span of time. The difference is small, but a very interesting increase in good movie percentage. 

The data supports my stance: the percent of bad movies per year has steadily increased over time. We live in an era where almost a 1/4 of the movies made are terrible and it is growing worse. As movie making technology became more available, more movies were made (generally perceived as a good thing). Yet, when comparing these years together, the number of good movies remained a small percent of the total. The bad movie ratios do not stay the same, thus, I conclude that overall movie quality is worse today than it was in earlier times. I wish that was enough, but unfortunately it is unfair to Liberating Panther and to my readers. The data has a few problems:

1. The lack of user ratings. For each year there was a number of movies that had no information or rating. It is possible that the missing data would support my friend’s stance instead of my own.
2. The ratings are based on modern movie audiences looking back on older movies. My friend believes that society often has nostalgia goggles about a whole plethora of issues, movies are no exception. The tendency to say, “things were better in the old days” is rather strong. Movies may be considered a certain way by today’s movies standards, but the audience’s opinions could have been very different when it first showed. This data does not reflect the opinions of audiences in 1935 or 1960. It would have been very difficult to track down this information, so I didn’t bother.
3. I am assuming the IMDB has accounts for all the movies made in a certain year. Their database could be missing entries. 1935 was a long time ago, recording keeping was harder back then. Lesser quality movies may not have been persevered.
4. IMDB catalogs movies from all over the world, not just the United States. My conversations with Liberating Panther on this issue focused mainly on movies in the U.S.

Even with the data, my stance is still assumption. An unbelievable amount of research is probably needed to determine whether myself or Liberating Panther is correct. Either way, this was an interesting little experiment.