MAN OF STEEL, SINCE YOU ASKED.

BY MARK

First, if you’ve come to this page just to read the blog entry, do me a favor–check out our fine, free comics offerings here at Thrillbent. I bring this up because it seems like a wasted opportunity not to. You don’t have to; I’m not posting a movie review here to link-bait, it’s just…well, it’s my blogspace, and we do good things here. Anyway.

Non-spoiler review: It’s not for me. It had some very nice moments, several I wish I’d written (and at least three I did, I’m proud to say–there was lots of BIRTHRIGHT in it), but I can’t imagine wanting to watch it again anytime soon. YMMV. It’s a good science-fiction movie, but it’s very cold. It’s not a very satisfying super-hero movie. That said, if your favorite part of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE was Superman standing in the Fortress while Jor-El lectured him, you’re gonna love MAN OF STEEL.

SPOILERReview:

At its emotional climax, at the moment of Superman’s ultimate “victory,” MAN OF STEEL broke my heart. I mean, absolutely snapped it clean in half.

I went in ready to forgive a lot. I knew we wouldn’t get much, if any, of the secret identity–“Clark Kent” as we know him, as a reporter in glasses, as in “disguised as…”, appears only in a cute nod, and I’ve said all my adult life that a Superman story without Clark Kent in it never really feels like a Superman story. But I was willing to give that a pass. And I suspected they’d front-loaded the story with so much Kryptonian backstory that it would end up being a science fiction movie, not a super-hero movie. But the music was good and the look of Kal-El , at least from the waist up, was good, and I had to suffer through four seasons of LOIS AND CLARK Superman with no spit-curl, so while I missed the ‘do, it was hardly a deal-breaker.

And I genuinely enjoyed the first two-thirds or so of the movie. Krypton was great. Zod was great. Really, there was a lot to like there. And I got my first of many proud-papa BIRTHRIGHT glows when we cut straight from the rocket’s entry to Clark as an adult, and I grinned like an idiot at the many, many other BIRTHRIGHT moments. I can’t really describe for you what it feels like to me to see evidence that I really have been lucky enough to add a few lasting elements to the Superman myth.

And I think you’d be surprised to find that I loved everything about Jonathan Kent. I loved his protectiveness, even when it made him sound like an asshole. (“Maybe.”) And I loved, loved, loved that scene where Clark didn’t save him, because Goyer did something magical–he took two moments that, individually, I would have hated and he welded them together into something amazing. Out of context, I would have hated that Clark said “You’re not my real dad,” or whatever he says right before the tornado. And out of context, I would haveloathed that Clark stood by frozen with helplessness as the tornado killed Jonathan. But the reason that beat worked is because Clark had just said “You’re not my dad,” the last real words he said to Pa. Tearful Clark choosing to go against his every instinct in that last second because he had to show his father he trusted him after all, because he had to show Pa that Pa could trust him and that Clark had learned, Clark did love him–that worked for me, hugely. It was a very brave story choice, but it worked. It worked largely on the shoulders of Cavill, who sold it. It worked as a tragic rite of passage. I kinda wish I’d written that scene.

But about the time we got to the big Smallville fight, my Spider-Sense began to tingle. A lot of destruction. A lot of destruction–and Superman making absolutely no effort to take the fight, like, ONE BLOCK AWAY INTO A CORNFIELD INSTEAD OF ON MAIN STREET. Still, saving people here and there, but certainly never going out of his way to do so, and mostly just trying not to get his ass kicked. (I loved Clark Kent’s pal, Pete Ross, and not just because they cast pre-teen Mark Waid as Pete Ross.)

And then we got to The Battle of Metropolis, and I truly, genuinely started to feel nauseous at all the Disaster Porn. Minute after minute after endless minute of Some Giant Machine laying so much waste to Metropolis that it’s inconceivable that we weren’t watching millions of people die in every single shot. And what’s Superman doing while all this is going on? He’s halfway around the world, fighting an identical machine but with no one around to be directly threatened, so it’s only slightly less noticeable that thousands of innocents per second are dying gruesomely on his watch. Seriously, back in Metropolis, entire skyscrapers are toppling in slo-mo and the city is a smoking, gray ruin for miles in every direction, it’s Hiroshima, and Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich are somewhere muttering “Too far, man, too far”…but, you know, Superman buys the humans enough time to sacrifice many, many of their own lives to bomb the Giant Machine themselves and even makes it back to Metropolis in time to catch Lois from falling (again), so…yay?

And then Superman and Lois land in the three-mile-wide crater that used to be a city of eight million people, and the staff of the Planet and a couple of other bystanders stagger out of the rubble to see Superman and say, “He saved us,” and before you can say either “From what?” or “Wow, these eight are probably the only people left alive,” and somehow–inexplicably, implausibly, somehow–before Superman can be bothered to take one second to surrender one ounce of concern or assistance to the millions of Metropolitans who are without question still buried under all that rubble, dead or dying, he saunters lazily over to where General Zod is kneeling and moping, and they argue, and they squabble, and they break into the Third Big Fight, the one that broke my heart.

See, everyone else in Zod’s army has been beaten and banished, but General Zod lives and so, of course, he and Superman duke it out in what, to everyone’s credit, is the very best super-hero fight I’ve ever seen, just a marvel of spectacle. But once more–and this is where I knew we were headed someplace really awful–once more, Superman showed not the slightest split-second of concern for the people around them. Particularly in this last sequence, his utter disregard for the collateral damage was just jaw-dropping as they just kept crashing through buildings full of survivors. I’m not suggesting he stop in the middle of a super-powered brawl to save a kitten from a tree, but even Brandon Routh thought to use his heat vision on the fly to disintegrate deadly falling debris after a sonic boom. From everything shown to us from the moment he put on the suit, Superman rarely if ever bothered to give the safety and welfare of the people around him one bit of thought. Which is why the climax of that fight broke me.

Superman wins by killing Zod. By snapping his neck. And as this moment was building, as Zod was out of control and Superman was (for the first time since the fishing boat 90 minutes ago) struggling to actually save innocent victims instead of casually catching them in mid-plummet, some crazy guy in front of us was muttering “Don’t do it…don’t do it…DON’T DO IT…” and then Superman snapped Zod’s neck and that guy stood up and said in a very loud voice, “THAT’S IT, YOU LOST ME, I’M OUT,” and his girlfriend had to literally pull him back into his seat and keep him from walking out and that crazy guy was me. That crazy guy was me, and I barely even remember doing that, I had to be told afterward that I’d done that, that’s how caught up in betrayal I felt. And after the neck-snapping, even though I stuck it out, I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the movie.

As the credits rolled, I told myself I was upset because Superman doesn’t kill. Full-stop, Superman doesn’t kill. But sitting there, I broke it down some more in my head because I sensed there was more to it since Superman clearly regretted killing Zod. I had to grant that the filmmakers at least went way out of their way to put Superman in a position suggesting (but hardly conclusively proving) he had no choice (and I did love Superman’s immediate-aftermath reaction to what he’d done). I granted that they’d at least tried to present Superman with an impossible choice and, on a purely rational level, and if this had been a movie about a guy named Ultraguy, I might even have bought what he did. But after I processed all that, I realized that it wasn’t so much my uncompromising vision of Superman that made this a total-fail moment for me; it was the failed lead-up TO the moment. As Superman’s having his final one-on-one battle with Zod, show me that he’s going out of his way to save people from getting caught in the middle. SHOW ME that trying to simultaneously protect humans andbeat Zod is achingly, achingly costing Superman the fight. Build to that moment of the hard choice…show me, without doubt, that Superman has no other out and do a better job of convincing me that it’s a hard decision to make, and maybe I’ll give it to you. But even if I do? It’s not a victory. Not this sad, soul-darkening, utterly sans-catharsis “triumph” that doesn’t even feel like a win so much as a stop-loss. Two and a half hours, and I never once got the sense that Superman really achieved or earned anything.

The essential part of Superman that got lost in MAN OF STEEL, the fundamental break in trust between the movie and the audience, is that we don’t just want Superman to save us; we want him to protectus. He was okay at the former, but really, really lousy at the latter. Once he puts on that suit, everyone he bothers to help along the way is pretty much an afterthought, a fly ball he might as well shag since he’s flying past anyway, so what the hell. Where Christopher Reeve won me over with his portrayal was that his Superman clearly cared about everyone. Yes, this Superman cares in the abstract–he is willing to surrender to Zod to spare us–but the vibe I kept getting was that old Charles Schulz line: “I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.”

Look, I know everyone involved in MAN OF STEEL went into it with the best of intentions. And trust me, there are not rivers or coastlines on this planet long enough to measure just how much I wanted to love this movie. If you don’t know me, you can’t imagine. And there were certainly things to like. But there was no triumph to it. None of Superman’s victories in this movie are in any way the kind of stand-up-and-cheer events you’d think necessary in a movie with Superman in it. Did it succeed in what it sent out to do? I think probably so. But what it set out to do, as it turns out, leaves me cold. With the exception of the first-flight beat–the smile Superman gets when he first takes to the air–it’s utterly joyless. From start to finish. Utterly. Joyless. And I just have no interest in relentless joyless from a guy who can fly.

Source.

He seems very passionate. Thoughts?

Sounds Cool

I didn't read his spoiler-review, as I'm planning on seeing the movie very soon, but I'm a little disappointed to hear that the world's biggest Superman fan was let down by the movie. I really respect Mark Waid and his vision of Superman, but I'll just have to wait and see for myself how the movie turns out.

On a similar note, I'm excited to see what other writers--especially Grant Morrison--think about the film.

@nightcrawler358: I've seen the movie and i found his views annoyingly conservative, sounds like one of those donner wankers who bashed the movie when it came out

I can respect Mark Waid's vision of what Superman is and should be......and to a great extent I agree with him.

However (and this isn't just against Waid) I have to call BS on the outcry of the final battle. First, Superman has killed in the comics, even killing an out-of-control pocket universe Zod when he had no other options (thus showing that the film takes inspiration from more than just Birthright and Earth One....for instance the military reaction is far more in-line with Secret Origin than the other stories). Second, Man of Steel isn't the first time Superman has killed onscreen and its not even the first time Zod has died onscreen.

For some reason nobody seems to bring up that Christopher Reeve's Superman killed in Superman 2 (including the Donner cut), 3, and 4.

In Superman 2 he directly kills Zod (who had been rendered powerless just seconds before) by picking him up and throwing him into what the audience can assume is a bottomless pit. That's quickly followed by Non, who really kills himself but Superman could have caught him, and then by Ursa whose punched into it by Lois....so she killed someone as well.

In Superman 3 he "kills" his evil self by strangling it to death and causes the compound to spill that blows up the death machine and kills the woman that was assimilated by it (very borg-ish and all)

In Superman 4 he throws Nuclear Man into a nuclear reactor in order to disintegrate him (you know, since he had already been rendered unconscious by preventing him from absorbing sunlight and thus could have been imprisoned or something instead).

Now, I admit, none of these deaths are graphic in any way and the villains are never actually shown dead......but are we really going to get upset when the new film shows death over when the old films simply implied death? That seems like a poor double standard of looking at the earlier films with more nostalgia than truth.

Also, I can understand the hate against the darker tone of the film.....but at the end of the day this is a movie about a guy having to make the Solomon choice. He has to choose who to side with and the act of going against his own people should not be something that is done with a smile and a twinkle in the eye. Its going to hurt and its going to be emotional.

Okay, maybe they should have focused on Superman saving more people like how he ran away from Zod in Superman 2 when the three started turning on the citizens of Metropolis (though to be fair for much of the fight Superman didn't care about the people in that film either.....yeah he keeps an oil truck from blowing up but he didn't give two hoots that he and Zod were crushing a car with two old ladies in it when they were grappling on the roof of the car) but at the end of the day he's fighting for his life against people at his own power level. Even comparing Superman 2 to Superman 4 would show you that Superman 2 had a darker tone to the other 3 Reeve films and yet people loved it.

I'm not excusing the miscues in this film, I just think too many people are condemning this film because it not the film they wanted yet on its whole its an amazingly fun experience.

wow. Harsh.

What can i say, this point of view really annoys me because it this kind of reviews that gave man of steel a crappy reputation

Now, i'm not gonna act like the movie was perfect or anything but it definitely deserved better

And its not like i'm gonna boycott waid or anything, he's still a great writer i just find his views on the movie to be way too close minded

When I walked out of the film, I tweeted "Really enjoyed Man of Steel. But I can see why some people are hating it."

And Waid really nails what I had in mind on so many different levels. I completely understand his reaction and am actually a little surprised I didn't fall more on that side of the response spectrum. The pivotal moment to which he refers knocked me out of the movie as well, but the interesting thing was that while half the room actually gasped or screamed, the other half actually applauded.

Wow, yeah. Just saw it. The film definitely had faults, but was SUCH a spectacle, with those ridiculously all-out fights!

But I totally see what Mark is saying, I too was shocked mainly by the carelessness that Superman did everything with. He didn't seem like a boy scout at all, more of an indifferent third party in Earth's fight with Zod. (I don't know, I was off-put by the way he basically threatened the army in the interrogation room)

A very impressively made movie, but I had a lot of problems with both Superman and Lois' characters.

@ltbrd: I could not agree more! It's crazy that people look back at Superman 2 as being better than Man of Steel because superman kills zod. Even in the Donner films he AND Lois killed, so why are they so up in arms about this? I agree that Superman usually tries to find alternatives, but maybe we can forgive a Superman who's still learning AND the fact that he really didn't seem to have much of a choice since Zod was hellbent on killing the planet even if Krypton couldn't be resurrected.

I agree 100%.

Thank you Mark Waid. =)

Mark Waid was one of the people trying to pitch a Superman screenplay if I remember correctly, so IMO he went in with anything but an unbiased opinion.

Also, being a good writer doesnt make somebody a good critic, or a good person to turn to for an opinion.

@novi_homines: Agree with you alot. The movie wanted to be a drama but turned into a CG epic. The movie was gorgeous! Snyder knows how to make you visually fall in love with the worlds he creates but I knew we were in trouble when on Krypton they had all the time in the world to calmly talk about the destruction of the planet, have an all out battle, send Kal-El off to earth, capture Zod & his gang, send them to the phantom zone, essentially saving the lives of these criminals!!!! Then Clark is fishing. Doesn't hear the cage break over his head and some guy is strong enough to knock him over. No, NO, NOOO!!! All the death and destruction that Superman did no care about bugged me the through out the movie. I almost barfed after the final battle with Zod. Superman and Lois are standing on the ashes of Metropolis and it's citizens to make out. This is so stupid! Bah! I'm all angry again! Why is everyone loving this movie?!?!? Am I being too harsh?

I felt the same way Mark Waid did after seeing it the first time. I couldn't stand the image of Superman breaking someone's neck and I felt like Goyer was just being sensational in writing a script where Superman had to kill.

But then I saw it again a second time and really thought about what was going on. The stakes were as high as they possibly could be and taking out Zod for good really was the only way to save everybody, despite how Superman felt about it. And I kinda liked that. I liked that Superman put his own squeamishness about killing aside just this once for the sake of humanity. There are ordinary people who are faced with that every day and what good is Superman as a role model if his life gets to be so much easier than everybody's? And this movie is about answering that question. I actually think I admired Superman more than I ever had after the second time of seeing this movie. Because he hated it. He hated that he had to do that, but he did it because he was the only one who could and Zod needed to be stopped for once and for all. How far would Superman go to save the world? Now we know. It was a bold, BOLD move to take with the first film of the franchise, but in the end I respected it. I still think it would have been a better choice to show a scene where Clark reflects on what he did and how that affected him to either Ma Kent or Lois, and I still wonder why they didn't show him saving people while he was fighting Zod. Because if you ask me, THAT was the worst thing about the movie.

I do really hope that the next movie has some reflection for Clark about his stance on killing though, and also some repercussions for the destruction of Metropolis. And I hope it doesn't have to be as dark as this one was.

So, I sort of disagree with Waid here, which is odd because that hardly ever happens.

Well thats his view on the film and he's entitled to his opinion.

*SPOILERS*

I'v seen the film 3 times. 75% of the damage done was caused by the world engine,i mean u could actually see the people being lifted up and then being crushed down. by the time supes and the army destroy that,i think its safe to assume that any survivors in the buildings left standing would have evacuated. to assume people were still in the buildings during the zod fight is well,i dont agree with that. i Know im assuming they evacuated but im thinking about what would actually happen. Plus,like i sed iv seen it three times and i noticed that not once during the movie does supes hurl zod into or through a building,its always zod doing that.the only place supes tackles zod through something is that construction site after zod starts flying. then we have the last scene which takes place in like a grand central station type setting which is underground where u see people who have probably hidden underground and then whatever happens happens........alot of people are talking about the disregard for human life,if superman destroyed the ship in metropolis all the kryptonians would be alive(cuz the phantom drive wldve been destroyed leaving no way to send them to the phantom zone) and then would proceed to destroy eveything. if he stayed helping people escape the world engine and didn't destroy the other one,it would have continued to destroy more and more life not just in metropolis but everywhere. Supes was basically screwed all around in this one,in the comics he wldve had the JL picking up the slack but obviously he didnt have that advantage here. and the buildings...during the zod fight its very clear there's alot of people on the streets and the building they fight in where zod looses control of his heat vision was deserted.

And even if whatever i said is completely wrong..what else can you expect from a fight between beings of this power level?(in a real life setting) and because of Zod's relentlessness which is so clearly shown in this movie, even if he wanted to, i dont think supes wld be able to take time out of the fight to save people. and as for takin the fight somewhere else i dont thnk zod wld allow for that to happen. they went up into space and zod still brought him back down to Metropolis.And one last point-this is superman at the absolute start of his career,his Zero Year if u will. we can obviously expect more protector of the people stuff in the second one.

this is nothing against Mark Waid, i highly praise his writing but don't really care for his views here....and the above is just Justifying this Superman's actions in my eyes.this is My opinion.

Seriously!

Superman didn't go out of his way to protect people while fighting ..., yet nobody was shown to get hurt other than soldiers who would have been hurt anyways because they were following the fights...

I can't believe people don't realize that Superman had spent years controlling his rage, and not fighting. So now when he is forced to fight, he is letting it all out, not likely thinking strait. In the first fight with Zod he was scared for his mother's life, then the second set of fights, the fighters came to him where he was. The third fight, he didn't pick the location either.

I also remember him telling people to get off the streets!

When Superman fought Doomsday, the final showdown was in the city. There have been plenty of other fights where Superman fought in cities. Sometimes he just can't force the battle to some place safer. The main difference is this Superman is a novice and has yet to learn how to keep his emotions in check in the heat of battle.

Mark ignores the fact that the humans were best suited to take out the machine they did because the device they used didn't need Superman to operate it. While the Machine Superman took out, needed brute strength which the humans didn't possess. There was also the big issue of Superman having to take a leap of faith and trust the humans could do it, there being a risk of loss of life is part of that and makes the leap even greater.

I will admit, Superman kissing Lois while people are in trouble was ... horrible! That Kiss didn't need to happen this movie!

Others have pointed that Superman has killed before, in main continuity and in else-worlds (DCCU is an else-world, while we are at it)!

What really gets me is Mark tries to imply millionsof people die (when we have no proof) while Superman is off gallivanting, that Superman didn't care about humans while fighting, just because he couldn't/didn't force the battle to safer locations (or didn't turn his head while fighting Zod, the guy threatening global genocide, to make sure everyone else was okay), then tries to use this to support his case against Superman killing Zod to save humans implying some sort of inconsistency.

I agree with everything in this post. But i still enjoyed the movie. I just hope they fix these problems in the next one

***Spoilers***

I can see where he is coming from, but for me the only bad points for me were:
Jor_El's death seemed almost funny thinking back on it, the comedic fall just seems kinda weird, the catastrophic damage to the city got to the point that it was just so much I started not to care, the use of the piano theme on every flashback became a little annoying. But most of all it was the ending, I really enjoyed how they side stepped the Clark Kent aspect but to then just have him don the glasses at the end just didn't work for me, I'm all for continuity and respecting the source material but the nature of Clark Kent's disguise (on film at least) is an outdated concept, in an age of HD photos and social media it just makes the characters around him seem stupid, especially since they are supposed to be reporters. If he wanted to 'keep his ear to the ground' just get a twitter or somthing, someone is going to notice you dude, from the Planet or somewhere else.

Even though I have listed nothing but negatives, I must make it clear that I really did enjoy this film. I am by no accounts a Superman fan but I enjoyed this far more than Iron Man 3 and TDKR, the story I felt was solid and the performances great

Debunked Mark's rant.

Mark Waid is just passionate. I think everyone here can understand that movies rarely capture the ideal image of any comic book hero. The more one cares for a character, the more critical their view is.

@sandman_: @mrshway88:

I put it as creative differences ... I clearly don't agree with his "reasons" for not liking certain aspects (he is certainly entitled to dislike what he wants), but I'm guessing he put it up because fans wanted him to as oppose to just wanting to take jabs at someone else work/vision.

Edit: well he kind-a dis Lois & Clark because of the S-Curl ... might be a bit of a stickler!

You would think Mark Waid would know what they were doing. With him never killing again.

@charliejade: If the Avengers had taken on Zod's army instead of Superman, Earth would be called New Krypton.