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I just saw the movie today, as it has only just been released in Australia. I really liked that sci-fi elements to the movie, and overall thought it was enjoyable. Faora was great, and so was Zod. I am pretty amazed at how awful that exposition dialog was when the soldier asked "WHATS A TERRAFORM????" and "WHAT WILL THAT MEAN FOR US, THE PEOPLE OF EARTH???" That seemed very poorly done. The amount of camera shaking in a lot of the scenes, especially the flashback of Clark and his dad talking by the truck, was distracting as well. I understand it was probably to evoke a feeling of home movies, but it was annoying. Slight spoilers below. Was the destruction at the end of the movie too similar to 9 11 for American audiences? I liked that the movie had a real feeling of dread, danger, and destruction. People can die. They aren't magically protected because its a movie.
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Jun 27, 2013 11:03
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ace_beef posted:Slight spoilers below. As a non-American myself (though I'm currently living there) I also wondered at that. Especially that scene where Perry and the other guy realize there's no way to save Jenny and they just stand there stolidly as the world goes to poo poo around them. Any Americans feel like weighing in on how they felt?
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Jun 27, 2013 11:22
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ace_beef posted:I am pretty amazed at how awful that exposition dialog was when the soldier asked "WHATS A TERRAFORM????" and "WHAT WILL THAT MEAN FOR US, THE PEOPLE OF EARTH???" That seemed very poorly done. "I can only conclude that this guy, who looked totally human, was actually an alien and that I didn't hallucinate anything after bumping my head." "Oh my go that is a terraforming device and not just your average Independence Day death beam!" Also, I don't want to offend the sad memories of New Yorkers, but it's been 12 years since 9/11. Also, city-flattening UFOs are an old staple of cinema (again, see ID4). Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 11:36
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Seeing the city destruction in Man of Steel really makes me wonder if and when it'll ever be okay/acceptable/whatever you want to call it to dramatize 9/11. Movies have a habit of taking real-life tragedies and playing around with them. Pearl Harbor is an obvious example, but then you get into the crazy stuff like Chernobyl was Russians messing around with an Autobot power supply according to Dark of the Moon. Three Mile Island was a result of a Wolverine vs Deadpool fight according to Wolverine Origins.
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Jun 27, 2013 12:27
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9/11 has been dramatized and referenced near constantly since 2001.
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Jun 27, 2013 12:39
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jivjov posted:Seeing the city destruction in Man of Steel really makes me wonder if and when it'll ever be okay/acceptable/whatever you want to call it to dramatize 9/11. Movies have a habit of taking real-life tragedies and playing around with them. Pearl Harbor is an obvious example, but then you get into the crazy stuff like Chernobyl was Russians messing around with an Autobot power supply according to Dark of the Moon. Three Mile Island was a result of a Wolverine vs Deadpool fight according to Wolverine Origins. Isn't United 93 already an example of dramatizing 9/11?
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Jun 27, 2013 12:56
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Danger posted:9/11 has been dramatized and referenced near constantly since 2001. True, but it hasn't really be trivialized for entertainment purposes like in jivjov's examples. I'm now curious as well when a film will be able to suggest that the 9/11 hijackers were alien infiltrators attempting to destroy key planetary defense centers in advance of a full invasion, and the Flight 93 heroes were undercover time-traveling agents who had to let the world believe they died in the crash to secure history while they were actually chronoported back to the 26th century.
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Jun 27, 2013 12:58
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McSpanky posted:True, but it hasn't really be trivialized for entertainment purposes like in jivjov's examples. I'm now curious as well when a film will be able to suggest that the 9/11 hijackers were alien infiltrators attempting to destroy key planetary defense centers in advance of a full invasion, and the Flight 93 heroes were undercover time-traveling agents who had to let the world believe they died in the crash to secure history while they were actually chronoported back to the 26th century. They already did that movie; it had reptilian alien jews and was called Loose Change.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:01
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jivjov posted:Seeing the city destruction in Man of Steel really makes me wonder if and when it'll ever be okay/acceptable/whatever you want to call it to dramatize 9/11. Movies have a habit of taking real-life tragedies and playing around with them. Pearl Harbor is an obvious example, but then you get into the crazy stuff like Chernobyl was Russians messing around with an Autobot power supply according to Dark of the Moon. Three Mile Island was a result of a Wolverine vs Deadpool fight according to Wolverine Origins. Does Superman have to take off like a bloody cannonball? Why can't he lift off gently? Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 13:12
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Speaking as an American, I think the nation as a whole just has a complex when it comes to 9/11. Yeah, it as terrible. No, it wasn't the worst thing to happen EVAR. But still, more than a decade later, any time there's images of a city getting flattened or building toppling we still get the inevitable 9/11 comparisons. Superman's been punching dudes through buildings for 70+ years. This movie isn't a 9/11 parable unless you the individual decides to make it one.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:44
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:They already did that movie; it had reptilian alien jews and was called Loose Change.  Touche.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:54
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Images of buildings toppling will unavoidably reference 9/11. That's about as explicit as it gets. 9/11 of course was perhaps THE formative post-modern moment for the globalized world and pretty much any work of art is going to reference it, either explicitly or through some residual aspect (war on terror, the end of the end of history etc.), just as a consequence of the environment in which it was first expressed.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:55
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WarLocke posted:Speaking as an American, I think the nation as a whole just has a complex when it comes to 9/11. Yeah, it as terrible. No, it wasn't the worst thing to happen EVAR. But still, more than a decade later, any time there's images of a city getting flattened or building toppling we still get the inevitable 9/11 comparisons.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:03
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WarLocke posted:Speaking as an American, I think the nation as a whole just has a complex when it comes to 9/11. Yeah, it as terrible. No, it wasn't the worst thing to happen EVAR. But still, more than a decade later, any time there's images of a city getting flattened or building toppling we still get the inevitable 9/11 comparisons. For one thing, it was not only the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, but the first serious loss of civilian life on American soil to a foreign attacker since what, the War of 1812? And it occurred at a time where both technology and society allowed us, if not actively encouraged us, to constantly bathe ourselves in the painful imagery and the impact of the event over and over again. Remember the stories of people sitting in front of the TV, watching news feeds for days or even weeks straight, constantly crying and living in the moment like it was the last thing that'd ever happen to them? Not even Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination just saturated the national consciousness like that. In the past -- and I mean the very recent past, like as recent as perhaps ten or fifteen years before 9/11 -- when enormous national tragedies like that happened, the initial shock eventually subsided, the nation went through a period of grief and mourning, and eventually we moved on. Changed, sure, but resolved to continue beyond the tragedy, just like we do individually when someone close to us dies. But this time around, that didn't really happen. We spent all this time chasing after all these things that are supposed to be this moment of ultimate catharsis, Bin Laden and monuments and a new WTC, when we never even truly processed the loss in the first place. And when you haven't let go of that loss, you keep seeing the lost everywhere you turn. McSpanky fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 14:07
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McSpanky posted:For one thing, it was not only the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, but the first serious loss of civilian life on American soil since what, the War of 1812? And it occurred at a time where both technology and society allowed us, if not actively encouraged us, to constantly bathe ourselves in the painful imagery and the impact of the event over and over again. Remember the stories of people sitting in front of the TV, watching news feeds for days or even weeks straight, constantly crying and living in the moment like it was the last thing that'd ever happen to them? Not even Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination just saturated the national consciousness like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing quote:In the past -- and I mean the very recent past, like as recent as perhaps ten or fifteen years before 9/11 -- when enormous national tragedies like that happened, the initial shock eventually subsided, the nation went through a period of grief and mourning, and eventually we moved on. Changed, sure, but resolved to continue beyond the tragedy, just like we do individually when someone close to us dies. But this time around, that didn't really happen. We spent all this time chasing after all these things that are supposed to be this moment of ultimate catharsis, Bin Laden and monuments and a new WTC, when we never even truly processed the loss in the first place. And when you haven't let go of that loss, you keep seeing the lost everywhere you turn. Yeah, 9/11 broke our national brain. We have a complex about it. It's so bad that when buildings get demolished in a Superman movie people immediately go "OMG that's a 9/11 reference!" What, should they have gone out of their way to NOT show any urban destruction between these two godlike figures simply because people might jump on the 9/11 bandwagon? No, because 'Superman fighting a baddie and knocking down buildings' predates 9/11 by at least 50 years.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:13
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Yeah, I appended that to "loss to a foreign attacker". And I may well be wrong about how long it's been, but it's certainly the largest by far within living memory, which is what's really relevant here.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:15
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WarLocke posted:
Well, it expressly is referencing a real event from recent history to utilize it as a visual metaphor (9/11 times a hundred). People jump on the bandwagon because they are responding to what the movie is saying, and visions of urban destruction have explicit metaphorical weight in this decade.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:20
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Danger posted:Well, it expressly is referencing a real event from recent history to utilize it as a visual metaphor (9/11 times a hundred). People jump on the bandwagon because they are responding to what the movie is saying, and visions of urban destruction have explicit metaphorical weight in this decade. Were Superman stories made before 2001 involving destroyed cities and toppling buildings referencing 9/11 then?
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Jun 27, 2013 14:24
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Is that a serious question?
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Jun 27, 2013 14:34
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Danger posted:Is that a serious question? You're saying that something about Superman stories that predates 9/11 is a 9/11 reference. I was just pointing that out. e: Metropolis gets destroyed in MoS because that's a staple of the Superman mythos, not because it's a 9/11 reference. You can choose to see it as one, but that's you imposing your view on the narrative.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:42
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AnonSpore posted:As a non-American myself (though I'm currently living there) I also wondered at that. Especially that scene where Perry and the other guy realize there's no way to save Jenny and they just stand there stolidly as the world goes to poo poo around them. Any Americans feel like weighing in on how they felt? Just your standard sexism, really. Perry and Other Guy have the throw their lives away pointlessly for Penny because Men are Expendable/Women are Weak, take your pick of who to piss off. Oh, and its a cheap way to inject more drama into a scene where thousands, if not millions, have already been killed or are being killed. Kal-L posted:Uh, I don't think she was saying the kryptonians were amoral, but that Superman's human morality was much weaker compared to their superior kryptonian morality. It was a really, really bad bit of dialogue. The best one can salvage is that Kal-El has the morality of a primitive, alien culture which must be obviously inferior to the mature, developed Kryptonian philosophical system. As Zod remarks, military members are pretty intensely trained, and I'm not surprised that they would have a stark and aggressive bent when it comes to ideology.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:03
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Where in the world did I or anyone say that? People are saying it's a 9/11 reference because the imagery has very clear symbolic weight. Metropolis isn't a real place.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:04
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WarLocke posted:You're saying that something about Superman stories that predates 9/11 is a 9/11 reference. I was just pointing that out.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:05
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Danger posted:Where in the world did I or anyone say that? People are saying it's a 9/11 reference because the imagery has very clear symbolic weight. Metropolis isn't a real place. I feel like we're talking past each other here. What I'm saying is that Snyder & Co. didn't sit down and say "We should have Metropolis get destroyed, we can pull on the 9/11 thing for ratings". Instead it was more likely something along the lines of "This is a Superman movie, of course Supes and Zod are going to be knocking buildings over." So are there some superficial similarities? Sure. But that doesn't make it a 9/11 reference or homage or whatever either, because those buildings would have been destroyed even if 9/11 had never happened.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:11
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WarLocke posted:Superman's been punching dudes through buildings for 70+ years. This movie isn't a 9/11 parable unless you the individual decides to make it one. Exactly.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:12
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Movies "pull" from 9-11 now because we know exactly what a skyscraper will look like when hit by and destroyed by an explosive force. Because we have a visual idea of it, movies use a lot of that imagery now. It doesn't always mean it references the politics/ideology/is making a statement on the event in itself, however, outside of that.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:16
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Baron Bifford posted:Neither of those disasters were as terrible as 9/11. He's still new at this whole flying thing, by the end of the fight with Zod though you see him slowly hover off the ground and get ready to attack without causing any shockwaves which shows that he is gaining more fine control over his power.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:34
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Darko posted:Movies "pull" from 9-11 now because we know exactly what a skyscraper will look like when hit by and destroyed by an explosive force. Because we have a visual idea of it, movies use a lot of that imagery now. It doesn't always mean it references the politics/ideology/is making a statement on the event in itself, however, outside of that. Also, just reiterating that we literally see two objects fly into two skyscrapers resulting in two explosions that don't really make sense in the context of what is happening. EDIT: WarLocke posted:I feel like we're talking past each other here. What I'm saying is that Snyder & Co. didn't sit down and say "We should have Metropolis get destroyed, we can pull on the 9/11 thing for ratings". Instead it was more likely something along the lines of "This is a Superman movie, of course Supes and Zod are going to be knocking buildings over." Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 15:48
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Danger posted:Where in the world did I or anyone say that? People are saying it's a 9/11 reference because the imagery has very clear symbolic weight. Metropolis isn't a real place. Exactly. Just like, post-Nazi Germany, every fascist villain with a German accent who screams orders at his subordinates is a reference to Hitler. There were and are other rear end in a top hat Germans before and since Hitler, but if you put one like that in your fictional world it now carries universal symbolic weight. There is no avoiding it. Basically, the filmmakers aren't drooling simpletons. They know right off the bat that if they have images of buildings being blown up, crashed into by planes (or other flying objects), and collapsing, it will evoke mental images of 9/11 in the overwhelming majority of people who see the movie and have that imagery burned into their memories. If they don't want to use that imagery they set the fight primarily in Smallville, or have them zooming around the globe, or in the city but street level where the element of danger to individual humans is the focus. That imagery is now in the collective conscious for better or worse, so if you don't want to comment on 9/11 you don't make a movie where skyscrapers fall down.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:57
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WarLocke posted:I feel like we're talking past each other here. What I'm saying is that Snyder & Co. didn't sit down and say "We should have Metropolis get destroyed, we can pull on the 9/11 thing for ratings". Instead it was more likely something along the lines of "This is a Superman movie, of course Supes and Zod are going to be knocking buildings over." What Snyder & Co. intended has no real relevance to how the scenes are interpreted, and doesn't mean that the imagery is superficial or coincidental (it is decidedly neither). I mean, in this instance it is clearly on the nose; take the overt War on Terror response at the end.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:57
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Every single interior shot during the Superman/Zod battle was completely empty. Do we know an exact timeline of when Zod's ship arrives over Metropolis and when the beam starts firing? If it's possible there was any time, even just an hour, its very likely that most of Metropolis, especially the skyscrapers, had been evacuated. A single cut to a reporter saying "Metropolis is being evacuated as we speak..." THEN the beam starts firing would've helped us all realize we weren't watching hundreds of thousands die. Bird Law fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 15:57
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Timeless Appeal posted:EDIT: In how you choose to see the film, sure. Just don't conflate that with the film itself. But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree here.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:00
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Bird Law posted:Every single interior shot during the Superman/Zod battle was completely empty. Do we know an exact timeline of when Zod's ship arrives over Metropolis and when the beam starts firing? If it's possible there was any time, even just an hour, its very likely that most of Metropolis, especially the skyscrapers, had been evacuated. There was no evacuation. We saw cars with drivers and pedestrians being crushed by the first bounce of the gravity beam. I'm sure after that everyone was fleeing as fast they could, but there was no organized evacuation effort on the screen. Kal-El's bloodlust claimed the lives of thousands in the battle he instigated.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:11
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Timeless Appeal posted:Authorial intent don't mean a thing, baby. Well I would agree with this but I don't even think it is the case here. Like Warlocke said, Zack Snyder and co. maybe didn't sit down and intend to write a 9/11 analogy, maybe they just figured it was Superman and he would punch guys through buildings, BUT they had to know even if they didn't want to evoke 9/11 they were still playing with imagery that explicitly evokes 9/11 whether they want it to or not. When you live in a world where imagery carries a heavy symbolism, you can either meet it head on or you can avoid it entirely. You can't do it and then whine "well of course all of the images of buildings being crashed into and collapsing wasn't a 9/11 reference, it's just Superman!" In my opinion they met it head on, but if you think the creators of the film never once thought "gee people might think about 9/11 during this destroyed city sequence" you are insane. The fact that we are talking about this at length proves that point. LeJackal posted:Kal-El's bloodlust claimed the lives of thousands in the battle he instigated. Haha this is hilarious (whether you are serious or not).
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Jun 27, 2013 16:14
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Bird Law posted:A single cut to a reporter saying "Metropolis is being evacuated as we speak..." THEN the beam starts firing would've helped us all realize we weren't watching hundreds of thousands die. One, it would be a cheap hand wave. Two, why SHOULD that fight be consequence-free, anyway?
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Jun 27, 2013 16:14
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WarLocke posted:In how you choose to see the film, sure. Just don't conflate that with the film itself. EDIT: Guy A. Person posted:I would agree with this but I don't even think it is the case here. Like Warlocke said, Zack Snyder and co. maybe didn't sit down and intend to write a 9/11 analogy, maybe they just figured it was Superman and he would punch guys through buildings, BUT they had to know even if they didn't want to evoke 9/11 they were still playing with imagery that explicitly evokes 9/11 whether they want it to or not. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 16:21
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Timeless Appeal posted:Hey, if you don't feel like arguing about it then that's fine, and honestly we really should have an authorial intent vs. interpretation thread since this argument comes up a lot. The thing is that you're putting additional value into what the author is putting into the text than what the audience is taking out of it. The film itself is not defined by what Snyder intended. Besides which he has 0 basis beyond speculation for what the filmmakers "intended".
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Jun 27, 2013 16:25
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LeJackal posted:There was no evacuation. We saw cars with drivers and pedestrians being crushed by the first bounce of the gravity beam. I'm sure after that everyone was fleeing as fast they could, but there was no organized evacuation effort on the screen. Kal-El's bloodlust claimed the lives of thousands in the battle he instigated. I'm pretty sure you watched a different movie than the rest of us. Other than when he went apeshit when his mom was threatened, Clark/Kal had no bloodlust. He actively tried to pull the fight to already-destroyed areas or even to space. It's Zod that was killing bystanders.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:34
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Maybe dudes haven't seen Watchmen, in which the destruction of New York is foreshadowed by a blimp slowwwwly veering towards the twin towers in the background of a shot. That's the same film that has a cgi simulation/recreation of the Zapruder film that pulls back to reveal Zapruder himself, with his camera. We get a shot of 'the vietnam war' recreated entirely with bad greenscreen and Apocalypse Now references. The same film is referenced here, in association with Zod. Snyder knows exactly what he's doing here, with this imagery of ash-covered New Yorkers fleeing in terror from collapsing buildings. He's created a pop-art collage of images sourced from everything from art films to comics to photojournalism to Independence Day. That's what he does.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:35
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Guy A. Person posted:Haha this is hilarious (whether you are serious or not). I am quite serious. Kal-El desired to fight Zod so strongly that he sacrificed the lives of thousand directly and billions indirectly in a moment of bloodlust. Destroying that Scout Ship to goad Zod into a battle royale was completely out of keeping with the 'highly moral protector of humanity' image Kal-El projects, but completely in keeping with his true identity as a genocidal, narcissist, self-appointed god king.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:35
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