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Just Saw "Man of Steel"
12 years ago
...and I probably should have waited for it to come out on video. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of really well done action scenes, and the writers had some good ideas about how to do something interesting with such a timeworn and oft-dismissed member of our pop-culture pantheon.
They also spend a while trying to make Superman into Jesus, but they seem to abandon that about halfway though when they realize that coming back from the dead isn't one of Superman's powers, so they can't actually kill him off. It'd make it a lot harder for them to make a Justice League movie. :P
Anyway, you could probably make a pretty good movie out of parts of this one... but it would be a much, much shorter film.
I don't want to go on and on, but there are a couple of scenes that really stand out to me in their badness. Spoilers follow.
In one, young Clark Kent gets his big tragic character development moment (because nobody can have a happy childhood *and* be a superhero) when his adoptive father gets killed by a tornado, and superboy doesn't save him because "the world isn't ready" for him to reveal himself. Setting aside that, by that point, basically everybody in Smallville pretty much already knows he's super, what really bugs me is the *reason* that Pa Kent had to die. You see, everybody else in the area hid under a freeway overpass and was safe. But the old farmer had to go back to save the family dog.
It's okay though. The scene is shot so that we know that the dog makes it.
...seriously? When an idiot gets himself killed for a transparently stupid reason in a movie, that's not tragedy. Heck, if they had just gotten the cast to overact a little more, it might have made a fairly amusing comedy sketch.
"Oh no Pa! While fleeing a tornado we somehow locked our beloved dog in the car!"
*wheeze* "Not to worry Clark, I'll just mosey on over there and let 'er out. Now where'd I put my walker..."
The other scene is pretty easy to miss, but it bugged the hell out of me. During a fight between Superman and a nameless evil Kryptonian chick, NEKC spouts off the following one-liner. Keep in mind that this movie is being heavily marketed to churchgoers, to the point of distributing superman-themed sermon outlines to pastors:
"You have a sense of morality, and I do not. That gives me an evolutionary advantage, and as history shows us... evolution always wins!"
I just, I can't... nnnngg *strokes out*
They also spend a while trying to make Superman into Jesus, but they seem to abandon that about halfway though when they realize that coming back from the dead isn't one of Superman's powers, so they can't actually kill him off. It'd make it a lot harder for them to make a Justice League movie. :P
Anyway, you could probably make a pretty good movie out of parts of this one... but it would be a much, much shorter film.
I don't want to go on and on, but there are a couple of scenes that really stand out to me in their badness. Spoilers follow.
In one, young Clark Kent gets his big tragic character development moment (because nobody can have a happy childhood *and* be a superhero) when his adoptive father gets killed by a tornado, and superboy doesn't save him because "the world isn't ready" for him to reveal himself. Setting aside that, by that point, basically everybody in Smallville pretty much already knows he's super, what really bugs me is the *reason* that Pa Kent had to die. You see, everybody else in the area hid under a freeway overpass and was safe. But the old farmer had to go back to save the family dog.
It's okay though. The scene is shot so that we know that the dog makes it.
...seriously? When an idiot gets himself killed for a transparently stupid reason in a movie, that's not tragedy. Heck, if they had just gotten the cast to overact a little more, it might have made a fairly amusing comedy sketch.
"Oh no Pa! While fleeing a tornado we somehow locked our beloved dog in the car!"
*wheeze* "Not to worry Clark, I'll just mosey on over there and let 'er out. Now where'd I put my walker..."
The other scene is pretty easy to miss, but it bugged the hell out of me. During a fight between Superman and a nameless evil Kryptonian chick, NEKC spouts off the following one-liner. Keep in mind that this movie is being heavily marketed to churchgoers, to the point of distributing superman-themed sermon outlines to pastors:
"You have a sense of morality, and I do not. That gives me an evolutionary advantage, and as history shows us... evolution always wins!"
I just, I can't... nnnngg *strokes out*
Instead, the writers seem to have gone "hmm, people don't like Superman, but they really like those Batman movies we made. How to make Superman more like Batman? Kill his parents, of course! Well, maybe just one of them... and there aren't a whole lot of dark alleys full of gangsters in the rural corn belt, so... I dunno... throw a tornado at his father-figure. Edgy!"
Killing off parents for no reason doesn't make me sympathize, it just makes me roll my eyes.