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I'm not sure how a comic book-loving kid meets the moment when he bends toward either the DC universe or camp Marvel, but when I send my memory back as far as it can go, I find myself in a local deli just a few blocks from my childhood home, spinning the squeaky metal rack that sat to the right side of the store's entrance, searching for the latest Superman or Batman comic.
For reasons I can't fully explain, I'm a DC guy. And with the advancing wonders of film-making technology, it's been a bloody nightmare to be a DC guy when the Marvel machine, now powered by Disney, has run circles all over the comic book-to-film industry in the last decade. Marvel Studios gave us a slam-bam-fantastic boot-up of Iron Man on the screen. It muddled through mediocrity with the Fantastic 4, only to spin out a solid and often thrilling X-Men film franchise.
And I got "Green Lantern."
Yes. That horrifying moment when your favorite superhero - for as long as you can remember...the one whose logo you have always wanted to tattoo on your body...the one on whom you've dropped much childhood allowance and adult bank - faces its moment when film technology met the challenge of what the storytelling required, and failed miserably. Like making the top 5 worst comic book-to-film adaptation of all-time list miserably. It still hurts. I think "Howard the Duck" is on that same list.
True, we have Batman, and most fanboys, Marvel or DC, are inclined to rank Christopher Nolan's recently completed Dark Knight trilogy as the gold standard for comic book movies. But damn. Can't a brother get a Flash film? A respectable and realistic Wonder Woman (sorry, Linda Evans...it's not because I didn't dream about you often as a kid)? A Green Lantern film to truly establish DC's most far-reaching franchise (with at least six individual titles published monthly, by my last count) as the Star Wars of the DCU?
One forgone conclusion I've long since made peace with is that the superhero who seems least fitted for our world today is the one who essentially started it all, the one whose logo is most likely as well known as the handicap symbol or a cross. Left abandoned at the side of the road after the world lost Christopher Reeve, the Superman story would lay in repose until 2006, when an otherwise accomplished filmmaker, Bryan Singer, couldn't make the Man of Steel work in a post-9/11 world. Superman had never truly left the cultural landscape. Reincarnated as a housewife's fetish for "Lois & Clark" and then as an emo teen's dream on "Smallville," Supes has maintained some level of a profile on the small screen, the latter show successfully running for a stunning 10 years. But Brandon Routh, bless his chiseled body and strangely vacant soul, did as much to kill Superman as DC Comics did in the literal sense - and infamously - in 1992.
Enter Christopher Nolan, the apparent savior to the DC Universe when it comes to imagining its characters on a movie screen, and here we are today with "Man of Steel." We've got a new Superman (Henry Cavill), a new director (Zach Snyder), and the creative team behind the Dark Knight trilogy. But, to return to my earlier thought, can Superman be adapted to fit our times? Can a character who is built on the bedrock of "truth, justice and the American Way" compete with the vigilantism and the resourcefulness of the 1 percent present in Iron Man and Batman, both severely flawed and brooding existential anti-heroes with the cash to built themselves into superheroes?
With apologies for burying my lede on this one, I'll finally get around to the point of saying that Snyder's "Man of Steel" is, in fact, a promising and successful re-imagining of the most famous comic book hero of them all. That success, however, is a qualified one, as "Man of Steel" succeeds fantastically in the emotional department and solidly in the origin story department but only marginally in the technical department.
As with any superhero film trilogy (and let's just be honest...that's where this is heading), the first film is the origin story. "Man of Steel" follows this tested template. The film opens on the planet Krypton, a corrupt and literally physically decaying planet where a dignitary by the name of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife, Lara (Ayelet Zurer) are reaching their wits' end in their pleadings with the Kryptonian government to forge an agreement that would settle its people and sustain its existence.
Defiantly and secretly, they have borne a son and named him Kal-El, and the infant is the first naturally-conceived child in more than a generation. Knowing that the planet itself is on the brink of destruction, Jor-El secures a vehicle capable of transporting Kal-El to another place so that the people of Krypton can live on after the planet's implosion. Through some research, he discovers that Earth's atmosphere is acceptable to Kal-El and that, in fact, its sun would help him to thrive. Lara pleads with Jor-El to find any other way, but is soon resigned to agree with her husband, and Kal-El escapes Krypton in a pod-like spaceship that can carry only him as his parents valiantly face the inevitable.
Another Kryptonian is equally interested in preserving the life of his people, though General Zod (Michael Shannon) proposes far more militaristic ways of doing so. And the source of the traditional comic book action in "Man of Steel" arises when Zod discovers that Kal-El exists, and where he exists. Kal is from Krypton. Zod wants him as he attempts to rebuild his planet and re-establish his people.
Kal, as we know from a multitude of retellings, hits ground in Kansas, where he's raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), and in my opinion, the film's best moments are those when we watch Clark (Kal-El's earthly moniker) grapple with the evidence of his being different. Loved ceaselessly by his parents and coached with whispered, masculine resolve by Jonathan, Clark is advised to keep his powers to himself. The world is not ready for the likes of him, Jonathan tells him wearily, and yet any of us with children can identify with the urge to help our kids fit in. Unfortunately for the Kents, a series of events forces Clark to use his unearthly powers out in the open. And after one heartbreaking moment where Clark restrains himself from using his abilities - a moment, by the way, that had me on the edge of tears - there's no turning back for Clark. He must learn to be...
...well, something. In one of the film's few moments of levity (one could either gripe that "Man of Steel" lacks the typical superhero movie moments of humor and gut-busting one-liners or find it refreshing that they are absent, and I can see it both ways), Clark is about to be dubbed "Superman" during an interrogation by a feisty Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and is interrupted from doing so. The "S" on his chest, it turns out anyway, means "hope" on Krypton. Here, it probably really means "sexy."
The back half of "Man of Steel" toggles between Superman's attempts at getting the local Earthly authorities to see him as an ally rather than a threat and Zod's arrival to Earth to demand that Superman be turned over to him. And this second plot point provides the film with what I consider to be its weaker moments of action. In fact, what frustrates me most about "Man of Steel" is just how absolutely four-star fantastic the emotional core of the film is - the stuff that explores the man, and how that amazing storytelling is cut off at the knees by what I consider to be poor directorial choices with regards to the climactic fights between Superman and Zod - fights in which a great many things are destroyed but with no audience investment. It's just two guys who can't seem to get hurt punching each other so hard that they fly backwards into shit and explode it.
Snyder films much of the action in frustrating close-ups. Yes, he breaks out the wide shots for those spectacular moments such as when we see Kal-El leap from the ground straight into the heavens. And not coincidentally, it's in these operatic, widescreen moments that the film is most successful visually. But I consider it a serious flaw that the framing is maniacally controlled, tight and ridiculously shaky, the use of hand-held camera work so overused that its purpose loses all meaning even when in certain moments it might have been effective. Why do all contemporary directors believe that hand-held camera work is the only way to communicate verite?
And "Man of Steel" experiences further setbacks thanks to the production work. Its color palate almost competes with the Dark Knight films in terms of its drabness. Thank God I didn't see it in 3-D, a medium that dulls the color of every film. I suspect (and someone who has seen it this way can let me know), that a 3-D print of this film is damn near gray. A little saturation would have gone a long way. But even this concern, along with that of poorly chosen camera work decisions, pales in comparison to the raging volume of the film. The Hans Zimmer score is not his most memorable, but I'd call it effective. Yet it's deployed in moments when, combined with the on-screen action, the film is a decibel level so high that one feels as though a wall of the theatre has dropped out to reveal a 747 preparing for takeoff. This is unquestionably and unnecessarily the loudest film I have ever seen. Ever. Period.
While I'm discussing the ways in which "Man of Steel" goes wrong, let me sigh deeply and admit that I'm still struggling with the ending, too. I can't say that I really liked it. For minute stacked upon minute, Superman and Zod engage in a high-speed fist fight, and as I mentioned, this climactic act plateaus in a narrative sense because it is so visually confusing and sonically loud. And then, well, I won't spoil it in case you haven't seen the film, but it involves Superman doing something very un-Superman-like, and I am trying to debate whether or not I am outraged at the heresy of Snyder, screenwriter David S. Goyer, and Nolan's betrayal of Superman's character, or whether I think it was actually a brilliant plot development and a gelling moment in creating a 2013 Superman. What I do know for sure, like it or not, is that the scene truly took my breath away, and Cavill's performance in the scene left me bereft and emotionally drained. I teared up!
And speaking of Cavill, I've read mixed reviews of his performance as Kal/Clark/Superman. Most of the negative reviews lament that he lacks the goofy charm of Christopher Reeve's work as the character. But those who are judging Cavill's performance against Reeve's are so far away from the point that their reviews of the film should almost be discredited wholesale. The point they are missing is that Christopher Reeve was MY childhood superman. He was a late 1970s-early 1980s Superman. That Superman doesn't work now (refer, again, to "Superman Returns," a clear attempt to lovingly recreate the Reeves-era Supes that just didn't work).
Henry Cavill is not just physically amazing enough to make not only women swoon but men envious - he is subtle and scared. Cavill understands that Superman is, at his core, a pacifist, and that reluctance is in his eyes - placed there by the conflict created by what his birth father wanted for him and what his earthly father expected from him - a conflict between fully-realized nobility and near godliness and a humble charge for a quiet and noble life of service. That is a 2013 Superman. He wants to help, not be the subject of a TMZ investigation. He doesn't want to destroy things (though so much is destroyed in the film that I just plain lose track of what it is being destroyed). He can't stomach fatalities. I thought Cavill was perfect.
In a cast of strong supporting performances, including not only Adams but an under-used Laurence Fishburne and a crazy-good Michael Shannon as a villain whose intentions the audience can actually fully understand and perhaps even somewhat sympathize with, it was the work of Kal's two dads that burned in my memory the most. As Jor-El, Russell Crowe was more svelte than I've seen him in years - regal and noble with an air of a Jedi to him. And even better still is Costner, turning in what I daresay could be considered one of his very best performances, ever. The fact that Crowe and Costner do such understated and emotionally stabilizing work in a comic book film will surely cause both to be overlooked without a second thought when awards are handed out, but it was because of them that I found "Man of Steel" to have more genuine emotion than any comic book film I can think of.
There is so much more I could say about "Man of Steel," but this review is already so long. I'd love to talk about the many moments of Christ-like crossover, most of them far, far from subtle (such as when Superman stabilizes himself mid-atmosphere in a crucifixion pose, or hey - did anyone else immediately catch on to the fact that the film mentions repeatedly that Kal/Clark is 33 when the present-day action of the film takes place, the same age Jesus was when he was killed?). I could talk, as a comic book fan, about the way that the story was changed from the comics to propel the movie and whether I liked them or not (mostly, I did). I could talk about how most Superman movies jumped straight from Kal's crash landing on Earth to his working at the Daily Planet, and this film finally and gloriously fills in that formative space in between.
But instead, I'll leave with this impression, the one that allows me to forgive a lot of what I found to be serious flaws in "Man of Steel." And that is the fact that this movie was rightfully (and hopefully not just coincidentally) released in theatres on Father's Day weekend. For "Man of Steel," when you strip the rest away, has been re-imagined for today's world as a story of the love of fathers.
Past Superman incarnations have focused on his pure goodness or his spectacular, alien powers of heat vision, flight and super-human strength. And in doing so, I think, they've rendered Superman one of the most boring comic book heroes ever. Who would choose the never morally conflicted, always righteous and vanilla Superman over the brooding, tortured, mortal Batman or even a mutant X-Man? Let's face it, Superman lacked conflict, especially of the internal variety.
"Man of Steel" deftly corrects this problem, though I'll cringe to find that some will feel that the film paints Superman's inner turmoil with a Dark Knight brush, an accusation that whifs of validity but is quite frankly too simple. Because this film, this film is about fathers and sons. About being super not just in a Kryptonian, alien, super-human sense, but also being super in service to others, in the content of one's character, and in loving and learning. "Man of Steel," as unnecessarily cacophonous as it can be, moved me and made me feel deeply, not just about Kal-El but about the wisdom I wish my father had imparted to me and the ways I'd like to evolve as a father to my own son.
Snyder films much of the action in frustrating close-ups. Yes, he breaks out the wide shots for those spectacular moments such as when we see Kal-El leap from the ground straight into the heavens. And not coincidentally, it's in these operatic, widescreen moments that the film is most successful visually. But I consider it a serious flaw that the framing is maniacally controlled, tight and ridiculously shaky, the use of hand-held camera work so overused that its purpose loses all meaning even when in certain moments it might have been effective. Why do all contemporary directors believe that hand-held camera work is the only way to communicate verite?
And "Man of Steel" experiences further setbacks thanks to the production work. Its color palate almost competes with the Dark Knight films in terms of its drabness. Thank God I didn't see it in 3-D, a medium that dulls the color of every film. I suspect (and someone who has seen it this way can let me know), that a 3-D print of this film is damn near gray. A little saturation would have gone a long way. But even this concern, along with that of poorly chosen camera work decisions, pales in comparison to the raging volume of the film. The Hans Zimmer score is not his most memorable, but I'd call it effective. Yet it's deployed in moments when, combined with the on-screen action, the film is a decibel level so high that one feels as though a wall of the theatre has dropped out to reveal a 747 preparing for takeoff. This is unquestionably and unnecessarily the loudest film I have ever seen. Ever. Period.
While I'm discussing the ways in which "Man of Steel" goes wrong, let me sigh deeply and admit that I'm still struggling with the ending, too. I can't say that I really liked it. For minute stacked upon minute, Superman and Zod engage in a high-speed fist fight, and as I mentioned, this climactic act plateaus in a narrative sense because it is so visually confusing and sonically loud. And then, well, I won't spoil it in case you haven't seen the film, but it involves Superman doing something very un-Superman-like, and I am trying to debate whether or not I am outraged at the heresy of Snyder, screenwriter David S. Goyer, and Nolan's betrayal of Superman's character, or whether I think it was actually a brilliant plot development and a gelling moment in creating a 2013 Superman. What I do know for sure, like it or not, is that the scene truly took my breath away, and Cavill's performance in the scene left me bereft and emotionally drained. I teared up!
And speaking of Cavill, I've read mixed reviews of his performance as Kal/Clark/Superman. Most of the negative reviews lament that he lacks the goofy charm of Christopher Reeve's work as the character. But those who are judging Cavill's performance against Reeve's are so far away from the point that their reviews of the film should almost be discredited wholesale. The point they are missing is that Christopher Reeve was MY childhood superman. He was a late 1970s-early 1980s Superman. That Superman doesn't work now (refer, again, to "Superman Returns," a clear attempt to lovingly recreate the Reeves-era Supes that just didn't work).
Henry Cavill is not just physically amazing enough to make not only women swoon but men envious - he is subtle and scared. Cavill understands that Superman is, at his core, a pacifist, and that reluctance is in his eyes - placed there by the conflict created by what his birth father wanted for him and what his earthly father expected from him - a conflict between fully-realized nobility and near godliness and a humble charge for a quiet and noble life of service. That is a 2013 Superman. He wants to help, not be the subject of a TMZ investigation. He doesn't want to destroy things (though so much is destroyed in the film that I just plain lose track of what it is being destroyed). He can't stomach fatalities. I thought Cavill was perfect.
In a cast of strong supporting performances, including not only Adams but an under-used Laurence Fishburne and a crazy-good Michael Shannon as a villain whose intentions the audience can actually fully understand and perhaps even somewhat sympathize with, it was the work of Kal's two dads that burned in my memory the most. As Jor-El, Russell Crowe was more svelte than I've seen him in years - regal and noble with an air of a Jedi to him. And even better still is Costner, turning in what I daresay could be considered one of his very best performances, ever. The fact that Crowe and Costner do such understated and emotionally stabilizing work in a comic book film will surely cause both to be overlooked without a second thought when awards are handed out, but it was because of them that I found "Man of Steel" to have more genuine emotion than any comic book film I can think of.
There is so much more I could say about "Man of Steel," but this review is already so long. I'd love to talk about the many moments of Christ-like crossover, most of them far, far from subtle (such as when Superman stabilizes himself mid-atmosphere in a crucifixion pose, or hey - did anyone else immediately catch on to the fact that the film mentions repeatedly that Kal/Clark is 33 when the present-day action of the film takes place, the same age Jesus was when he was killed?). I could talk, as a comic book fan, about the way that the story was changed from the comics to propel the movie and whether I liked them or not (mostly, I did). I could talk about how most Superman movies jumped straight from Kal's crash landing on Earth to his working at the Daily Planet, and this film finally and gloriously fills in that formative space in between.
But instead, I'll leave with this impression, the one that allows me to forgive a lot of what I found to be serious flaws in "Man of Steel." And that is the fact that this movie was rightfully (and hopefully not just coincidentally) released in theatres on Father's Day weekend. For "Man of Steel," when you strip the rest away, has been re-imagined for today's world as a story of the love of fathers.
Past Superman incarnations have focused on his pure goodness or his spectacular, alien powers of heat vision, flight and super-human strength. And in doing so, I think, they've rendered Superman one of the most boring comic book heroes ever. Who would choose the never morally conflicted, always righteous and vanilla Superman over the brooding, tortured, mortal Batman or even a mutant X-Man? Let's face it, Superman lacked conflict, especially of the internal variety.
"Man of Steel" deftly corrects this problem, though I'll cringe to find that some will feel that the film paints Superman's inner turmoil with a Dark Knight brush, an accusation that whifs of validity but is quite frankly too simple. Because this film, this film is about fathers and sons. About being super not just in a Kryptonian, alien, super-human sense, but also being super in service to others, in the content of one's character, and in loving and learning. "Man of Steel," as unnecessarily cacophonous as it can be, moved me and made me feel deeply, not just about Kal-El but about the wisdom I wish my father had imparted to me and the ways I'd like to evolve as a father to my own son.
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