Seven years ago, I came back from an opening night screening of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, grinning from ear to ear over the movie I had just watched. Having grown up on Richard Donner’s original Superman: The Movie, Singer’s love letter to that film was heartfelt and beautiful. Sure, as a longtime fan of the comics, there are elements of the modern comic book mythology I wanted to see on film, but at the same time, it was nice to have the “Donner-verse”- for lack of a better word- get a more proper closure than the abysmal Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. But despite my sincere enjoyment of that movie…even as I watched it, I knew deep down that this was the absolute wrong way to re-launch this franchise. You don’t make a sequel to a movie twenty-five years after the fact, especially to a movie that not everyone in the movie going audience has seen. And yes, I know Star Wars did it, as did Sam Raimi with his recent Oz movie. I’d say Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz are maybe the only “old” movies that still have the same cultural currency with today’s kids as when they were originally released. Richard Donner’s Superman isn’t in the same league, sad to say. This generation needed their own Superman, and they got yesterday’s Superman instead.
Well, the Millennials finally have their Last Son of Krypton with the release of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. As I did several years ago, I left the theater grinning from ear to ear, although this time, flaws and all, I feel this is how you reboot a character for a whole new generation. Whatever flaws the movie might have, director Zack Snyder, writer David Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan have succeeded in making Superman cool again.
The Good Stuff
Henry Cavill as Superman
Although he’s not a man of many words in this film, Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent is the definition of stoic hero. When he first appears in this movie, he’s already a hero in fact, helping people who need it wherever he goes, just on the “down low,” as they say. He’s simply not a public figure wearing a cape, but he is no less of a hero from the moment we first see him onscreen. Despite what some people might say, this isn’t “emo Superman,” wondering whether he should be helping people in need; helping those in need is just something he just does,because he’s the only one who can. His only struggle is with whether or not he should let the world know who he really is, but once Zod appears and takes that choice away from him, he steps up to the plate. Cavill might not have the wink-wink-nudge-nudge almost camp quality of Christopher Reeve, but that version was simply for another era. Brandon Routh was just doing a Reeve impression (although a very good one) and Tom Welling spent ten years watching practically every character in the DC Universe put on a costume and become a superhero before he finally did. But Henry Cavill is finally a true Superman for this generation. Also, it should be noted, he is spectacularly hot.
Amy Adams as Lois Lane
I’m gonna go right ahead and say it–Amy Adams is probably the best Lois Lane yet portrayed in live action (sorry Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher and whatshername from Smallville.) The Lois Lane we get in Man of Steel is anything but a damsel in distress, just waiting to be captured by some villain, or just a googly-eyed lovesick woman. Sure, previous Superman films told us she was a great journalist, a Pulitzer prize winner even, but we never saw her going after a story really. Amy Adams’ version of Lois is on to a huge story from the moment we meet her in this movie, and isn’t letting anyone get in her way. It just so happens that the story she is after turns out to be Superman himself. Of course she gets herself into danger, she’s Lois Lane, but she never once feels like a victim. If I have one quibble about this version of Lois, is that Amy Adams kept her signature red hair. She’s getting paid a lot of money for this part, she could at least dye her hair, since Lois Lane is a pretty famous brunette character. But it’s a minor quibble, and I’ll gladly take a redheaded Lois Lane if she’s portrayed as well as she is in this movie. This is probably the most feminist friendly version of Lois we’ve yet seen in film, and it’s about damn time.
But it’s not just the two leads who do stellar work here–Russell Crowe’s Jor-El is great, and unlike Marlon Brando, his “ghost” isn’t just a talking head, he is a crucial part of the action. Kevin Costner and Diana Lane are equally perfect as Ma & Pa Kent, given far more to do character-wise than their counterparts were given back in the 1978 film. And Michael Shannon is a totally different Zod than Terence Stamp played, but no less wonderful. And although Laurence Fishburne doesn’t have a huge part as Perry White, he comes off as more of an actual character this time and not just as a stereotype of the angry, demanding boss he was in the past.
The Action
Without a doubt, Man of Steel has the best superhero action in any movie of its kind to date. (Almost too much to be honest.) The action is relentless, brutal even, and spectacularly rendered by the effects artists. The destruction brought upon by General Zod on Metropolis is the equivalent of twenty 9-11’s. Sure, so was the finale to The Avengers, but director Zack Snyder here really shows us the real terror on the regular human populace, particularly in one scene where a Daily Planet employee is trapped under some rubble, hanging on to dear life as destruction rains down on the city, We see candlelight vigils for the fallen at the end of The Avengers, true…but we never really get the sense of just how horrible an alien invasion like this would really be for those trapped below, with city blocks just wiped out and left to ash. The filmmakers don’t flinch, although they stop short of showing actual gore and bodies. This is still PG-13 after all.
And then, there’s the fight scenes. Oh man, are there fight scenes. For comic book fans like me, this movie is like finally getting to see Superman unleashed in live action for the very first time, fighting villains who are his true equal and not just lifting heavy objects and saving people from disaster. It is a comic book geek’s dream come true. This is the Superman every kid imagines they are when they put a towel around their necks and run around the back yard, the one seen in comics and cartoons. Frankly, the one who kicks serious ass.
The Adherence to Modern Comic Book Mythology
One constant that keeps turning up in the more negative reviews of Man of Steel is how this isn’t “really Superman,” or “this isn’t any Superman I know.” It seems that for a majority of critics, especially all the ones over a certain age, it is pretty clear the only Superman they really know is the Christopher Reeve version from the old movies, and not much else. The Donner/Reeve version has cast a very long shadow over the Superman mythos ever since that first film was released; obviously Superman Returns was pretty much a straight up sequel to those movies, and both the Lois and Clark and Smallville television series took tons of cues from the Donner films, right on down to that last shot of Tom Welling on Smallville opening up his shirt to the tune of John William’s iconic theme. But the truth is, the comic book lore has changed a lot since the days of the original movies, and it is great to see a version come to life on the big screen that reflects them, even if only in part.
Being a comic book writer himself, screenwriter David S. Goyer knew exactly which of the modern iterations of Superman to use as inspiration, instead of going back to the old days of the forties, fifties and sixties versions of Superman. Much like he did with The Dark Knight trilogy, Goyer looked to the modern stories of the character instead. The idea of a Krypton with a genetics-based caste system comes from John Byrne’s 1986 reboot of the character (also called Man of Steel.) Much of the look and design of Krypton, as well as the notion that the S symbol means “hope” in Kryptonian, comes from Mark Waid’s series Superman: Birthright. The reveal from Pa Kent to Clark about his alien heritage, one of the best emotional beats of the movie, is lifted directly from Geoff Johns’ Superman: Secret Origin. And Jor-El’s speech to Clark about humanity? Lifted straight from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, arguably the greatest Superman story of the last several decades. In short, David Goyer did his homework, and finally gave fans a Superman not rooted in the now distant era of the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics, but in the comics of the modern era. And it is long overdue.
The Bad Stuff
As much as I’ve been heaping praise on this movie, it has some real, basic problems that keep it from being truly great. Chief among those problems is the non-stop A.D.D-ness of it all. Director Zack Snyder barely ever lets his movie slow down for even a moment, and the pacing of this movie is nothing short of relentless; it steamrolls over you and barely gives you a moment to come up for air and breathe. Seemingly as a response to the glacial pacing and retro, romantic vibe of Superman Returns, which most fans hated, this movie is nearly constant action. Barely a few minutes go by before we go from one action scene to the next. In short, they overdid it, and as spectacular as those action scenes are. I could have taken one or two out, or at least trimmed them down in exchange for some more character moments, particularly between Lois Lane and Clark Kent. And although Hans Zimmer’s score is fine, occasionally more than just fine in fact, it still can’t hold a candle to John William’s classic Superman score, maybe the one part of that film that hasn’t dated in the slightest. While I totally agree with the choice to go for a totally new theme, simply to differentiate this movie from the last, nevertheless it should at least be somewhat as memorable, and it simply isn’t.
Final Verdict
Man of Steel isn’t a perfect movie by any stretch, and it’s probably not even in the top five superhero movies ever made for that matter. It lacks the gravitas of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies (Goyer did a better job on the script level on those movies as well, although he had help from Jonathan Nolan. He might wanna call him up for Man of Steel 2.) It doesn’t have the strong characterization and excellent dialogue of Joss Whedon’s Avengers or the first Iron Man. But it is easily on par or surpasses Marvel’s Thor or Captain America, just for sheer epic scale and spectacle alone. And in the end, that is what Superman, the world’s first superhero, needs to be: Epic. Unlike Superman Returns, I couldn’t take someone like my mom to see this movie. She’d feel overwhelmed by the CGI carnage and relentless, modern A.D.D. pacing. But this Superman isn’t for my mom’s generation, or even mine (your humble author here is approaching forty.) This Superman is for the Xbox generation, and it is high time they had a version of this mythology to call their own.
Final Score: 4 out of 5