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I didn't like Man of Steel. Its annoying, because I did like bits of Man of Steel, and I would've liked to have seen the film that the trailer promised me, but I didn't get that film. The film does have some really good moments. The flashback scenes with Clark, especially when he's left Smallville and is roaming around the world, are some of the best bits of the movie and show him as someone who's struggling with the alienation of having superpowers but still wants to help other people with them. There's some really interesting stuff as he's growing up and how developing these powers is scaring people that ties in really nicely with how scared of Superman people are in the main story. The film has really strong moments right the way through to him putting on a superman suit and fighting the other Kryptonians in Smallville where we see him struggling to actually fight people as strong as he is, trying to save people who are terrified of him and some really nice action sequences. The film takes a sharp nose dive from pretty much the end of that fight and onward, but before I talk about that I'd like to mention how disjointed this film is and how much it hurts it. The flashbacks with a younger Clark do a lot to flesh him out into a more complete character, but we get them woefully late in the movie. He makes the jump from Clark Kent to Superman, from hiding from others and being this ambiguous, quiet figure to the much more clean cut Superman pretty loving instantaneously, getting a pep talk from his alien dad Jor-El and a complimentary superman suit and then suddenly he's acting completely differently - he's much more like the old charming Christopher Reeve superman when he's talking to the military than he ever was talking to Lois Lane or Jor-El before he put on the suit, and that very jarring change is only smoothed over afterwards as we learn more about him when he was a kid. This isn't just superman's problem either, the key plot with General Zod and his very character is changed from more of a straight villain to a tragic figure in some lines he delivers after the entire plot was resolved, lines that should really have come much earlier in the film. Lois Lane is in this film too as a very competent reporter who after being a pretty cool character in the first half of the film and trying to track down the wandering Clark Kent is sidelined into being a really boring love interest who does nothing that is not laser-focused toward putting her into situations that Superman can save her from, plausibility be damned. The romance between her and Superman also falls pretty flat because they barely spend any time together or develop any chemistry. Sure Lois might have a crush on the dude that keeps on saving her, but what does Superman see in a woman that he's barely spent any time around? Anyway after Superman fights a bunch of kryptonians in Smallville we're treated to about forty minutes of uninterrupted action scene that had me wishing for the end credits. Superman fights a bunch of CGI tentacles with absolutely zero suspense because of course he's not gonna lose in a fight to a bunch of loving cgi robot tentacles, c'mon, and follows it up with another equally long action sequence of punching invincible people through buildings with absolutely no visible damage done to either dude, until suddenly one of them wins the fight even though they weren't strong enough to hurt each other before. It's really loving boring and as you've probably already heard, they destroy most of Metropolis and probably kill a whole ton of people even though Superman could totally fly away from the city to anywhere else and avoid the ridiculous collateral damage. It's a film that tries to say interesting things about what being a superhuman might actually mean in the real world and how scary some people would find you if you were, but its ruined by (I'm hedging a guess on who to blame here but I think I'm pretty close) Zach Snyder's almost fetishistic addiction to explosions and enormous action setpieces, as well as its disjointed story issues. People try to criticise the bad press for this film by saying that people hate it because it isn't the superman they're familiar with from their childhood or their comic books, but this film is bad for a bunch of very good reasons. I'd love to see a director's cut of this film, on the condition that its done by a different director to the one that hosed it up in the first place. Maybe Richard Donner, if he feels up to it. 2.5/5, although just on how ridiculously boring the ending was I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Red Bones fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 11:58
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 07:44 |
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