Despite being the poster child for America, DC Comics’ biggest superhero Superman has never quite found a level to appease everyone on the big screen. The ridiculous Richard Donner films are remembered fondly for their light heartedness sure but it doesn’t really get to the general character core of Supes, with the franchise losing it’s way even more with the disasterific Superman 3 and Superman Returns offerings.
Step forward the holy trilogy braintrust behind this latest Man Of Steel revamp with comic and sci-fi screenwriter David S. Goyer (the Blade and Dark Knight trilogies), hyper-action director Zach Snyder (300 and Watchmen) and, most notable of all, producer Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight trilogy) teaming up to deliver a “hyper realistic” approach to Big Blue on the Big Screen. But given all the hype, does it succeed or fail?
Orphaned from his dying homeworld of Krypton as a newborn baby and found in a Kansas field, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill, The Tudors) grows up to a man and gains extraordinary powers. Despite looking completely human on Earth, he still feels alienated due to his powers and sets off on a journey of self discovery. Upon finding an old Kryptonian spaceship and learning of his past from a hologram of his biological father Jor-El (Russell Crowe, Les Misérables), Clark or Kal-El accidentally triggers a beacon for Kryptonian army general Zod (Michael Shannon, Take Shelter) who is hell bent on restarting Krypton on the ashes of Earth.
Despite some original scepticism, Shannon’s take on Zod turned out to be rather enjoyable; gone is the campy megalomaniac with quips, replaced by a pre-programmed military leader whose duty it is to save Krypton by force no matter the cost to the other side. If you ignore a rather placed reason for Superman to hate Zod, the General is just forced by own birth reasoning to carry on his duty making him sympathetic. Shannon can deliver the seething rage where needed and delivers a driven Kryptonian who is nearly unstoppable on his quest for rebirth.
Amy Adams (The Fighter) turns up as Lois Lane… and does pretty much nothing. She’s used as a plot device at one point and fan service but is pointless overall, and drops the strong independent women we’re accustomed to seeing as Supes’ ‘girlfriend’ and his relationship to humanity; it falls flat since they jump straight from saving her life, to telling her a story after tracking him down, to being BFF’s. Adams herself isn’t exactly a strong actress to support such a special role, and similarly, Lawrence Fishburne (Contagion) had no real point in being featured at all.
Weirdly, Crowe has a fairly prominent part as Jor-El. The opening 20-25 minutes is an extended chase scene with Crowe escaping with a macguffin containing all the knowledge and genetic material of Kryptonians (or something stupider than that) and whilst being pretty it’s overall unnecessary in creating dramatic tension. It also adds something superfluous (with Zod killing Jor-El when the planet the pair are on is about to explode) just to give Clark a reason to hate Zod. Quite why we need all this when you think back to the original Superman with Marlon Brando’s Jor-El doing similar in about 5 minutes. That said, Crowe-El was certainly good and weighed the film with a superb portrayal as a father (or a hologram of one) who never knew his son.
Speaking of father, it would be remiss not to mention Pa Kent played by, found-in-a-Hollywood-drawer, Kevin Costner (Hatfields & McCoys). In another stellar job, Costner competes for the Dad of the Year award with Crowe, yet he feels an attachment and warmth for a boy who has fallen from the stars and begun developing strange powers. He recognises Clark is due for bigger and better things than he can comprehend and his emotion shows in his wonderful performance.
Now for the star of the show – Cavill, as Superman. He looks the part at least, and gets to show snippets of charm which capture Supes perfectly, he showed decent emotion when being embarrassed, but overall you feel Cavill is just there, and sadly doesn’t get the opportunity to make the role this own; so, given that he doesn’t have a lot to do (thanks to the script), he’s alright.
The main shotgun to the knee that stops Man Of Steel from the start is the rather rubbish plotting. There are points which fall down a bottomless pits of logic; such as when Jor-El gives in to the useless Krypton council (who have ruined his planet, yet won’t join Zod to save his race – actually why was Zod overthrowing the council when Krypton was screwed anyway?), how the Krypton council seem so horrible that they give Zod and his army leaders a functional spaceship to pilot despite being imprisoned forever on it. Rather distracting at times to give so much to the antagonist with terrible reasoning.
It’s hard to understand how someone who is obviously as talented as Goyer can create great comic adaptations like the first two Blade movies and then go onto cruise mode with poor to average writing in his scripts since. He’s got great ideas in his locker but they’re either executed poorly or lost in a sea of terrible dialogue and plot. For example, Zod is angered by Jor-El saying that Kal-El is the first natural birth for centuries, as usually children are pre-assigned roles in lifes and bred & taught accordingly on Krypton. Now this creates a theme of free reign but why is Zod so pissed off by the revelation? The amount of complicated science jargon is too much without explaining what it is. They have something as intriguing sounding as a World Engine – never explained what it does specifically. Waste of the audio recording equipment if you’re recording anything from Goyer’s script.
Thematically, Man Of Steel was lacking as well; there’s so much you can do with a super powered demi-god, that limiting him to just his big standard alien origin feels dreary. It’d be great to see a Superman movie tackle massive issues like “If Superman is so powerful, why doesn’t he stop war?” like we get in Superman – The Quest For Peace. We see kids stuff in flashbacks (with Clark holding back from raging out at kids who bully him constantly – which is cute but unoriginal), it’s not terrible, watchable even, and to a point the American army not trusting Clark fits in with the remit, yet you’re left wanting more.
It could be argued that Nolan’s eye to make it more “darker”, emotional, and realistic cuts any enjoyment and humour Superman is akinned to. But you know what, it actually improved the quality of the film. It casts Superman as a character back to his original roots as an alien; which in the times of post-9/11 America of not trusting anyone, they aim all their guns at him. However, in an attempt to make the film realistic, it creates an artificial environment where actors can’t express themselves and as such the conversations don’t sound natural at all and become wooden at times.
That said, in terms of character Supes is a bit squiffy. The botched writing doesn’t make clear the motivations for Clark Kent deciding to use his abilities for good and there isn’t really much interaction to associate him with the human race which limits the ending. How about some cute scenes like Superman saving a guy falling from a skyscraper, cat in a tree etc.? Considering he’s been underneath Earth’s yellow sun for 30+ years, you would have thought he would have smashed through any of the new Krypton challengers who bury themselves away in the darkest corners of the galaxy. Nope, they equal up to him. The ending as well with Superman’s action are rather out of place, which could have easily been remedied with a case of “Dude, just pull his hair back”. There’s nice tributes to his Kryptonian heritage for the comic marks but whilst it is probably the best Superman film ever, Man of Steel doesn’t have the best Superman character.
The special effects and CGI are top notch and are easily the best thing about Man of Steel. Coupled with the superb action shot by Snyder in a style reminiscent to his earlier movie 300, it doesn’t quite make it as spellbinding as the original Superman films but lays down a massive marker for anything we’ll see this summer. What I love most is the sense of scale in the Superman vs. Kryptonian fights. When someone gets thrown through a skyscraper, they go for miles. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to see – Superman really cut loose and go toe-to-toe with someone with equal standing. We get it in spades here. Ignore the odd video game fighting style scenes and the fights are a real winner.
Other action impresses. The scene where the Kent family are stuck against a tornado on a freeway is excellent and heartbreaking at the same time in a well done moment. Krypton looks impressive although the crystal technology has been made even more ludicrous by using one of those memory panel office toys. Clark stopping the oil rig from collapsing is a fantastic feat of technology. Overall we’ll be hard pressed to find anything superior action wise in the CGI department on the big screen this year.
In the end, the Snyder-Nolan-Goyer dream team is letdown by poor plotting and science yet, despite being a mess, they’ve still created probably the best Superman film ever. That’s not saying much in comparison to the Marvel Universe and Batman movies but at least Man Of Steel stands enjoyably tall with superb action and effects. Super.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
