Man of Steel review - WITH SPOILERS

[spacecaps]

Loved the movie.

My only critique of the movie (and it was mentioned earlier) was the major destruction during Superman and General Zod's fight scene. It was over the top and Superman would have broke his 'No Kill' Rule just by this alone. Hundreds would have lost their lives in this sequence.

Superman would have taken the fight with Zod out of the city.

That end battle looked like it took place at 2 pm on a workday. So many citizens just walking around the city, working, and dying by falling debrie because two god-like creatures just toppled over yet another building or crashed into and through a high-rise dropping glass, steel, and concrete on the unsuspecting masses below. By the time that last fight was over, Metropolis looked like a pile of rubble. That's like the police department blowing up a bank with the hostages inside in order to stop a robbery in progress. (Lex Luthor to the rescue on the rebuild in part 2 anyone?) Anyway Superman could have flung Zod out over the ocean or to the desert or to anywhere that's not a major populated city during the endless last battle. In one of the movies few attempts at lightening the tone they followed this bazillion dollars in damage and countless (unseen) loss of lives battle up by having Superman destroy a military drone that was following him around and getting yelled at by the Army General because it cost "12 million dollars." What kind of reprimand did he get for destroying a city the equivalent of Manhattan and directly causing the (still unseen) deaths of countless civilians?

[B-Lister]

I know! It was awesome wasn't it?

[MIB41]

Enjoyed the film, could have used some explosions though....

Yes. I didn't see a thing that made me think it was mimicking the Transformers or the Avengers. Seriously this film lost more buildings than any given day between Godzilla and Japan.

[kingdom warrior]

That end battle looked like it took place at 2 pm on a workday. So many citizens just walking around the city, working, and dying by falling debrie because two god-like creatures just toppled over yet another building or crashed into and through a high-rise dropping glass, steel, and concrete on the unsuspecting masses below. By the time that last fight was over, Metropolis looked like a pile of rubble. That's like the police department blowing up a bank with the hostages inside in order to stop a robbery in progress. (Lex Luthor to the rescue on the rebuild in part 2 anyone?) Anyway Superman could have flung Zod out over the ocean or to the desert or to anywhere that's not a major populated city during the endless last battle. In one of the movies few attempts at lightening the tone they followed this bazillion dollars in damage and countless (unseen) loss of lives battle up by having Superman destroy a military drone that was following him around and getting yelled at by the Army General because it cost "12 million dollars." What kind of reprimand did he get for destroying a city the equivalent of Manhattan and directly causing the (still unseen) deaths of countless civilians?

If they fought in a desert, I would demand my money back especially if I'm paying 20 bucks for 3D, and just to note there are no God like creatures fighting in the sky not caring for the ants or where they live in everyday life......just to put it into perspective, when you walk around do you even care what ants you are killing as you walk around?.....lol


Ummmmmm Did he not Destroy and stopped the Kryptonians???? I think you are forgetting that there are casualties in a battle,the Comic books do them all the time and no one mourns the unknown dead in comics, Why? because it's just a comic book. Had the Kryptonians taken over, all of the human race would have been terminated......and remember no one makes demands on a superbeing that can throw you into the sun....lol and last,just remember it's just a movie.....lol


Had we not had any of those scenes this thread would have been filled with OMG!!! He didn't fight they did nothing it was boring!!! The destruction was perfect for the Rise of Lex Luthor in the sequel......I pay for Superman to be a Badass NOT kiss lois so she could forget,not spin the world backwards so Lois doesn't die Not to see him flying about with Lois doing Can you read my mind.....I want the Bad *** Superman that Siegal and Shuster created before all the later knuckle heads watered down....and I pretty much got that......bring on the sequel!!.....lol

[Earth 2 Chris]

There was A LOT of destruction, and as I said earlier, that's currently the "thing to do" in Hollywood, because now they can do it and make it look realistic. It's a trend, just like disaster films influenced Superman: The Movie.

As for casualties, I took it that most of the buildings were abandoned by the point of the huge final battle. I mean, an alien ship was shooting a giant laser beam into the ground and causing shockwaves throughout the cit, and there was quite a bit of time between the ship beginning it's destruction and the beginning of the Superman/Zod fight. Perry White even kind of indicated the Planet employees were some of the last to abandon ship. I think they should have shown some more scenes of people running away from downtown, but they did show a few. That was my take anyway.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Goyer and Nolan didn't intentionally leave the big question of all the destruction out there for Lex Luthor to take up the fight against these marauding aliens. In Batman Begins, and Dark Knight, they planted seeds, some obvious, some very subtle, that bore fruit in the next film. If Lex owns most of the city, he has a personal stake in all of this rampant destruction, and an axe to grind with Krypton's only survivor!!!

[kingdom warrior]

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Goyer and Nolan didn't intentionally leave the big question of all the destruction out there for Lex Luthor to take up the fight against these marauding aliens. In Batman Begins, and Dark Knight, they planted seeds, some obvious, some very subtle, that bore fruit in the next film. If Lex owns most of the city, he has a personal stake in all of this rampant destruction, and an axe to grind with Krypton's only survivor!!!

Yep, that's How I see it, Lex products were all over the place....you can bring in Billionaire Luthor who has bigger plans for the next movie.....

[MIB41]

In Batman Begins, and Dark Knight, they planted seeds, some obvious, some very subtle, that bore fruit in the next film. If Lex owns most of the city, he has a personal stake in all of this rampant destruction, and an axe to grind with Krypton's only survivor!!!

I thought Emeraldknight brought up a really good point when he and I were discussing the film afterwards. I questioned the relevance of that one scene (near the very end) where Superman sends down a satellite that was supposedly spying on him. And there is this exchange between him and this supposed military figure. I was really taken back by that because it didn't fit into the context of the events leading up to that point. It seem out of sorts with the story. Metropolis and America's military had been seriously compromised. How could we find the time or funds to invest in a satellite to track Superman so soon after all this destruction? And how could this 'military person' be at that exact place of impact and KNOW specifically what Superman had even destroyed? Emeraldknight said, "Maybe that's not really our military at all. Maybe it's Martian Manhunter incognito?" Hmmmmmm.

[madmarva]

I think Superman knocked the Satellite down where he wanted it to make the point to Swanwick that he made, but it would be fun if Swannwick turned out to be MM. Also, we don't know how much time passed between Zod's death and supermAn's exchange with Swanwick.

[spacecaps]

As I wrote on the "non-spoiler" Superman thread, I really, really didn't like this movie. It gave me a headache and for an action movie was pretty boring but just saying that is really only enough to get me yelled at by some here. After giving it a lot of thought about what exactly bothered me here's my breakdown of what went wrong.

First off, the movie was essentially a remake of the Richard Donner films of the 80's marking the second early 80's remake we've gotten this Summer already. (The first being The Wrath of Kahn.) Now despite the flashy and cartoony CGI in the Man of Steel, the opening scene of the movie is pretty much a shot for shot remake of the 80''s movie. We see Jor-el sending his son off into space, Jor-el dying, and Krypton being destroyed. By the first half hour I felt like I was watching a movie I already saw. I realize that's Superman's origin but why not take the time to establsih Krypton as a world of it's own here? Something that makes a connection between this alien planet and the audience so that when it does reach it's end, the audience feels a great loss. Instead of showing it only in it's final moments (again) we could have had an established Krypton world that we actually cared about when seeing it's destruction. A twenty minute back-story on Kal-el and company living on a thriving Krypton would have gone far beyond showing us a dying planet with a hastey expliations as to why it was dying. The idea of a Russell Crow prequal has already been tossed around but this could have been taken care of in a better crafted and different beginning than the other Superman movie.

Second you have what I call "The Finding Nemo" complex. This is a trend that, as far as I can tell, began with the Pixar movie when it wasn't enough to have some terrible tragedy befall the hero (his mother was eaten) and in addition they had to add on another layer of specialness to the character (his defomed flipper) Here we see that babies are born on Krypton Matrix style but not Kal. He is the first natural birth in CENTURIES! OHHH....It would have been enough to make him the first baby with the ability to choose his own future but they shoe horn in the notion that he's extra special. Super, some might say. Not only is this the first of the many Christ like images in the movie it raised the question, how the hell did Laura keep being pregnant a secret. If she is like the only woman to carry a child in hundreds of years, A) Would anyone have kno''wn what to do B) wouldn't anyone have noticed, and C) Jor-el was kind of a big deal on Krypton, like an important political figure, so how could he have kept this a secret for however long it would take for a Kryptonian to carry a child in the womb.

Right after this, we have Zods revolution which only serves to establish him as a one dimentional bad guy. Again, having a non-imploding Krypton opening that shows Zod not being all crazy would have worked wonders for the movie. Showing us a side of Zod that drives him to preserve the existance of Krypton rounds out the character and would have added another layer of complexity to the story. Instead of Zod being this crazed warmonger, we could have seen things from Zods perspective for a time. Something that would have been interesting would have been to show Zod as the hero in this sense and Jor-el as the bad guy. Clearly Jor-el is breaking many laws. Zod is doing his job in trying to stop him. What are his reasonings and motivations? What is his background? Create an aspect of his character that resonates with the audience and makes them think that, although his methods are wrong, his rational is sound. Instead we got generic bad guy that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. The main bad guy is a flat character from first shot to last shot.

Cut to the sentencing to the Phantom Zone, which at this point, the world was clearly dying and no one but Jor-el seems to notice. Despite the impending doom, they had time during the apocalyps to stop and try a military officer for war crimes and send him off into space prison. You know if they had this kind of technology at their disposal maybe they could have applied it to preserving non-criminals while their planet dies around them. Again though, no one really seems botthered by the fact that the planet is literally exploding around them. Again, they're super advanced technology did't see this even coming years or months prior? Jor-el had that space-pod ready and waiting for his son so they obviously saw it coming. Even the computer stupidly asks Laura if she should be taking refuge from the all encompassing lava eruptions. Where did it want her to go exactly? It just didn't fit. Also the gray scale/graffite/etch-a-sketch computers were kind of odd too. You've got a civilization that advanced in technology and yet they're watching everything on what is the equivelant to a black and white television.

Once off Krypton we get a 30 something Superman in the right place at the right time saving workers from a burning oil rig. Mix in an an out of place flashback that does nothing more than establish that Clark has done this kind of thing before and then we see Clark at a truck stop where he's a waiter, I think, defending some barfly's honor. He gets a beer dumped on him and he shows restraint by not punching the guy to the next continent but by tying his attackers truck into a knot. Subtle. In several flashbacks we see young Clark getting picked on repeatitly by his classmates but there's his dad to show and teach him restraint. Again the movie misses a golden oppertunity here. A way more compelling movie would have shifted the focus on Jonathan struggleing to teach his emotional teen with god-like powers the ability to show said restraint even when every fiber in your body is telling you to punch a hole in this guys face. Having a Clark "Hulk-out" as a teen, so to speak, and deal with the consequences of the aftermath would have been a much more gritty approach to showing us how Clark evolves into the Man of Steel. Having him not fight back as an adolescent but retaliate as an adult doesn't make any sense but more on that in a second.

Moving to Lois up in Alaska.... Clark is there too but there's very little explination as to why he's there. In fact, no one but Lois even seems to notice him exploring this higly classified and top secret goverment site. He's walking around this 20,000 year old spaceship in the ice. So is Lois. Something attacks him but he's got the key so it leaves him alone. Then it attacks Lois but he saves her. This was more disjointed than any of the flashbacks. So it turns out the Fortress of Solitude is a 20,000 year old space ship. Clark has been here for 33 years (he goes out of his way to mention this in yet another Christ-like reference) and yet his connection to his homeworld is an ancient and abandoned spaceship that is fully functional. That be like finding an abandoned Ford Model-T in the woods and having it start right up. How....?

Anyway, back to Clark and Jonathan. Someone mentioned before that having John Kent die of natural causes is paramount to Clark learning that despite his god-like powers, he still cannot save everyone. Yeah, that's a pretty pivitol moment in the life and times of a young Clark Kent but here Jonathan dies after twisting his ankel while trying to save the dog in what is clearly a murderous wind storm. Clark stands by and watches. He just kind of lets it happen. That's not very Super. I get wanting to have Jonathns death teach Clark a lesson (again the heart-attack would have worked here) but to have him get whisked away by a twister while his son stands 100 yards away watching intently was downright silly. A better lesson would have been maybe having both his mother and his father in great peril and Clark having to choose between which one he saves. It doesn't even have to be his mother, it could have been another family, whatever, but coming to terms with the notion that despite his awesome powers, he cannot save everyone and the choices he makes have very real consequences would have had a much greater impact then having Jonathan die needlessly in what is becoming known as "Wizard of Oz" style. Also, the risk of exposing who you are and what your capable of would have come into question. Do I reveal my powers and save my father? Do I risk my secret here but not here. How do I cope with the choices I make? A bus full of children is a cause to expose yourself but a tornado about to murder your father isn't. What, was he afraid John would be dissapointed in him? Again the movie doesn't jive.

Now another place where they could have really hammered in the "actions have consequences" would have been to introduce Lex Luthor in a cameo. They could have done this in a way that just had Superman save Lex Luthor from mortal peril somewhere in the film. A great place would have been at the end if for nothing else but to break up the monotony of the endless last fight. Think about that for a second. Establish Lex in this movie as a minor character. Clark saves this man, which then sparks an undying infatuation with Superman which in turn leads to Lex becoming his greatest nemesis. Having Clark learn that not everyone you help is necessarily a good thing would have had quite the impact on the character for the eventual future movies perhaps even compelling him to make different choices in the future and question his decisions going forward. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all.

Now aside from all this there are still some other glarring problems too. Superman has a song. It's the audio que that he's about to do something super. It wasn't used. Imagine sitting through Indaina Jones without his trademark fanfare playing as he swings across a bottomless chasm. It kind of left an emptiness in the film. I didn't even realize it's absense until after it had ended but in retrospect it's like seeing a band you like in concert and afterwards realizing they didn't play one of their biggest hits.

Also as I've mentioned before, the mass destruction of Metropolis and Smallville is devistating. We just had some pretty traumatic storm damage from Sandy and that didn't do 1/10th the damage that Zod and Superman did. That kind of destruction could cripple the countries economy. But again, the unseen deaths is what really bothers me here. Lets says most of the workers evacuated the buildings, where'd they go? Ever try to get out of Manhattan around rush hour. Was anyone in NYC on September 11th. You were simply stuck with no where to go. In an event like that Metropolis would have been shut down and it's inhabitants trapped so it's hard to write that off as "I'm sure everyone got out OK." Also consider that the fight didn't just take place in one concentrated area, it took place across the entire city. If you had heard this was taking place uptown, why would you have evacuated your downtown office? But for a movie that was billed as real and gritty, having unseen deaths of the masses strips it of any relavence. For the same reason you felt sad when the camera lingered longer on one Ewok dying in the Battle of Endor than it did when Alderan, a planet of billions, blew up. That's called empathy and without seeing the consequences of the devastation we lose our ability to emphathize with the victims and when that happens "real and gritty" go out the window and what you have is basically a video game where no actions have any real consequences.

Now I can see why a lot of people liked the movie and I'm not trying to change anyones mind but while many of you saw AWESOME!, this is what I saw. It's big and flashy in an Avengeres sort of way. It's different in someways than a lot of other movies of it's kind and yet in so many ways it's the same as so many that came beofe it. I had no expectations going into the movie and outside of a few trailers and some passing comments about it, I went in with an open mind. Instead of dark and gritty like this movie was touted, I got SUPERMAN SMASH! ZOD SMASH! extravaganza, a movie without any chemistry between the actors, disjointed flashbacks, a joyless script that tried to force humor in at the end, heavy handed religious images, a lot of terrible video-game quality CGI, undeveloped and uninteresting characters, a world left devastated by a horrific battle but lacking any real consequences, and a rehash of a movie made over 30 years ago that somehow now looks infinitley better in comparsion.

[palitoy]

As for casualties, I took it that most of the buildings were abandoned by the point of the huge final battle. I mean, an alien ship was shooting a giant laser beam into the ground and causing shockwaves throughout the cit, and there was quite a bit of time between the ship beginning it's destruction and the beginning of the Superman/Zod fight. Perry White even kind of indicated the Planet employees were some of the last to abandon ship. I think they should have shown some more scenes of people running away from downtown, but they did show a few. That was my take anyway.

Yeah, I kind of gathered most people left the offices already. When they did show the interior of a building, it was empty.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Goyer and Nolan didn't intentionally leave the big question of all the destruction out there for Lex Luthor to take up the fight against these marauding aliens. In Batman Begins, and Dark Knight, they planted seeds, some obvious, some very subtle, that bore fruit in the next film. If Lex owns most of the city, he has a personal stake in all of this rampant destruction, and an axe to grind with Krypton's only survivor!!!

You know, that's one of the things I found disappointing about this movie. Not enough seeds planted to suggest that this universe was bigger. I'm not talking cameos but how about a character mentions Wayne Tech or Central city, something like that? I had the same problems with Green Lantern, I don't get that reluctance to give fans that little taste.

[johnmiic]

So I haven't seen the film yet, but am reading all the spoilers, because like many of the big summer films this year I really wasn't enthused about seeing it. From what I gather on the whole the film is well done, it delivers a good take on Superman, but like many efforts to re-interpet old characters and situations it suffers from the "idiot plot" devices and embraces story holes to deliver the goods. So it's a matter of whether you want to overlook small details to enjoy it or dislike it because they should have got the small stuff right.

[spacecaps]

how about a character mentions Wayne Tech or Central city, something like that? I had the same problems with Green Lantern, I don't get that reluctance to give fans that little taste.

The satellite they destroyed during the fight at the end said "Wayne" on it and of course there was the Lexcorp truck that's been mentioned before.

[johnmiic]

Review by Phantom Troublemaker w/Spoilers on his Needless Things website:

http://www.needlessthingssite.com/2013/06/movie-review-man-of-steel-or-that-new.html?m=0

[palitoy]

The satellite they destroyed during the fight at the end said "Wayne" on it and of course there was the Lexcorp truck that's been mentioned before.

Oh, I totally missed that. Good on them.

[vintage spideyfan]

My seven year old son and I caught a matinee on Father's Day. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Cavill was excellent. A little surprised with Zod's demise, but I think I see where they're going with that. The 2 hr and 24 min runtime made my Son a bit restless, but he seemed to enjoy the show. There is some intense action and violence, but nothing excessively bloody or graphic. In fact, the only thing that seemed to bother him was the "You are not alone" scene. Over all, I loved it and hope to catch it again with my wife.