Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers popularized the notion that it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a given skill. If this is indeed the case, I think I may be approaching mastery of whatever skills “Shitting on the World War Z adaptation” entails.

Based on the novel by Max Brooks, the film’s production was infamously fraught with problems, including millions of dollars of unaccounted overages and a last-minute Hail Mary reshoot of the entire third act.

To me, everything I heard about the adaptation sounded wrongheaded, and I said so anytime the topic came up. What I and many others felt should have been something like a documentary-style HBO series looking back at humanity’s near extinction — think Ken Burns or Band of Brothers, but with zombies, as would befit the book’s story and style — was instead going to be simply another story of one man trying to survive the onset of the apocalypse. In other words, the same movie we’ve already seen — practically the only movie we’ve seen lately — albeit on a grander scale.

But knowing that in advance and having the time to come to terms with it could be a blessing in disguise. The WORLD WAR Z movie is not the World War Z book. Okay. Fine. We’ll set that aside and treat it as though it’s called something else. As a movie, is it any good?

I’m as surprised as anyone else to find myself saying: yeah, actually — it is. While it may indeed be the same movie we’ve seen writ large, that turns out to be a pretty badass thing to see. Although Marc Forster’s action sensibilities have improved only marginally since the nigh-unwatchable QUANTUM OF SOLACE, I can write it off (with a shrug and a heavy sigh) by noting that WWZ is not ostensibly an action film the way a Bond film is, and/or that the swarming undead hordes are meant to be disorienting and chaotic. Whatever. It’s not very good but it’s not bad enough to ruin the movie, and keeps the story moving.

If anything, the story may move too fast. Brad Pitt’s globetrotting protagonist Gerry Lane seems to arrive in every new location with just enough time to get necessary plot information before things go tits-up and we’re treated to another camera-spazzing “narrow escape” sequence. The story takes surprising twists and turns, throwing up obstacles for Lane which I did not expect, making the movie pleasantly unpredictable and non-formulaic; and the few moments in which character development occurs are well-done (the movie got me on board early on with a brief but loaded scene of Pitt on the edge of a rooftop). But most of the movie leaves very little time for these moments to occur.

Even with its not-the-book storyline, the events of the film would have been better served as a TV series, so Lane could arrive in a location, make friends, see the different responses of different cultures to the zombie plague. Supporting characters are introduced and dispatched too quickly for us to become attached or feel much of anything other than breathless.

It seems the filmmakers realized this, as the movie finally gets a chance to slow down in the re-shot third act, in an extended sequence at the World Health Organization headquarters (suggested by Damon Lindelof and written by Drew Goddard). The film turns down the volume, takes the foot off the gas, and becomes a hold-your-breath suspense film — something we don’t see nearly enough of in this genre — bringing the movie into clear focus with a simple goal and an intimate showdown with a single zombie. Forster may not be to my taste for action, but I’d love to see more of this kind of filmmaking from him.

The film manages to end on a relatively satisfying note while still leaving itself open for further (already announced) installments. Optimistically, fans of the book can note that, while this film was not a faithful adaptation, it also did nothing to contradict the book. So we may yet get a chance to see some of the novel’s great moments brought to film.

And if not, if the burgeoning franchise continues along these lines — well, the book is still there on the shelf for me whenever I want it. If the rest are at least as entertaining as this one, I’ll be alright with that.

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.