Hotfoot's Man of Steel Review [WARNING SPOILERS]

[Hotfoot]

This review will have spoilers past a certain point. That cannot be helped, as this is going to be more of an analysis than a review in many respects. That said, I will give everyone my limited, spoiler free review here.

Man of Steel is a fun movie, but it’s not my favorite superhero movie to date. I don’t give numerical scores, but I would highly recommend at LEAST a matinee, if not a full showing. I do not recommend the 3D version, though I’m sure it was put together well. The camera work of the 2D version did not fill me with confidence that the 3D version would be easy to follow. Protip, Hollywood, if the action is real time and the camera is moving around like crazy, it won’t track well in 3D.

Now, from here on in there are spoilers, so stop reading here if you’re concerned about that.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

Superman was one of my favorite heroes when I was a kid, and for good reason. I often felt like I was an outcast for trying to do the right thing. I fought a lot when I was a kid, largely because I was picked on, and partly because I had a short fuse. As I got older, I kept getting into fights, but because I was bigger than a lot of the other kids, I was often given harsher punishments, or assumed to have been the primary one responsible. As I tried to gain control of myself, there was Superman. Yeah, maybe it’s cheesy, but it was there. Sure, there was Spider-Man, who was picked on too, and a nerd like me, and shared my sense of humor, and there was Batman, who spent years of his life training to always be the best, but Superman struck a chord with me because despite his incredible power, he always tried to help people. He could have done anything he wanted, ruled the world, but instead, he helped people because it was the right thing to do. When I was teased, especially when I was in elementary school, much of it was because I was a “goody two-shoes”. I thought things like the golden rule and fairness were just the way things should be done. Not everyone in my peer group agreed, but as one of my teachers said in middle school, my class was filled with some of the worst kids they’d ever seen in thirty years. Granted, suburbs, but still, there’s something to it given how many of them are either dead or in jail right now.

I suspect these kids were ultimately responsible for the Dark Ages of comics in the 90’s.

Anyway, my Superman growing up was the Superman in and around the Death of Superman storyline. I didn’t seriously start collecting comics until about then, so I don’t have much in the way of memory of Superman’s story from Infinite Crisis until Doomsday showing up, but I was able to piece things together from what I collected from that point on. I stopped in the late 90’s, so the post-Smallville retcons are not a part of my headcanon with regards to Superman. This is modestly important, because my personal version of Superman very heavily influenced my enjoyment and viewing of this movie, so I’m going to start with that.

Post-Crisis/Pre-Smallville Superman was a relatively new take on the character by pretty much every account I’ve read online, and in my opinion, it was one of the best in Big Blue’s history. The Golden Age had Ant-Man Superman, the Silver Age had God-Man Superman, and the less said about the new 52 the better, though I’ve heard some of the arcs there have been decent lately. Post-Crisis Superman was phenomenally de-powered comparative to the Silver Age Superman, but he was still recognizably Superman to modern audiences. He could fly, bullets bounced off of him, he was fast, he had heat vision, x-ray vision, super hearing, and his vulnerabilities included, aside from Kryptonite, Magic and Psionics (up to a point). He didn’t have new powers every month, and he was, for quite some time, the only surviving Kryptonian. There was no Supergirl, no Superboy, no Kandor, not even a General Zod, at least not in his reality.

Most changed, however, was his origin. He still came from a dying Krypton and all that, but in this reality, Ma and Pa Kent were still alive and would show up pretty regularly and often act as moral support for Clark when times got tough. His powers didn’t develop properly until his late teens, at which point he began the “mild-mannered” part of his persona, withdrawing from his usual activities to avoid not just being discovered, but to avoid taking advantage of his powers. After College, Clark travelled the world for several years on a massive walkabout, working as “Superman” in secret as he got a feel for humanity and his role in it. It also neatly worked as helping him build up his cover as a reporter because as he travelled the world, he learned about people, places, and things. He could speak with authority on affairs foreign and domestic because he had BEEN THERE, which explains why Perry would send him off to places to cover stories when he had to go there as Superman.

Lex Luthor was different too, and that doesn’t make a huge difference with regards to this movie in particular, but it does make a difference with regards to the Lex/Superman dynamic in my mind. Lex Luthor was a kid born in the bad part of Metropolis known as “Suicide Slums”. He was born to a poor family, had a bad childhood, and clawed his way to the top of the economic bracket through hard work, determination, and ruthlessness. He was a businessman first and foremost, and it wasn’t that he only did evil, he did good things too, but they were usually monkey paw sort of good. Lex Luthor was Superman’s foil because he had no powers, and yet had power over everyone, including Superman. Any time Superman foiled one of Lex’s plans, he would shuffle off responsibility to one of his underlings. Even when Superman finally managed to nail Lex for his crimes, he had an out. Lex, meanwhile, hated Superman because Superman didn’t have to work for his power, he didn’t have to sacrifice for his fame. He was infuriated because he couldn’t corrupt Superman or bring him to heel, and since he was an Alien, he was convinced that it was all a ploy as a prelude to an invasion.

Superman, however, simply kept doing the right thing. He worked with authorities as best he could, he put on a good public face, and he kept on saving people, beating bad guys, and generally saving lives. And he didn’t kill to do it, even though it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to do in most cases. He believed in justice, in letting the system do its job, and that people could be redeemed if given a chance, even Lex Luthor.

And then he killed General Zod.

Now, yes, I did just say that Superman didn’t kill, and that he was alone as the Last Son of Krypton, but in the comics, he flat-out executed General Zod and his two cronies. It wasn’t a fight, it wasn’t a trip to the Phantom Zone, it was a death sentence he carried out personally.

Some clarification, this was pocket dimension/alternate reality shenanigans, some of the first of it since the Crisis event. The details are lost on me, but the short version is this. Alternate Reality Earth has been devastated by Zod and Company. Their Lex Luthor, who is a good guy, reaches out to Superman and begs for help. Superman comes over, gets his ass handed to him, even with the help of Supergirl (who wasn’t the Kryptonian version, but an engineered creation of AltEarth Lex to be a symbol of Hope after Zod killed Superboy/Young Clark). Superman, having no chance to defeat Zod on his own, resorts to using that universe’s version of Kryptonite, which was harmless to him, but ultimately lethal to Zod and his crew. He killed the three of them, and returned to his world with the last surviving member of that Earth, Lex Luthor’s Supergirl.

It had a profound effect on Superman, and he left Earth to wander the stars, hoping to come to terms with what he had done. This was a real crisis of faith moment for Superman, because until this point, he had never killed, he had never had to kill, and it went against many of his core principles. He was not Justice, but here he had acted to carry out some measure of it, and it resulted in more death. It was a sobering moment for Superman, but ultimately he came to terms with it and returned home, but not before running into the likes of Mongul, Lobo, and Darkseid.

I bring this up to shine some context on the movie. My Superman has killed, and while it was not a decision he made lightly, it was one he ultimately followed through with. It was a special case, perhaps, but it still happened. He went on to do it again later on in his run, but any time he did it, it was for a damn good reason, and not before trying nearly every other option. Yeah, it was mostly with Doomsday, but anyway.

Also different was the relationship Clark had with Lois. Ultimately, he married her. During my introduction to the run, they had been engaged for some time. Prior to him revealing his secret to her, he had used nearly every trick in the book to keep her from finding out the truth of his secret identity, including using shape-shifter friends of his to pose as Superman while he stood around as Clark Kent. There’s even a photo that’s brought up more than once during the run of Superman, Lois, and Clark, all in one frame. Still, they were in love and Lois was often the voice of reason and reality. She also never let her relationship with Clark affect her reporting, though on some occasions she would pull the Super-Ripcord when things got too hot, though more often than not she could get herself out of trouble, given that in this reality she was an Army Brat who was raised as “one of the boys”. Action Lois issues were always great fun when she was allowed to be a self-rescuing princess, and it helped explain why she was always getting into those dangerous situations and getting annoyed and Superman when he came to rescue her.

Now, the Movie. Seriously guys, if you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading here. I’ve given you enough time, just leave now and come back when you’ve seen the movie.

Okay, so, Man of Steel was in many ways a return to the Superman I know and love. There are, however, some massive changes, some great, some...less so. First off, it’s the first and only depiction of Superman in film that shows his post-college walkabout, and it’s all good fun, though it’s shown more from the perspective of everyone around him less than from his perspective in many respects, but that’s fine. The really great twist in this is that Lois comes across him on his walkabout, he saves her, and she tracks his ass down all the way back to Smallville. Lois figures out his secret identity before he even wears the damn suit in public! Fuck. Yes. This was always one of the stupidest things in Superman lore, that Lois Lane, ace fucking investigative reporter, could spend more than ten minutes with Superman AND work with Clark for years, and never be able to figure out the secret. Yes, they’ve had reasons over the years, and most of them have sucked. Clark’s secret is best kept when he’s a nobody reporter that almost nobody ever sees face to face. You put Clark’s face and Superman’s Face side by side, and all the glasses in the fucking world won’t help you.

So yeah, that happens, and I just about cheered when it did.

So, origin story altered, but good, but we’ve not yet seen Superman flying around saving people in the suit yet. The pacing of these movies may be formulaic, but it’s not without reason. Hero gets powers, hero learns to use powers, hero then saves people with powers in his iconic suit, then the villain shows up and they have a throwdown.

Yeah, not this time. Zod and his crew show up almost immediately after Lois and Clark have their heart to heart and Lois drops the story. No saving planes or trains or kittens in trees, nope, straight to fucking Zod, who calls for Earth’s governments to hand over Kal-El. Superman, now in costume, surrenders to the US government as a token of goodwill, and...they just hand him over because frankly, they have no reason not to. From their perspective, it’s a foreign power demanding the extradition of one of their citizens, and they risk war by not doing it. They don’t know Superman from fucking Adam at this point, were he already the celebrated hero of Metropolis, this discussion would be absolutely different, but they turn him over, and they ask for Lois too. It looks like there’s about to be a throwdown, but Lois, seeing a story in this, goes anyway.

Aaaaand here’s where one of the biggest problems with the movie comes up. This plot point is bad and the writers who made it should feel bad. It was stupid, it was irritating, it was fucking completely unnecessary. I get that they didn’t want to include Kryptonite in this movie because, well shit, the last one was fucking stupid anyway and that had Kryptonite everywhere, but come the fuck on. Superman is already vulnerable to radiation from his planet, sunlight from a red star, magic, and psionics, to say nothing of just supertech weapons (which, I will point out, KRYPTON HAS). But no, let’s also throw in Krypton’s ATMOSPHERE. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Krypton’s atmosphere makes Superman normal. Yeah, I know, in Zor-El’s little speech about why Superman gets his powers, the “richness” of the atmosphere is listed, but only after all the parts about lower gravity and solar radiation, which have been part of the canon for over fifty fucking years. Even non-comic fans, when asked, will be like, “Oh, yeah, he’s solar powered”.

Now, in its defense, for all I know, the atmosphere of Krypton was radioactive, and it’s the radioactivity of the air that saps Superman’s strength. That’s about the only way I’m buying it though.

So anyway, fighting happens, Superman and Lois escape to Earth, and Zod is on the hunt for a MacGuffin that will let him recreate Krypton on Earth, so he starts with the pod that brough Superman to Earth. This leads to Zod threatening Ma Kent, and a big brawl between Superman, Zod, and his two lieutenants throughout Smallville. Remember this one, it matters later. Anyway, big throwdown, but here’s my problem. Zod and the rest are clearly a match for Superman at this point, but they’ve only been on Earth for a little while. Moreoever, they’re all wearing encounter suits. SEALED encounter suits. They’re breathing Kryptonian atmosphere, and when they START breathing Earth’s atmosphere, they get overloaded by the Super-Senses like Clark did as a child, which gives Superman the upper hand for the moment. Problem is, THEY CLEARLY HAVE SUPER POWERS BEFORE THAT POINT. Superman was weak as a kitten when exposed to Krypton’s atmosphere on board their ship, and they didn’t exhibit any superpowers themselves while breathing Krypton’s Atmosphere, so what the fuck, movie? They’re still wearing the same goddamn armor the entire time, so it’s not the armor that gives them these powers, and they certainly didn’t show off moves like that back on Krypton, so again I ask what the fuck. There’s a throwaway line about how the helmet filters out things, so they’re not overloaded, but that’s pretty weak shit. The masks they have on are rebreather masks, just like we see Lois wearing when she’s in the Kryptonian ship.

I mean, look, the fight sequence was good and all, and there was some nice stuff done by the American Military, especially by Colonel Stabler (fuck his in-movie name, that’s what I’m calling him), but that stuff just rubbed me the wrong way. Have Superman win because he’s had years of experience with the powers, and Zod has to adapt to being that strong and that fast. Let Superman start off more powerful, but as he works his way through Zod’s minions, Zod and his lieutenants gain more control. That’s how it should have been but, alas.

So, after the fight through SMALLVILLE KANSAS, in which the American Military lost several aircraft, they grab Superman’s ship from the KENT FARM (admittedly, Superman could have gotten it originally, but it was being airlifted by helicopter to the military base), where the alien space craft from Zod’s ship landed to threaten Ma Kent, resulting in most of her house being destroyed, where a police officer drove Lois who ran up to Superman.

I’m sorry, but I’m really just banging my head against the desk here because later in the movie they try to find out where Superman lives and I mean fuck me it’s obvious at this point. They don’t have to spy, they just need to check the insurance claims in Smallville and plot them on a fucking map.

Anyway, the plan is to send Zod and his cronies back to the Phantom Zone through macguffin technology. Meanwhile, Zod is trying to turn Earth into Krypton through radical terraforming. Basically, it’s a two-part process (though...I don’t know anymore, fuck it), one part of his ship is over Metropolis, the other part breaks off and sets up shop on the other side of the world. They make a graviton-particle beam, bounce it off the main deflector dish, and then MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIE.

No, I’m not just saying that. Millions of motherfucking people die. They don’t show it on screen explicitly, but people are clearly dying. This goes beyond the point of most Superhero fights where people are knocked through buildings and shit, Zod LEVELS as in MAKES FLAT about a mile section in diameter of Metropolis, with buildings being destroyed and crumbling for maybe another mile. That’s before the final throwdown he has with Superman. It’s some incredible devastation, and we see Perry and the other Daily Planet characters running and screaming and oh god it’s terrible.

Maybe perhaps a bit too terrible. I don’t know, it’s always hard to judge in these movies. You want the bad guys to deserve it, but this is genocide. I’ll bring this up again later.

Anyway, Superman does his thing and Lois, Colonel Stabler, and Emil Hamilton do their job and send the Kryptonians to the Phantom Zone, except for Zod, which leads to the final fight of the movie. Hamilton and Stabler “die”, though it’s the Phantom Zone, they’re probably able to do a sequel if it comes to that, along with a host of Kryptonian baddies they can bring back any time they want. Then Zod throws down in a serious way. He’s got full control of the powers, he’s trained as a soldier, and he’s got nothing left. It’s a great throwdown, and it ends with Zod giving Superman a choice. Kill him, or he’ll just keep slaughtering humanity. Superman tries to reach him, tries to get him to stop, but ultimately, it’s a choice to kill Zod or watch a family burn in front of him.

And then he killed General Zod.

At this point, it’s wrap up. Superman is in the costume, the government is nervous about him, but people have generally accepted that he’s on our side. Metropolis is being rebuilt, and Superman adopts Metropolis as his home. Clark Kent shows up and gets a job with the Daily Planet, to a smirking and knowing Lois, and roll credits.

Superman does feel bad about killing Zod, and it’s a good moment, but I sat there in the theater just thinking, “Man, did you SEE what he did to Metropolis? He’s already killed enough people to put himself in the running for the land speed record on genocide here.” But it goes beyond that. The reason Superman killing General Zod was such a powerful moment in the comics was because up until that point, he had never killed ANYONE. He didn’t even let people die except in extreme circumstances, so it’s a major moment when he actually does pull out the lethal option. It’s the reason the World of Cardboard speech is such a big deal, Big Blue is CONSTANTLY holding back to avoid killing his opponents and to avoid hurting people. He takes fights away from populated areas, or he ends them quickly.

That...that didn’t really happen in this movie. Part of that, I’m sure, was that Superman was still somewhat inexperienced, but...yeah. We don’t really see him saving too many people this time out. He saves some Oil Rig guys, Lois, a random soldier, the bus of kids when he was a kid, and...that’s pretty much it.

And I blame Pa Kent.

God damnit Pa Kent was a shit in this one. Not entirely, I mean he had redeeming qualities and he was an overall good person, but fuck me. The one line that made me really nervous from the trailer was in the movie, unedited so it wasn’t a fakeout. Pa Kent was not the moral center he’s always been in the comics AND EVERY OTHER VERSION I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Granted, Golden Age is hard to judge, but STILL.

Here’s the exchange:

Clark: What should I have done, just let them die?
Pa: ...Maybe.

NO. NO NO NO. Fuck you movie that is NOT the message Pa sends Clark. That is not Pa Kent you can go fuck yourself a thousand times with a splintery kryptonite dildo.

Pa Kent’s response has been, always will be, and always should be “No, of course not”, usually followed with a “but”.

AND THEN the lecture about people being afraid of him, or people wanting to hurt him through his loved ones, or what have you happens.

Not. Like. This.

Pa Kent tells Clark that he SHOULD LET PEOPLE IN TROUBLE DIE.

This is a major sticking point for me and I don’t expect it will be for anyone else, but as a fan of Superman, and particularly My Superman, this would never fucking happen.

And Clark certainly never would have watched Pa Kent die in a tornado.

Oh that scene made me livid. When Pa Kent dies, it’s always been health related. He gets old and dies, usually in his sleep, and it’s sad. He’s always the first to go, always, but I guess that’s tradition at this point. But here, Pa Kent flat out tells Clark not to save him, even though he knows he’s going to die.

I want to take everyone involved in writing that sequence, the fucking air shit, and the pacing of this movie with regards to Superman being a damn hero and lock them in a room where Bruce Timm can beat some talent into them.

At the end of this movie, I had a smile on my face and ultimately I had a good time, my complaints are mostly the ones of a long time fan nit-picking, save this one: the pacing. Yes, we see Clark saving some people, but it’s almost never with the suit. It’s never public, it’s hidden. By the time we see him in the suit, he’s throwing down with the main bad guys. Now, yes, the movie was already nearly two and a half hours, but you can’t tell me that the five minutes of him flying around with the suit couldn’t have been converted into fifteen minutes of him showing up and making a splash publically. Shit, we don’t even see him as Clark Kent, newbie reporter until the last five minutes of the fucking movie. The distinction between Clark and Superman isn’t even in this movie starting off, and by the time it comes up, the credits are rolling and everyone knows Superman is from Kansas. Not Clark, SUPERMAN. And that means Clark is not likely to keep his identity secret very long. Though, hey, maybe only the military knows and they won’t tell anyone. Maybe.

I don’t know what elements were put in by Nolan, but there was shit added that didn’t need to be put in, and there was a lot of shit left out that really should have been in. Yes, I know, it’s Superman, we don’t need to spend a lot of time on his origin story, except this is a hard reboot of the franchise, we sort of DO. Because every version of Superman has been different over the years, and we need to connect to THIS one if there’s going to be more done with it. DC’s non-Batman movies have been all too quick to pull out the big guns it seems. Green Lantern should have started with Sinestro, not Parralax. Superman should have started with saving Lois and some sort of alien menace, not jumped straight to Zod. But Zod could have worked better, but they needed to build up Superman as a hero first. Otherwise, it really cheapens the danger that Zod presents, the choices humanity has to make, and all the rest. Zod is terrifying because he is the reality of “What if Superman ever turned on us”, but multiplied by his allies. To really measure that threat, and what that means to humanity, first we need humanity to see the things Superman is capable of. We need the Hope that Superman brings to turn to Despair to make the conflict more engaging. Otherwise, it’s just Independence Day with one good alien.

Now, I’ve not touched the Kryptonian section of the movie because, honestly, for the most part it was fine. They explain, loosely, why Kryptonians never really expanded and became gods of the universe, bureaucracy. That combined with a brutal genetic engineering caste system, makes Krypton fallible and less a paradise that just happened to explode. Superman being the first natural birth in centuries was sort of a nice touch. Making him a MacGuffin a bit less so, but whatever. The sections with Zor-El, dead or alive, were pretty damn fun.

So...yeah. If you’ve read all this, hopefully you understand my take on the movie and Superman in general, and why it’s difficult for me to view this movie outside of the prism of “My Superman”.