MAN OF STEEL (2013)
[WARNING: SUPER SPOILERS!]
[WARNING: INCREDIBLY LONG!]
Brad: First of all I gotta say that I really feel bad for the kids of today. Seems like all the great classic superheroes are completely different for them as it was for us. This isn’t a “Where-Have-All-The-Good-Times-Gone” kind of generational gripe but it seems every superhero has to be depressing and downtrodden these days. Batman has gotten increasingly darker over the years. Last year’s Amazing Spider-Man was mopey and angsty and now even Superman is depressing. It doesn’t have to be so campy or corny like the 50s but the Donner/Reeve Superman movies were a great example of a fun superhero movie. While his symbol stands for “hope,” this movie couldn’t be further from feeling any good feelings at all.
Brian: I see your point, the whole thing was just on kind of a down note. Except for the ending there was like 3 minutes of levity in the entire picture, when he was in the interrogation room. However, I’m kind of glad they didn’t put in goofy crap. We had that already. This movie had to distance itself from the other Supermans and it did. Maybe it was a little too Batman Begins-y but that’s ok.
Brad: Sure they got distance away from the campy 80s Superman flicks but they lost the essence of him also. I understand the whole stay in the closet Superman because the world will not accept you premise but he didn’t do squat to prove himself as a hero. He was just as much a target as the human race was in the movie and after saving one colonels life do they deem him worthy of being a good guy.
I said last night that this movie was too sci-fi for my liking and we can discuss that later but the other gripe I have now after sleeping on it is they went too big too soon. Way too much happened, destructive-wise, I mean in this movie for an origin story. It was great in Reeve’s Superman II that they had Zod and his gang. The first one established Superman as a outcast young man who learns his past and powers and saves people in Metropolis and gains the public trust and adoration. Then he meets up with a human foe of Lex Luthor who has a simple and nefarious plot which is feasible enough to believe and Superman has a tough time trying to solve the problem and ultimately fails. But then cheats a little for love and then saves the world and puts Luthor in jail. THEN the sequel has him against a bigger group of foes with the same powers as him. What will Man of Steel do for the sequel? How do you go from Independence Day-like destruction to a Lex Luthor evil scheme?
Brian: Well he did that whole saving planet Earth thing…
But did you want a slow movie? Did you want ANOTHER full-on Superman origin story? I don’t think making a movie while worrying about what you’re going to do in a sequel is very smart. Think about the first Superman movie, his major battle was with an earthquake. Then he f’d that up so he spun the Earth backwards. If that had happened in this you would have called bullshit. I think nostalgia for the first two plays a real heavy hand in people our age liking them so much.
Brad: My quick synopsis of the first movie was not intended as a desire to remake the origin story AGAIN. In fact when I heard that this was going to be an origin story I groaned because Superman doesn’t need an origin movie. He’s 75 years old and most kids are inbred with the knowledge of how Superman came to be. More kids on this Earth know the origin of Superman than the story of Jesus probably.
Speaking of Jesus, this film played that similarity a little too blatant, don’t you agree? They even had him in church! And he said he was 33 years old. And the line that bugged me most was the Zod’s female lieutenant said something about evolution always winning or something, implying that evolution is bad since the villain agrees with it.
True about nostalgia but I think the filmmakers have that burden as well. In the comics, Superman has a ton of villains yet in 6 Superman movies we have had Luthor 4 times and Zod twice. I’m not a big Superman comics can but I’m sure someone else would’ve been interesting to start off on a smaller scale.
Brian: It turned me off to the movie when I first heard they were going to have his origin again. But I actually thought the Smallville scenes were good. Except Pa Kent dying because he went back to save a F*CKING DOG.
Yeah it was pretty heavy on the Jesus. The parts that stood out the most were when he was sitting in the church and behind him there was a stained glass window of Jesus with basically a red cape on. (By the way, why was that scene in there? Couldn’t he have just had that conversation with Ma Kent?) And then when he leaves Zod’s ship through the hole he made he does a blatant Christ on the cross pose. I’m surprised there wasn’t a scene where his palms bled.
Clark Almighty!
They should definitely move on to other villains, but thinking about it, Batman is the only DC hero with good villains. All of Superman’s villains are lame. I’m sure Lex Luthor and maybe Brainiac will be in the sequel, and a live-action Braniac seems hokey.
Brad: DC comics have mediocre heroes! They are all very basic and bland. The Flash. Hawkman. Wonder Woman. Green Lantern is interesting enough but we all know how that film turned out. Batman is only really good when he’s dark and gritty. Superman is a flying strong man with heat-ray vision (I’m kinda shocked they used that power so much in this film) and like I’ve said a 100 times too basic for a reboot. Maybe he only works well on a basic level like the Reeve movies. He’s the best Good Samaritan super hero. Only looking out for all the poor slobs of the world. In this film he was more focused on beating up Zod’s gang that he didn’t give two shits about how many people were dying in the wake of the battles. Dozens of skyscrapers were falling down and I’m sure 1000s of people died as a result. Even in Smallville there had to be countless casualties. The first thing I thought of when he attacked Zod because Zod threatened Ma Kent was that he left the other villains with Ma Kent. They could’ve killed her. Reeve’s Superman (or earlier-era Supes) would’ve punched Zod away from his mom and got her to safety. That’s the true Superman way. Getting upset (he pounds Zod’s face like a dozen times) and resorting to ultra-violence is not what I want to see Superman do.
Brian: Hahaha, did you really just say, “That’s the true Superman way”? But yeah it seems like everyone is pointing out how Superman punching Zod through buildings causing them to topple likely led to numerous civilian deaths, and probably a lot of ruined lives in general.
Hard Ticket to Home Video 
Superman actually read this review during his flight from Krypton to Earth and still didn’t get to the last page.
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Great review guys. Oh and I made it to the last page and missing poop inside spacepod is a disturbing mystery.
still haven’t seen it, but from reading your post I can see that the movie suffers from everything I thought it would.
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Thanks! It wasn’t great, but entertaining enough.
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One page is enough. Based off page 1, I’ll assume you guys were lukewarm, at best, to this movie. I pretty much agree. It was a decent movie, but the more I think about it, not a decent Superman movie.
“But did you want a slow movie? Did you want ANOTHER full-on Superman origin story?” This was my reaction, too!
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On page 3 we hate it but on page 4 we LOVE it! Then on page 5 we’re back to lukewarm.
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Interesting and entertaining read. Enjoyed ALL 5 pages. I too enjoyed it but didn’t love it. But I wasn’t expecting too much because I’m not huge on Supes in general. Good review.
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Thank you! You’re very brave.
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I get the gist but am not reading 5 pages of it, next time video this conversation 😀
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We can’t, I slur my words way too much and Brad’s image can’t be captured on film.
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Haha 😀
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I think this needed to be a full on origin or stay away from that entirely. As it was, it was a mash up and spread itself too thinly. Also, I get the whole hate about everything being destroyed and him making questionable decision but he’d only just become Superman by that point. Maybe he’d not really developed his proper moral compass by that point. Or maybe it was just dodgy writing!
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But him developing a moral compass through his old man was the point of half the movie.
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That’s very true. It kind of felt like he was still quite immature in this film and that he’d probably grow more mature as he gets older, hence him killing Zod and being distraught about it. I think this exemplifies one of the film’s biggest issues – it doesn’t quite know what kind of film it wants to be.
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Yeah but he was 33, not 17.
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Again, good point. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it was.
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I lost my shit when Pa Kent died the tornado. What the hell!?!? You’re going to DIE and make a widow out of your wife, leaving her the burden of running the Kent farm all on her own, because you want to prove a point to Clark? What the eff is wrong with you man! Your friggen son is Superman, just let him save you!! Someone should have spoken up about this in editing. “Do we really need to have him die?” “Oh, good point, that does seem extreme and stupid, we’ll cut that scene altogether, for brevity and common sense.”
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Not his finest choice. And couldn’t Clark have just rescued him in a normal way? “Sorry, it’s just time for me to die for no real reason” Or they could have just gotten another friggin’ dog.
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One of the best scenes in the 78 Superman was when Clark realized that even with all his supernatural powers he could not save someone (especially someone he loved) from dying. Having Costner wave off Clark from saving him is extremely weak to the development of Superman as a hero.
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Yeah but to be fair 78 Superman didn’t even try to restart his dad’s heart with his heat vision.
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Wouldn’t that just incinerate a huge whole in Pa Kent’s chest?
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You don’t know until you try! Or he could have superpunched his heart back into rhythm.
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lol, yeah totally! They live on a farm, they probably have tons of other dogs to choose from. And the townspeople were probably like “Wtf? you can push a bus of kids out of a lake but you can’t run over to your old man and escort him to the underpass?”
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And didn’t the dog die anyway? All in vain!
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And They did get a new dog too.
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And he did reveal himself to the world not long after too so his death was twice in vain!
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The timeline on that was really unclear. It kind of seemed like Clark was around 20 maybe, so that means he wouldn’t reveal himself for 13 more years after he wandered around finding menial work for no real reason. The world wasn’t ready in the dark days of 2000 but it’s totally ready in 2013!
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Sweet Jesus or should I say Superman you guys sure had a long talk about this one. I wish there was as much on screen chemistry between Clark and Lois as there was with Pa Kent and his dog.
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He loved that dog more than his own life.
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and his wife apparently lol
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Hmmm, maybe there’s something darker going on there….
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haha!
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Well – it took me almost nineteen hours to read this entire thing but I did – good job boys!
P.S. I’d go back to save my dog too.
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Come clean, your dog read it to you.
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It’s true!! He did!! Toots is a good boy!!
(I never learned how to read : ( )
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I would rate it a bit higher but still, a good review 🙂
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Nice review! I enjoyed it quite a bit actually. One thing I hope they work on in the sequel is Lane’s and Clark’s relationship. Adams described their dynamic as “a strong friendship”, which I agree with. I never really saw a romantic connection between the two, which isn’t a bad thing at all, I found their friendship really sweet and charming, so when the actual romantic interaction between the two happened, it caught me a little off guard. Perhaps that’s all down to the messy script.
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