MAN OF STEEL Review

MAN OF STEEL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     The most popular movie genre is arguably the Superhero genre.  Last year saw what could be the greatest superhero movie ever made, Marvel’s The Avengers.  It had amazing action, humor, dramatic elements and suspense.  Any good superhero movie should follow this criterion as best it can.  One film that ignores that totally is Zach Snyder’s new film Man of Steel and the next reboot in the Superman franchise.

     The story is like the other Superman stories.  Superman or Kal-L is sent off his planet by his father because it is about to be destroyed.  At the same time the military leader of the planet Zod is sentenced to prison in some sort of black hole. Before that, Zod threatens to find Superman no matter what it takes. Superman lands on earth and is taken in by surrogate parents.  He then learns to cope with his unique powers and abilities. 

     The movie is full of great sequences but the film as a whole really falls flat.  The story of Clark, Superman’s earth name, is told through flashbacks.  These are the best scenes in the picture.  There is one where Clark as a young boy and he is seeing through peoples skin. Others include Clark saving his class from a sinking bus.  This brings me to the poor decisions that are made in the script.  And there are a lot of them.  Ma Kent played wonderfully by Diane Lane is a great character that you really care about. Pa Kent, who is played by Kevin Costner in his best performance in a long time. His character is the dumbest person, makes the weirdest decisions I’ve seen in a long time.  He is obsessed with not letting anyone know about his son’s powers.  He even thinks it might be better to let a bus full of kids die just so Clark’s secret won’t get out.  He also makes the single most stupidest decision possibly ever put to film.  Other characters make odd decisions as well.

     The heart of any superhero film is that these guys care about everyone.  Most of them don’t want anybody to die.  Batman in the Nolan films has a rule that he doesn’t kill anybody.  In The Avengers final scene they are doing everything they can to save everybody.  In Spider-Man 2 Peter Parker is at risk of losing his job as a pizza delivery boy, yet he saves two kids from getting hit by a car, even though if he is late delivering this pizza in a half hour or less than he will be fired.  In Man of Steel, Superman does not care.  He slams Zod into a gas station and it explodes.  I have to think at least five or six people would have been in there.  Yet Superman does not care.  In the final battle which goes on way too long, buildings are destroyed left and right.  Superman and Zod fighting is one of the most selfish acts of a superhero.  Superman rather stop Zod by slamming his face into glass, or throwing him into a building.  Even when Superman is thrown into a building, which then starts collapsing, you know with people in it, all Superman can do is keep fighting Zod.  He saves so many people in the beginning that I would think that he would care about the thousands of people dying in this final battle.

     The final battle is full of explosions and destruction.  There are so many times in the battle that invokes 9/11.  So many times that is uncomfortable.  It is invoked in The Avengers but it is done really well.  The attackers are attacking New York.  The Avengers do the best they can to stop them. It is what we wanted when 9/11 happened.  As the scene goes on though we realize it is what we had.  The Avengers are saving everyone they can, like the fireman and cops on that day. This film is just saying “Hey, remember that terrible thing that happened.  Well let me remind you.”  He shows us what it looked like but he does not say anything about it.  It feels like once Snyder stops introducing great actors like Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe, he just moves on to blowing stuff up.

     Zach Snyder hits you over the head with his 9/11 imagery.  He also, maybe even more so than 9/11, hits you over the head with Christ imagery.  Some of the Christ parallels are so grown worthy it takes you out of the film.  At one point his father tells him to save earth, he agrees and floats away with his arms in the Jesus on the cross position.  There are countless things that happen, like he’s 33 or that he is a unique birth. There are too many parallels to be smart and just comes across as annoying.

     Man of Steel is one of the most anticipated films in a while and sadly a big letdown.  Well that’s what you get when you give the director of Sucker Punch and Legend of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole a big, possible the biggest, superhero franchise.  It’s big, dumb and with very little jokes that by the nature of the film just seems out of place.  The film is one of the biggest messes I’ve seen in a while and a waste of two and a half hours of film watching.