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computer parts posted:Essentially yes. If Earth continues along its present course it will become Krypton. Superman is a child from the future sent back in time to try to prevent that future from happening. Meanwhile, Zod & co are time travelers who want to bypass the way things actually happened and just construct their future world in the present day.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:41
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Baron Bifford posted:Nooo... the terraforming machine is just a plot device to allow Superman to save the world. What is a superhero movie if the hero doesn't have to save the world? What is a supervillian if all he wants is a database? Without this element, Zod would only have been interested in getting the codex from Kal-El. The world would not have been in jeopardy if Zod said "ok, we'll just gently caress off and terraform some uninhabited planet once we've killed Kal." The Dark Knight is a pretty good example of a film where the villain literally goes "I'll just gently caress off once I've killed the hero"; it's not like that's an unimaginable plotline.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:47
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A lot of comic book stories are arguably like this, but a movie adaptation, particularly an origin tale, needs a world-saving scene.
Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 16:51
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Baron Bifford posted:A lot of comic book stories are arguably like this, but a movie adaptation, particularly an origin tale, needs a world-saving scene. But there's no reason it had to be Zod specifically.
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Jan 26, 2014 17:14
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BrianWilly posted:Sure, it's a vision of what America could potentially turn into in one of a hundred thousand potentialities.
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Jan 26, 2014 17:24
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Man of Steel - I haven't seen a film this thoughtful about Indian genocide since The Shining
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Jan 26, 2014 19:03
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Baron Bifford posted:The scene was very chaotic. There was poor visibility to due all the dust and debris flying, plus people were distracted looking left and right. Clark could have easily saved the day, and dismissed any witness who claimed to see anything unusual. Baron Bifford posted:Here's a better analysis: David Goyer is a hack who doesn't think things through hard enough. Baron Bifford posted:Nooo... the terraforming machine is just a plot device to allow Superman to save the world. What is a superhero movie if the hero doesn't have to save the world? What is a supervillian if all he wants is a database? Without this element, Zod would only have been interested in getting the codex from Kal-El. The world would not have been in jeopardy if Zod said "ok, we'll just gently caress off and terraform some uninhabited planet once we've killed Kal." You're assuming that you're smarter than the people making the movie. Stop that.
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Jan 26, 2014 20:38
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Yoshifan823 posted:You're assuming that you're smarter than the people making the movie.
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Jan 26, 2014 22:27
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Baron Bifford posted:Everyone, stop analyzing and criticizing now! He's suggesting that you analyze and criticize the actual movie, instead of spinning fanciful theories about the process by which it was made rooted in the assumption that the professionals behind it are morons. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 23:20
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But that's what everybody else in this thread is doing!
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Jan 26, 2014 23:30
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Baron Bifford posted:But that's what everybody else in this thread is doing! No, everyone else is treating the movie and the people who made it as if they're filmmakers who know what they're doing. When you see something in a movie you don't like, the correct response isn't "this is dumb here's how they should have done it", it should be "why did they do it that way?" The answer is pretty much never "because they're dumb and suck".
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Jan 26, 2014 23:47
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The 'this only happened because it's a movie and the hero has to be contrived to be a hero!' line of criticism sucks. It just sucks. I can't think of a witty joke - you went in to the theatre to watch a Superman movie in 2013. A fiction film with magic. About a pre-existing character. The plot is going to be contrived a little - but that only makes the little things shine all the brighter. Hoo boy, a scene in an oil rig where Clark saves someone. They're clearly just trying to make me 'empathise' with the 'protagonist' of the movie and make him look like the good guy. But why an oil rig? Why such an important image of modern consumerism? Was that all a complete accident by Goyer? And what movies don't consist of 'plot devices' in some sense or another? Baron Bifford, for my personal understanding, what did you want to see in the movie? I don't mean this condescendingly, I'd really like to know.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:21
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Probably a young Clark Kent using his bare hands to brutally murder a young Pete Ross.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:30
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OppyDoppyDopp posted:I don't think this take on America is entirely forward-looking. What happened to virtually all of the people who used to live in what is now called America? Is it a coincidence that Metropolis - a stand-in for New York, which was taken from its previous inhabitants and turned into one of the most artificial environments on Earth - is where Zod starts bulldozing? Heck, I don't even disagree that the film's Krypton is supposed to represent what a failed human race might eventually become, what I disagree with is that the film is taking any particular critical stance towards modern Earth civilization as it stands. Hbomberguy posted:If you missed the scene involving an oil rig with poorly-implemented safety features that almost kills a bunch of the people who work on it (a place poorly-run by the people in charge eventually exploding, does that remind you of a similar event earlier in the film?) and the numerous scenes where Superman refuses to obey the powers that be and actively subverts their attempts to monitor him, implying his attempts to 'change the world' don't equate to working with/fixing America's military-industrial complex, then maybe I would see your point. And even if we somehow infer that Clark is anti-military in some way, the film nonetheless depicts the American military as being forthright and competent at their jobs. Y'know, if you actually watch what happens in the film? We never see corruption in the ranks, we never see negligence, we never see acts or attitudes that might contribute to the breakdown of society; we just see a bunch of stalwart humans giving their all for their jobs, withom whom Clark couldn't have stopped the threat. This is in stark contrast to the Kryptonian military -- led by Zod -- that devolved into being a gang of war criminals due to their infighting and zealotry. If Clark is supposed to be against the American military as it was depicted in the film, then by the film's inherent story he's being awfully dense. Moreover, if Kryptonians murdering Americans is supposed to be subtext of the transformation of inferior American society into something more functional, what do we say about the fact that Superman is hellbent on stopping this transformation and ultimately decides to eradicate any possible means of this transformation? That sounds to me like Superman prefers the current system as it is. Yoshifan823 posted:You're assuming that you're smarter than the people making the movie. And if the film doesn't seem smart, well...
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Jan 27, 2014 01:27
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BrianWilly posted:You're assuming that the people making the movie are smart, and that's a bias in and of itself. All other things being equal, the intelligence of the film ought to speak for itself. A logical process would be "The film seems smart, therefore its creators must be smart," not "The creators must be smart, therefor the film seems smart." No, I'm assuming that they know what they're doing. As I've said, the people who are making the movie are making all of these choices, and they aren't just spur of the moment things, they put actual thought into them. The idea isn't to just assume that they're wrong because they don't make sense to you, the idea is to figure out why they were made in the first place. That's where actual thought about a movie comes from: "Why was this choice made?"
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Jan 27, 2014 01:30
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If Man of Steel portrayed corruption and negligence in the military, it'd be making a liberal, reformist point about a few bad apples, clear out the rot, etc. etc. The point is that a completely competent, on-point, and functioning military blows the living hell out of Smallville and Metropolis without having any power whatsoever to eliminate the real threat, because they are the real threat in embryonic form.
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Jan 27, 2014 02:04
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Based on what? What does the US military's inability to fight a superior force have to do with its comparability to that superior force, much less to do with its viability as an institution? If my army can't win your army then my whole society needs a hard disk reboot? The indigenous cultures of America were unable to handle the superior power of the European colonists...so if I make a movie about that, does that mean I'm saying Native American society was A) a larval version of colonial Europe and B) a negligent system that's better off with a redo? Of course not, that would be inane. You are literally suggesting that Man of Steel says the military is bad when it never says the military is bad because if the film did say that the military is bad then it wouldn't actually be saying that the military is bad. Like...to be sure, it's a step above the "It's bad writing if characters actually give opinions about things" and also "TIME TRAVELERS" arguments within this last page of crazy...but only just.
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Jan 27, 2014 07:26
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The film uses Skynet imagery to represent Krypton in the dream sequence. Skynet is very specifically a criticism of not just MIC corporations such as Cyberdyne, but Sarah Connor's wage slavery as a fast food waitress. Terminator is anticapitalist in general. This exact type of imagery appears throughout this film. The guy who's worked a decade at IHOP, and the drone takedown at the end, are two prominent examples among many. See the waitress harassed at the bar, the Wayne Industries satellite, the recurring oil and gas imagery.... Hell, just look at the fact that the film is blatantly about 9/11.
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Jan 27, 2014 07:49
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Yoshifan823 posted:You're assuming that you're smarter than the people making the movie. I stand by my position that Pa Kent's death scene was a misfire. I know I'm not alone in saying this. I suppose there could be some deeper philosophical subtext to the movie based on what Jor-El says to Kal-El, but it's hard for me to connect Krypton to modern America (I can foresee America having an energy crisis, but Krypton's caste-based genetically engineered society is unrecognizable). Y'know, whenever there's a dispute like this on SA I always feel it's good to dig up an interview with the filmmakers to learn what they intended. Here's one interview he did with Den of Geek!: quote:To me, that was interesting. I refer to Zod not as a villain, but as antagonist. His goals happen to be conflict with Kal's. But if you look at it from Zod's perspective, is he doing anything wrong? Look at what happened with the European settlers in America or Australia. They displaced and ultimately kind of committed genocide on the indigenous populations. And those who were against other human beings. Here's another interview, with Collider: quote:...one of the things that we tried to do was depict Krypton as a legitimately alien world. So we decided that on Krypton, aside from the fact that it’s got a different gravity, it’s got a different atmosphere than we do, it’s a mega gravity planet, so gravity there is anywhere from four to 10 times the gravity on earth. If we went to Krypton, we couldn’t breathe its atmosphere. The sun radiates in a different spectrum of light. Different radiation and things like that, a lot more UV radiation on Krypton. All these things come into play and they also explain why Superman has the powers that he has. But, we also decided that Krypton has a much more formalized and socially stratified society than we do. So we liken Krypton to if you’d taken feudal Japan, but they had never encountered the West and then continued on in that system for the next 150 years, that’s kind of what we imagined Krypton would be like. It’s very formalized. So Krypton was not an allegory for America and its possible fate but for feudal Japan - insular, rigid, decadent. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Jan 27, 2014 |
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Jan 27, 2014 11:30
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Krypton was inspired by feudal Japan, but it's an allegory of America, pointing out among other things that America uses economic class to create as rigid and stratified a society as feudal Japan's was.BrianWilly posted:Based on what? What does the US military's inability to fight a superior force have to do with its comparability to that superior force, much less to do with its viability as an institution? If my army can't win your army then my whole society needs a hard disk reboot? The indigenous cultures of America were unable to handle the superior power of the European colonists...so if I make a movie about that, does that mean I'm saying Native American society was A) a larval version of colonial Europe and B) a negligent system that's better off with a redo? Of course not, that would be inane. The funny thing here is that, apparently, the only possible critique of the military that you can conceive of is for individual members of the military to be portrayed as stupid, lazy, or corrupt. Man of Steel repeatedly shows the military uselessly causing massive amounts of collateral damage, but somehow no one cares - and this is a movie whose critics list as their principle complaint that the hero doesn't do enough to save civilians! People keep claiming that Superman carelessly and apathetically destroyed Metropolis, even though he did not do this and it was actually the U.S. and Kryptonian war machines that did, because they're totally blind to the idea that violence and injustice might be inherent and systemic rather than trivially-correctable flaws in the behavior of certain deficient individuals. Man of Steel draws extremely strong parallels between Krypton and America, and the Kryptonian military and the American military. Just as you say, there's absolutely nothing shameful about the U.S. planes and soldiers losing in a fight to the Krytponian planes and soldiers, because the Kryptonian force was a much more advanced version of the American force. They were able to interact and understand each other simply and clearly (witness the prisoner exchange and the rapport that develops between Faora and Law and Order SVU guy) and fight each other in a straightforward way that very logically results in the victory of the side with superior arms. The same thing happened with Superman and the Kryptonian soldiers - Superman was a worse fighter, and got his clock cleaned. His only advantage was his complete immersion in and acceptance of America's/Earth's actual environment/atmosphere/ideals. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Jan 27, 2014 |
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Jan 27, 2014 11:40
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Ferrinus posted:Krypton was inspired by feudal Japan, but it's an allegory of America, pointing out among other things that America uses economic class to create as rigid and stratified a society as feudal Japan's was. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Jan 27, 2014 |
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Jan 27, 2014 11:52
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Baron Bifford posted:This is rubbish. Read this little primer on feudal Japanese society and tell me if you still think it resembles America. He didn't say that though?
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Jan 27, 2014 12:13
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Baron Bifford posted:the terraforming machine is just a plot device to allow Superman to save the world. Thought experiment, Baron Bifford: What if Superman were 'contrived by the plot' to kill a very small puppy? He needs a villain, after all, and the villain is just a empty formal conceit. Why not a puppy? This question is 100% serious.
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Jan 27, 2014 12:51
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BrianWilly posted:And even if we somehow infer that Clark is anti-military in some way, the film nonetheless depicts the American military as being forthright and competent at their jobs. Y'know, if you actually watch what happens in the film? We never see corruption in the ranks, we never see negligence, we never see acts or attitudes that might contribute to the breakdown of society; we just see a bunch of stalwart humans giving their all for their jobs, withom whom Clark couldn't have stopped the threat. This is in stark contrast to the Kryptonian military -- led by Zod -- that devolved into being a gang of war criminals due to their infighting and zealotry. If Clark is supposed to be against the American military as it was depicted in the film, then by the film's inherent story he's being awfully dense. You are misinterpreting what I wrote. The military does a fine job - but their job is wrong. They arrest Superman as though he's some kind of criminal simply for existing, and they try to keep tabs on him when he clearly doesn't want anything to do with them - even though the film portrays the individuals in it as good people. Key film image: When the fine, upstanding military fires their missiles at the World Machine - but the machine's changes to gravity cause them to rain down on innocent citizens instead. This is a visual metaphor for a system failing to serve its intended purpose, much like an oil rig catching fire and exploding or an entire planet getting blown up. Those missiles were perfectly forthright and competent missiles, probably built by upstanding men and women in a finely-tuned, properly patriotic factory, and they exploded and killed innocent people in a satisfactory manner, but the problem is they were not a method of fighting the machine that is destroying the world, because that machine encompasses them. A stupid person would say 'so what, the military's evil because it doesn't have the right kind of missiles?' gently caress no, of course not. It's making a statement. Bear in mind that hack writer could've just made the machine simply immune to human weaponry, which would have very different connotations from it warping our weapons against our own people. Also I disagree about Zod. Zod's 'gang' follow his orders and work with him perfectly. They are like our military - doing what they are told to do. They are startlingly efficient at their jobs and willing to die for it 'a good death is it's own reward', etc. Remember when the military guy literally parrots that back at her? Do you see what the film might be saying about both respective militaries? I'll ask again: Baron Bifford, for my personal understanding, what did you want to see in the movie? I don't mean this condescendingly, I'd really like to know.
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Jan 27, 2014 12:57
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I want to see the Superman fights a puppy movie.
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Jan 27, 2014 13:36
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People like the dark knight so much because all the characters frequently sit down in a room together to explain precisely what they thematically represent. Man of Steel was just too subtle, you can't 'interpret' the film because the film didn't explicitly tell you that one character might be anarchy or whatever. The lesson is, all films should come with a preliminary class where the main characters explain what they represent and their themes directly to the viewer. And then Air Bud should fight Superman. Possible reboot-Beethoven teamup?
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Jan 27, 2014 14:05
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Thought experiment, Baron Bifford: Finally someone is interested in my Krypto Gets Rabies screenplay.
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Jan 27, 2014 16:35
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Baron Bifford posted:Well, I may have gone too far in calling David Goyer an outright hack - he is the guy who wrote The Dark Knight; but he's also the guy who wrote The Dark Knight Rises. I always felt many of his ideas were superficial and not properly developed. David Goyer had the most writing influence on Batman Begins and the least on TDKR, which was mostly Chris Nolan. This is from reading the scripts and my opinion on writing styles and comparing it to other things Goyer, Jon Nolan, and Chris Nolan wrote. Even still, TDKR is the most "properly developed" of the Batman movies, especially since it completely closes every theme and thread started in the other two movies (while at the same time, homaging every major interpretation of Batman there is). It's the most "dense" of the Batman movies, and has a lot more thematics that aren't directly spelled out as compared to the Dark Knight (ie. Bruce locking away his mother's pearls at the beginning as compared to Selena wearing them at the end), but it's also the tightest script of them all.
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Jan 27, 2014 16:49
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How many times has the puppy trained in 100x normal gravity?
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Jan 27, 2014 19:43
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What I'm hearing is that there's a version of this movie where Superman beat Pete Ross to death with his bare hands as a child and went on to face a deadly puppy. I want this movie.
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Jan 27, 2014 19:59
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Thought experiment, Baron Bifford: Great, you made me think of an old comedy bit on some cable game nerd channel where they did a low budget skit about Kratos from the God of War game going after the God of Chaos (the God of Chaos took the form of a puppy, but Kratos killed it any way).
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Jan 27, 2014 20:54
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If we're on Batman here, I kinda wanna float the thought that Superman's closest thematic cousin in the Nolan films is in fact the Joker. Superman coming back from some theoretically catastrophic future Earth has a fair amount of resonance with Joker's whole schtick about confronting people with the monstrosity inherent in their day-to-day lives. They strike me as two different approaches to the same problem. What's Joker's line in the interrogation room? "I'm not a monster, I'm just further ahead on the curve"? There's certainly overlap there.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:37
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Darko posted:David Goyer had the most writing influence on Batman Begins and the least on TDKR, which was mostly Chris Nolan. This is from reading the scripts and my opinion on writing styles and comparing it to other things Goyer, Jon Nolan, and Chris Nolan wrote. Goyer contributed to the story, but the screenplay was written by the Nolan brothers. Goyer knows a lot about comic books, but his scripts often feel like they need another draft. The Codex sounds like something you'd hear brought up as a dropped idea in a making-of featurette.
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Jan 29, 2014 06:47
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Toady posted:Goyer contributed to the story, but the screenplay was written by the Nolan brothers. Goyer knows a lot about comic books, but his scripts often feel like they need another draft. The Codex sounds like something you'd hear brought up as a dropped idea in a making-of featurette. Darko posted:Even still, TDKR is the most "properly developed" of the Batman movies, especially since it completely closes every theme and thread started in the other two movies (while at the same time, homaging every major interpretation of Batman there is). It's the most "dense" of the Batman movies, and has a lot more thematics that aren't directly spelled out as compared to the Dark Knight (ie. Bruce locking away his mother's pearls at the beginning as compared to Selena wearing them at the end), but it's also the tightest script of them all.
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Feb 1, 2014 16:37
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Goyers involvement in certain superhero movies has, I believe, brought us better superhero movies than what we would have got without his involvement... if that makes sense.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:00
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Timeless Appeal posted:Eh, I think you are being unfair to Goyer a bit. The dude understands structure really well. Batman Begins is a really tightly and smartly crafted script even if it's using Superman: The Motion Picture as a roadmap. It's just that it has awful dialogue. Let's not forget that Batman Begins involves a plot to vaporize the city's water supply with a giant microwave.
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Feb 3, 2014 07:58
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Toady posted:Let's not forget that Batman Begins involves a plot to vaporize the city's water supply with a giant microwave. Your argument is ridiculous. What other superhero film does not have a far fetched plot to destroy a city, country, the world etc...
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Feb 5, 2014 00:07
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:Your argument is ridiculous. What other superhero film does not have a far fetched plot to destroy a city, country, the world etc... Daredevil
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Feb 5, 2014 00:19
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Toady posted:Let's not forget that Batman Begins involves a plot to vaporize the city's water supply with a giant microwave.
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Feb 5, 2014 00:27
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Toady posted:Let's not forget that Batman Begins involves a plot to vaporize the city's water supply with a giant microwave. 
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