The first preview for Man of Steel that I saw had me worried. It was horrible. It looked a bad episode of Deadliest Catch. It had that horrible Gaelic sounding music and a crab boat splashing in the water. However, since then, each preview has been encouraging. I had been really looking forward to seeing the movie. I did have some concerns when the previews started to show these Kryptonian ships and Zod suddenly having an army. I began to hope they didn’t go all sci-fi with the movie. You can have all the action you want but Superman is about fantasy you add too much sci-fi to it and you take away what’s fun about the concept of Superman.
So I see the movie and sure enough, they did everything they could, wrong. I just knew they picked the wrong director and writer for the movie. First mistake. They spend way too damn long with the back story of Krypton. We all know the story, and we don’t need to dwell on it or change it and if we do, we don’t need to spend all day with it, just get to the point and move along.
So you spend what seems like at least the first half hour of the movie just waiting for them shoot little Kal El into space so he can get to earth and be little Superman. Finally the moment comes and he’s already grown up and all the those childhood scenes from the previews that looked so good are nothing more than just sad flashbacks for Clark Kent. I thought that was interesting it wasn’t good or bad, it was just different. Maybe a little disappointing but I understand why they did that, they needed to move the story along because they’ve already spent so much time on Krypton.
I’m still in it though. I still am enjoying the movie, it’s different, I expected that. So I’m going with it thus far. But, then Clark is spending forever trying to decide whether or not or to come out. It isn’t until Zod shows up and threatens all of mankind that Clark finally dons the cape. He takes a “Leap of faith” and turns himself into the government so that they can either use him or turn him over to Zod. They opt to turn in him over to Zod.
Now what transpires after that is series of scenes that are right out of any sci-fi movie. There’s time on Zod’s ships, there’s Zod’s ships blowing shit up. There’s little Zod fighter jets blowing shit up. There’s the military failing at doing any damage to Zod’s ships.
Superman escapes and then pretty much the rest of the movie is all about superman battling the spaceships, Zod’s people, in a CGI spectacular that is so over done it loses any sense of reality. The action often happens so fast you’re not even sure what the fuck just happened and this happens until the bitter end of the film. There’s a cute sort of “epilogue” to the film with Clark and his new job, I really liked that.
Now all of this is obviously just my opinion. But, for me, what makes Superman fun is that he’s a Superman on Earth! I want to see him getting shot at and not getting hurt. I want to see him lifting cars and shit. I want to see him doing superhuman stuff that we can relate to. This new movie doesn’t offer too much of that and when it does, it’s put into this sci-fi context where what he is doing isn’t so special because all of the Kryptonian’s have the same power. There was too little of getting to know Superman and too much of getting to know Clark Kent.
In nut shell, for some stupid reason they decided to take the Original Superman I & II, merge them into one film cutting out so much of what made those two movies great. I think the writers think they have to go with sci-fi things because there’s only so much you can do with Superman. There’s not much the bad guys can do. That’s just a weak imagination. The first Superman film dealt with this brilliantly. The villain was human, he was smart and to build tension they set it up so Superman had to deal with two heavily armed missiles headed in different directions. Save Louis or save Mrs. Tessmacher’s mom.
I do hope they make another one. I hope it’s more earth based. I loved the actors in this. I think Henry Cavill made a really good Superman. Loved Amy Adams and Laurence Fishburne. I look forward to the next one if there is one. But, I am guessing that even though this new version is breaking records this weekend, I am sure there is going to be a big drop off next weekend as word gets out that the movie just isn’t any fun. It has some fun moments but it’s just dark and gloomy the whole damn time and very little of the hope the films previews boasted about.
Should you see it? Yes. It’s not a bad movie and they just did some things I didn’t want to see. However, they have set it up so that next one might be more interesting, fun and more earthbound.
