I’m
not a fan of Superman. I became a comic fan while Superman was dead.
That should tell you something. A
hero who can not be harmed and cannot be tempted by very definition has
no appeal to me. In fact, everything I've witnessed with Superman,
barring special events in which he fights other Kryptonians, there is
only one reason this is even a series: Lois Lane's tendency to get
herself captured. Silly Lois, don’t you know only Superman should
investigate things? A silly girl such as yourself could get hurt, don’t
you know?
Believe me, I’m going somewhere with this.
The
movie begins on Krypton, where Scientist Jor-El is trying to convince
the government that the planet is imploding as a result of harvesting
materials from the core of the planet. No, correct that. He’s lecturing
them for doing so, and they don’t disagree with his conclusions at all.
The response of the leaders of this technological paradise is “Well
what were we supposed to do about it?”
From
there, Jor-El has conflict with the militant Zod. Zod was an
occasional villain of Superman’s in the Silver Age. Actually, he can be
compared to Green Lantern’s arch-rival Sinestro. Both of these two
villains debuted in 1961 and had a fairly equivalent number of
appearances in their first two and a half decades. The difference is,
Sinestro continued on in Crisis on Infinite Earths
and later events, coming to be one of the premiere villains of the DC
universe, while Zod was banished from the new direction Superman took
after Crisis.
In the 1990s he became a little more obscure, appearing only via
imitations and alternate universe counterparts, much in the way
Supergirl was killed off and replaced with Earth-2’s Power Girl. In
2006, Zod returned to comics, making a brand new impressions on fans
that had probably never heard of the name.
My editor at this point is telling me that Zod featured heavily in Superman
films of the 1970s and ‘80s, and has since become a common name. Now,
he’s hurting me, punishing me for not having seen these films.
Watching
this film, I find it hard to believe that Zod’s appearance is anything
less than a reference to the villain’s popularity strictly from the
previous films, which is a bad place to start. Otherwise, Luthor or
even Brainiac would be a great villain for a film, something that could
really be given a modern spin as well as giving Superman a chance to be
Earth’s hero. Instead, we get the villain from the earlier Superman
films, tied inexplicably in with the titular character’s birth as
Kal-El. If the scene I described earlier doesn’t show that the Council
is irredeemably stupid, holding the knowledge that Krypton is doomed and
the entire civilization is going to die, they decide to punish Zod’s
rebels by exiling them. Off-planet. In another dimension. So that all
of the rebels live, and the law-abiding citizens die. Krypton is less a
tale of over-complacency and too much thirst for technology than it is
the lifetime winner of the Darwin Award, isn’t it?
From
there we get a standard superhero origin, with some changes. All of
the morals and things that are usually added, not for the sake of story
but out of some sort of obligation, are left out of here. Saving people
just comes naturally to Superman, and he starts doing it offscreen.
The only parts of the origin that we see are the ones that are relevant
to the conflict between Superman and Zod - his Kryptonian origins, the
way he overcame the sensory overload, and similar topics. A version of
the Fortress of Solitude is somewhat referenced, somewhat explained, and
then pushed aside for things that are relevant to the plot.
But
there’s another element that’s always an important part of the origin:
the love interest. Mary Jane Watson, Pepper Potts, Carol Ferris.
Actually, the last one is closer to the mark. Both Carol and Lois, in
previous incarnations, made up for their frequent Damsel-in-Distress-ism
by being cut-throat businesswomen. This doesn’t entirely excuse their
roles, in my opinion, but at least some of the times Superman saves
Lois, it’s because she’s in a role where any man or woman would have
been murdered by the villains of the story and Lois is just that focused
on putting her job before her welfare. Like Green Lantern, Man of Steel
saps these harder, less immediately likable aspects from the character,
making her nicer and more supportive and...not Carol Ferris, and not
Lois Lane. I could call her LINO, but I think that was beat into the
ground with Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla. In any case, everything that stood about this character, that made her so enjoyable to watch on the rare occasion I watched Superman the Animated Series is gone.
It’s
not just the separation of this character from the classical one, or
the fact that they included a meeker, less intimidating woman as a
character in the film. It’s the variety we get, and the fact that
Warner Brothers has now intentionally taken two strong leaders who don’t
take crap while still not needing to be the superhero themselves and
replacing them with women who might not necessarily lie down and give in
to pressure, but exist entirely for the purpose of supporting the male
characters and making them feel
in control. I praised Pepper Potts because, despite existing in a role
that might be difficult for the viewer to internalize, she embodied
ideas that you rarely see in cinematic women. Carol and Lois embody
many of those same ideas and mentalities (minus the “silly woman” thing I
talked about earlier) in progressively more relatable packages, yet
either Warner Brothers as a whole or directors Martin Campbell and Zach
Snyder making individual choices felt that these characters were too
intimidating and had to be softened into a role of pure support,
preventing them from being characters that can act (or even exist as
independent characters) on their own. David Goyer’s scripts aren’t
traditionally any better, but there was enough wiggle room in Man of Steel’s script for Dana Delany’s Lois to rear her head.
The
rest of the film is essentially visual magnificence. This is something
that the generation of superhero films starting in 1999 (although
arguably we’re in a new generation that began in 2008) has excelled in.
This film, with a visual range from red to black, to grey, to blue, has
a better range than many and as a result comes off stronger. Until the
3D kicks in.
I
watched this film in 2D, and it was pretty obvious where 3D was
intended to be a major selling point of a scene. That’s one problem
with big budget releases this year; they often seem to rely entirely on
the 3D gimmick. Few films are actually filmed in stereo, even in post-Avatar days, but all of them are filmed with 3D in mind, it seems. At times, Man of Steel
gets to the point where it feels claustrophobic without 3D glasses,
where everybody seems to be standing shoulder to shoulder, with the
understanding that the 3D will add some depth to the room to keep it
from feeling like everybody is standing in a narrow hallway.
The end result is that Man of Steel
is your standard superhero film. It features a workable origin, a
workable conflict, and workable characters, without bringing anything
spectacular to the table that makes it stand out among the crowd. It
looks good, but is dragged down by its reliance on 3D. The characters
have layers worth seeing and discussing (an argument can be made for Zod
being merely a product of his society, and everybody has difficult
decisions to make), but this is ultimately hurt by an outdated mentality
of fearing a woman with some independence. Man of Steel is a Superman reboot made in 2013, and is no more or less than that would lead you to expect.
0 comments:
Post a Comment