MAN OF STEEL review by Dorkman

Zack Snyder’s reboot of the cinematic Superman mythos is, for my money, the best live-action interpretation of the character to date. But saying so is more of a negative statement on previous versions of the character than a positive statement about MAN OF STEEL.

Produced by Christopher Nolan, Warner Brothers obviously tapped him to bring some of the grounded-in-reality mojo that rehabilitated Batman from a punchline to a multi-billion-dollar franchise to their other floundering superhero franchise. Its a tall order — it’s one thing to make a “realistic” movie about a disturbed billionaire with an eccentric view of what constitutes philanthropy, and another thing entirely to do so with an alien muscleman in blue tights.

The filmmakers make a wise choice in their approach. They don’t try to justify the unjustifiable — i.e. Superman’s abilities, or mythology of Krypton in general. In fact they embrace the fantasy more than previous incarnations, with sweeping alien vistas and Jor-El straight-up riding a dragon during the reimagined “Death of Krypton” prologue. To ground the film, instead, they approach the people of Earth with a sense of reality.

Previous incarnations of Superman mostly feature humanity happily accepting this strange and powerful being as a positive fact of life. MAN OF STEEL instead portrays humanity as fearful and suspicious of this new demigod, and his struggle to gain our trust and acceptance. Call me cynical, but if you want to sell me on realism in the Superman story, that’s where it’s at.

A great idea for an approach — unfortunately the film doesn’t deliver on its potential. Succumbing to what Damon Lindelof recently termed Story Gravity, the film’s attempt to tell a story exploring human nature — through the unique perspective of a man who is both insider and outsider — is derailed by setpieces of ever-increasing scale and monotony, with indestructable Kryptonians punching each other into progressively larger buildings. Nearly the entire final hour is nothing but superpunches and piles of crumbling glass and concrete.

Trey has frequently remarked upon the post-9/11 American obsession with falling skyscrapers. Whatever the underlying sociological reason for this (another post for another day), if the general audience is anything like me, MAN OF STEEL may have finally broken this fever. While the visual effects work is, of course, top notch, I can only watch so many amazing destruction simulations in a twenty-minute span before my mind goes numb; however many that is, MAN OF STEEL showed that many — and then twice again as many, and then a couple more. I get the sense the filmmakers really wanted to give me my money’s worth, which is admirable, but the final product massively overshoots the point of diminishing returns. The movie would have been better served by cutting pretty much every action beat in half, and either using that time to focus on the characters, or just let the film run shorter.

Henry Cavill fills the big red boots (and the rest of the costume) admirably, and makes the character his own, doing a fine job of communicating this Superman’s desire to help humanity with his frustration at having to so often hold himself back, so as not to frighten us.

What I wish, as I said at the time on Twitter, is that we got some sense of why Clark Kent, even before discovering his destiny, is so intent on saving us. He has these abilities and he feels he has a responsibility to use them for the good of mankind — but why? I want to see humanity’s “Save the Cat” moment, the moment he decided, even if we fear him, he loves us.

When I said this, I got a number of responses to the effect that his human father, Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner in a performance of somber, simple dignity) provides that. This may be true in the general Superzeitgeist, but in this story, it is not. In this story, Jonathan Kent is the voice of cynicism and fear, trying to instill in Clark his belief that the world will not — cannot — understand Clark, and that Clark therefore must take care to never reveal himself.

MAN OF STEEL’s Jonathan Kent is not the answer to my question of why Superman loves humanity — he’s the number one reason I’m asking it. Why does Clark decide that this man, this good man who loved and protected him as best he could, who Clark trusted and admired — what drives Clark to the conclusion that, in this, he was completely wrong? The film spends so much time establishing Pa Kent’s borderline paranoia that it cries out for a turning point, but the film gets distracted when the other Kryptonians arrive on Earth to start the punching, and it’s just assumed we understand why this new incarnation of Superman does what he does.

Amy Adams is great as Lois Lane, and for the first time I actually understand why Superman would fall in love with her. After a lifetime of Pa Kent’s telling him how unprepared humanity is for him, and of people’s reaction to each incident seemingly proving him right, Lois trusts Clark and believes in him. She would almost be the proof of humanity’s goodness I’m looking for, except that Clark had already decided to be a savior before he ever met her. She just inspires him to do so openly.

The development of their relationship takes a significant departure from previous versions of the story in that Lois knows from the beginning that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same, effectively and wisely skipping over the part where we’re supposed to believe that a pair of glasses could fool her for years and years. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic is played in future installments.

Like the story itself, Lois’ character goes a bit off the rails once the Kryptonians show up. She starts off a strong character, self-motivating, daring, clever. But soon enough she reverts to her more typical story role as damsel, who can suddenly accomplish nothing without a man showing her the way. Disappointing.

Russell Crowe is a strong enough actor to give gravitas to the hyper-Shakespearean melodrama of Krypton as Superman’s father Jor-El. Michael Shannon’s General Zod is less compelling, as a character or a villain, since there’s very little to his character other than “crazy person.” Shannon does that fine, but there’s nothing about the character to make him iconic. He’s got a goatee and screams a lot, and that’s pretty much it.

The world seems to recover a little too well and readily from the destructive climax of the film, but it’s possible this could be salvaged in MAN OF STEEL 2 if that film shows Earth wrestling with the aftermath. There isn’t much hope — just a fool’s hope — but I’ll have to see it before I can judge.

And I will see it. Despite being a letdown in terms of story, and having action scenes that finally turned me into the geezer raving about how movies are all just video games for kids with no attention span these days, there’s just enough interesting stuff here that I’d like to see the filmmakers develop.

If they understood what worked and what didn’t in this film, they will develop the character relationships and Superman’s relationship with humanity as a whole. If they didn’t, they’ll just try to up the ante by having Superman punch TWO cities into rubble.

…What’s that? They announced Batman will appear in MAN OF STEEL 2? So we may be seeing both Metropolis and Gotham?

Sigh.