2 seconds later, the bungee cord tightened and Clark
went crashing back down.
While I usually try to get these reaction pieces up nice and quickly (well, quickly by my own hopeless standards, at any rate), Man of Steel - Warner Bros' latest attempt to prove they can do a successful superhero movie not about Batman - has been something of a stumbling block, thanks to a few factors. I couldn't see it until a few days after its UK theater debut, I was still fumbling through an attempted review of Fast & Furious 6 (probably gonna ditch that one - short version, it was silly and great fun, see it if you haven't) and there was no shortage of reviews from more official sources all over the net, many hitting in advance of release, to the point where I figured anyone who knows me could already guess what my opinion would be.
Nevertheless, I do want to get some thoughts on it down here, because it's one of the more 'important' films this summer. And in the name of variety, I'm also gonna throw in my 2 cents on the MoS tie-in game for iOS/Android devices after the film stuff. Who says I'm not good to you? (SPOILERS FOLLOW)
Try as he might, Superman just couldn't remember how
he'd got so drunk the night before.
The Plot: Many years ago, on the distant planet of Krypton, catastrophe approaches. Warrior-cum-scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe), his predictions laughed at by the high council, arranges to have his son Kal - the first natural-born child after centuries of selective DNA grooming - launched toward a far-flung habitable world, mere days before Krypton meets its violent end.
The infant Kal-El lands on Earth and is adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), taking the name Clark. After spending much of his life hiding his true nature from all around him, Clark - now an adult (Henry Cavill) - is fixated on tracking down clues as to his origins, eventually leading him to a long-abandoned spacecraft in the Arctic. Alas, while this ship provides him with plenty of closure, its activation sends a homing signal to another surviving group of Kryptonians led by supreme military leader General Zod (Michael Shannon), who descend on Earth with less than noble intent. Will the freshly-anointed Superman rise to the challenge and save us all?
Brother-Chaplain Levicus of the Blood Ravens 3rd company, reporting for duty!
Or maybe Zod. I don't know.
The Good: A big problem with the past Superman films is that, even after Richard Donner and his cohorts left the series, the subsequent filmmakers for whatever reason felt obliged to stick with their aesthetic and 'vision' for the main elements of the Superman mythos. While this is fine as far as Metropolis architecture being very much stuck in the '30s goes, eventually one tires of everything on Krypton being assembled from crystals and whatnot. Man of Steel thankfully ditches that schtick, and while I can't say I like everything about the new look, props for at least trying. What really works is Krypton, in the 15 or so minutes we see it: no longer a huge snowball floating in space, but a fully-realised Star Wars-esque world with a definite split between rural landmasses and grandiose future cities, and loaded with all manner of weird and wonderful technology. Do I understand why it's all there? No, and some of it strikes me as wacky for the sake of wackiness (see the Krypto-embryos floating in Matrix machines drawing knowledge from a crystal skull or something) but it's a real visual delight that only gets better when Jor-El summons a goddamn dragon to evade a bunch of Zod's UFOs. Aside from the establishing shots of Asgard in Thor, this is as close as we've ever come to a full-on recreation of classic Golden/Silver-Age comic panels, and I love it.
Speaking of things being lifted straight from the comics, Man of Steel does, as promised, deliver the first really convincing examples of Superman fighting seen outside of DC's well-received animated features, and taken out of context they're delightful, channeling Dragon Ball Z and similar anime fare and just letting a handful of invincible people smash into each other like titanium conkers, ricocheting back and forth, sending heat rays, girders and leftover train carriages flying at will. I've not been a huge fan of director Zack Snyder's past works (Watchmen was alright and, realistically, probably couldn't be any better than that; his other stuff's a bit bleh) but if there was one thing I figured he'd get right on this project, it was the action, and he did. The man just has a very natural eye for keeping everything on-screen legible to the audience even when everything's moving at breakneck speeds, and that's invaluable here (and if he does get the Justice League job, it's good news for the Flash).
In what is becoming a (pleasant) recurring trend for superhero flicks, the cast are almost entirely great. Time will tell whether or not Henry Cavill will be able to stand equal to Christopher Reeve's legacy, but for now he cuts a great figure as Superman, powerful but never imposing, and handles the story's many scenes of existential brooding without going over-the-top and dragging things down into that bog of misery that choked the life out of The Dark Knight Rises. Russell Crowe is not an actor I have ever enjoyed (there's just something in his voice and bearing that irritates me) but he's not so bad here, partly because, y'know, he rides a goddamn dragon. I can't hate that even if I tried. There's also something inherently hilarious in his latter appearances as a hologram projected by the spaceship serving as an ersatz Fortress of Solitude, as he pops in and out of existence instantaneously, like a bearded, berobed Jiminy Cricket. Kevin Costner's turn as Pa Kent is predictable stuff leading up to his 'Uncle Ben moment' but he's exactly the right sort of guy to play this kind of generic American ideal of fatherhood, and Diane Lane is equally great as the motherly counterpoint to that.
"Are you gonna sit there mopin' all day, son, or are you gonna
help yore daddy build his goddamn baseball field?"
PARENTING!
The villain side is arguably where the film shines the most, though. One of the smartest touches in the script is the idea that all Kryptonians are engineered from birth to excel at one particular task, so one destined to be a soldier has an ingrained knowledge of martial skill and the chain of command but lacks the moral fibre to be affected by the plight of anyone other than their comrades and the population they defend. This serves to both let the audience feel some measure of understanding or pathos for the errant Kryptonians, and also allows General Zod to be the same sort of 2-dimensional evil-o-gram he's been immortalised as for decades without it feeling like a cheat or a let-down. Of course, this would be pointless if the character wasn't played in an enjoyable way, but luckily Michael Shannon hits exactly the right notes, chewing the scenery whenever he can get away with it while preserving a sense of manic desperation that makes Zod almost a pitiable creature. This incarnation absolutely holds its own before the long shadow cast by Terence Stamp, although it's kind of a shame that Shannon doesn't get to say the line. Trust me, he is more than batshit insane enough to pull it off. Then there's Faora, played by Antje Traue in her second English-language role (the first was the rather cool scifi-horror Pandorum). Faora is basically everything I like to see in a henchman/woman kind of villain: subservient without being a boring drone, possessing her own distinct characteristics separate from Zod, given enough screentime to feel important without slowing the film down with backstory for a secondary character. She's also one of rare few costumed females in recent superhero movies to have actual physical power - I don't know if there's an intentional trend toward this or not, but 90% of the time superheroines or girl-villains get stuck being non-powered ninja types or using a relatively wishy-washy, intangible power like telepathy. Look, sometimes I just wanna see a badass chick throw a car at someone's face, if that's wrong lock me up. Anyway, Traue fills the role out perfectly, her unconventional beauty and ice-cold stare complimenting the inherent mercilessness of this most punchiest of femme-fatales.
And, as ever, much props are due to the effects department for a metric ton of very good work. This is unsurprisingly a greenscreen-heavy production, to say nothing of all the heat rays, flying cars, flying trains and flying people (and yup, that goddamn dragon) zipping about, and once more nothing really struck me as 'fake' or cartoonish, save perhaps for the way Supes and the other Kryptonians move during their fights, but I imagine that's unavoidable when dealing with characters with such insanely amplified physicality. So yes, much love, tech boys and girls.
Faora was not going to fall for the 'it's behind you' ruse EVER AGAIN.
The Bad: Pacing. Man of Steel follows much the same pattern as Transformers: Dark of the Moon, in that it leads with 90 minutes of character building and plot development (well, okay, Transformers had neither of these things, but it was SUPPOSED to...) before heading into an hour of pure action climax. On paper, that's not such a bad idea, but in reality, both films left me numb in short order. There's an upper limit to just how much sound and fury the mind can handle without a breather, and Man of Steel just doesn't know when to stop - however much credit I have already given for the conception of the super-fights, the fact is I had already had my fill by the time the first one ended, and after that there's still another 2 massive action scenes, one after another, to sit through. There are only so many times invincible people can hit one another through things before you realise it's all a bit pointless since nobody is actually getting hurt in these fights. Superman grinds Zod's face off the side of a skyscraper and Zod doesn't react. Zod tackles Superman through a satellite and Superman barely grunts in surprise. It's like watching John Cena wrestle John Cena in a Last Man Standing match. Doesn't matter what moves they do, how many tables get broken, how many chairs are swung, they're just gonna keep beating the count every time until the end of the universe. Or until someone steps over the line (we will get to that later).
Then there's the tone, which was probably an unavoidable pothole. Because Christopher Nolan's Batman films have made so much money (and Green Lantern was a bomb), Warner Bros. seem to believe that his chosen approach is the only one that works where cinematic adaptations of DC properties are concerned. This, frankly, is the worst kind of executive logic, and Man of Steel in a just world would be proof of its idiocy. The whole film is just dull and joyless, with Snyder opting for a slightly-wobbly handheld shooting style and washed-out colour palette that calls to mind a documentary rather than a fantasy film, and the script by David Goyer point-blank refusing to indulge whimsy or happiness or humour in any but the most base of fashions. This might work for Batman, but only because Batman is frequently a miserable git. But Superman? The big blue boyscout? No. As a result, whenever the film tries to, say, go for a happy ending or bring up that "the 'S' is for Hope" spiel, it falls on its face and comes off as disingenuous. There is no Hope here, only varying degrees of despair.
Deadliest Catch: much less deadly when you can shoot fire from your eyes.
Thematically, the film's a mess. The reason behind that whole genetic-engineering business on Krypton (which, as I said, I'm not mad at itself - works wonders for the baddies, and it's an interesting concept) is to set up a 'choice versus fate' debate, with the film obviously making the former the good option; so in theory, Superman defeats Zod because he has the freedom to be a better man while Zod is stuck being the only thing he can be. That's fine, except it requires Superman to actually decide things for himself. As it stands, he basically just does what people tell him to do. Pa Kent tells him to hide his gifts from the world, and Clark does so. Pa tells Clark not to save him even when he easily could, so Clark doesn't. Hologram Jor-El tells Clark to be Superman, so Clark puts a cape on. Even the one moment that should be a no-brainer for Superman - when Zod tells him to surrender himself or Earth will suffer - requires Clark to go to a church (?) and get a random priest (???) to tell him that he probably should, in fact, do the thing that won't necessarily get millions of people killed. Doing what you're told isn't choice, it's duty, and in that sense Superman and Zod have the same driving force behind them, and the only thing that makes Superman better is...what? His cape's red not black?
Then of course, there's the destruction level, or rather the presentation of it. No, I wasn't going into the movie under the illusion that, as Superman collided with the similarly-powered Zod and his minions, there wouldn't be any collateral damage. What I wasn't prepared for was the sheer scale, nor how it would affect me. This is another issue with that pesky tone business; in a more lighthearted movie I could wave off the massive casualties without a care (heck, G.I. Joe 2 wiped greater London out of existence and my reaction was limited to 'whoa, nice effect bro'), but when everything is so dull - and when we zoom in among the wreckage for scenes of panicky folks covered in 9/11-referencing ash fleeing for their lives - it gets to me, and I can't help but ask why I'm being forced to see and think about this in a sodding Superman movie? Superman should save everyone. He has the power to do so. That's basically the whole point of him. Instead, the film drags him off halfway around the world while Zod's wacky flying claw obliterates most of midtown Metropolis during business hours...and once Superman gets back, he decides to have his punch-up with Zod around and through whatever buildings are left standing, where people are still visible crowding the streets! Why are you making Superman look like a menace to society, movie? WHY?
(Also, when Clark returns to the city a matter of days after the battle, all the buildings are back up and there's no rubble anywhere - did he help fix it? 'Cause I would've liked to have, y'know, SEEN that)
This represents less than 0.5% of the total carnage in Man of Steel.
Couldn't be more carnage if the actual Spider-Man villain called Carnage was in it.
All of this leads up to Superman breaking Zod's neck. This...this did not make me scream out loud, as I half expected it to. Frankly, I was so sick of all the destruction and the overlong fight scene that I was just glad to be past it. However, that doesn't change the fact that making Superman personally kill someone - and having him win by killing someone - is just about the worst thing anyone could ever do to this character. This is even worse than Brandon Routh's Superman spying on Lois Lane in the privacy of her own home with his x-ray vision and never telling her (and that was awful). Quite apart from the fact that the only way a character with Superman's level of power at hand can be a reassuring presence as opposed to bloody terrifying is the typical dedication to preserving all life (no matter whose it is), by killing Zod, Superman lets Zod win. Seriously. Earlier in their fight, Zod says, "This only ends one way - you die, or I die." Ignoring that that's actually two ways, by killing Zod instead of finding another way, Superman proves him right. More broadly, Zod has been blaming much of his bad luck in the film on Jor-El, for various reasons; even after killing him, Zod is still pissed off at the guy's memory. What better revenge, then, than to spoil the image of the son that is Jor-El's legacy? Zod may have died but he's laughing beyond the grave.
Oh, since I mentioned her, you may be wondering where Lois Lane is in this film. Well, she is certainly in it. She just does nothing worthy of note. This is especially disappointing when you consider it's Amy Adams in the role, who is of course a fantastic actress deserving of a respectable appearance. But while there's little that's degrading or offensive about the part (she does need to be 'saved' by Superman a bunch but that's to be expected), the idea of a modern, 'capable' Lois goes out the window pretty quickly, as her initial proactive search for the then-unknown Clark gets shafted as soon as Zod and his cohorts show up, and from that moment on Lois is either simply being dragged around by the various super-people with no say in the matter, or becomes just another face in the crowd along with Perry White (Laurence Fishburne in an even less rewarding role).
Bonus bad: Not bothering to call him 'Superman' by name until the last 20 minutes or so, then giving the name an 'urgh, really?' eye-rolling reaction like it's the dumbest thing ever. If you think Superman is a dumb name, pro tip - do not make a fucking Superman movie.
Bonus bonus bad: The scene with Superman dumping a broken spy drone in front of the army officer and essentially telling him "it's my way or the highway now". Because I really needed another moment of Supes acting like a dick after the Metropolis battle. Thanks much.
Things That Would Make This Film Better #1:
Force Michael Shannon to keep making this face in all his scenes.
The Verdict: If you went back in time to witness its initial conception, you'd probably find plenty of evidence that Man of Steel was gonna turn out to be a great Superman movie. Many of the basic ingredients are there. The cast is fantastic, the director is a bold and smart choice, he's paired with writers who have plenty of superhero experience and enough talent in the art pool to make that big budget stretch to unimaginable wonders. But somewhere along the line it all turned sour, as if someone decided that, no, actually, we don't like Superman and we are only making a film about him under duress. And because they couldn't get out of their contracts, they decided to effectively ruin the new franchise before it even figured out how to stand on its own legs. At time of writing, Man of Steel has made a ton of money and has at least one sequel getting fast-tracked (or however fast a DC movie can be tracked - WB is not good at this), but I've honestly no idea how they can proceed with this version of Superman, short of pulling a G.I. Joe-style semi-reboot and basically ignoring all the stupid or counter-productive things that happened in this one. I'm giving it a 5 out of 10 against better judgement; there's still a lot of moments that I love in the movie, but there's just as much filth being smeared over the icon at its heart and that pisses me off to no end.
~+~
And now, a game!
Heartburn. Fnar har har.
Man of Steel: The Official Game.
Released June 2013.
Published by Warner Bros. Games.
Developed by Phosphor Games Studio.
Available on iOS and Android devices.
Version played: Android (Kindle Fire tablet)
Going mobile seems to be an increasingly popular trend for licensed games. I imagine this is partly down to the reduced cost inherent to less-demanding systems, though the success of this model is probably down to the type of people who are easily suckered into buying a game purely because it's based on a film they've heard of are also the type of people who don't discriminate between different consoles or formats - for them, a game is just a game, not an obsession or lifestyle.
...that was lot of unrelated prattling, wasn't it? Sorry.
Anyway, Man of Steel: The Official Game is a beat-em-up, which isn't surprising given the focus of most of the film's action. You play as Superman (derrrrrr) and take on the Kryptonian assault troops of General Zod one at a time, using various touch controls to dish out super-knockouts. Swipe back and forth for basic punches, tap and hold on Superman to block, do the same just as an enemy attacks for a parry, make a 'pinch' motion with two fingers to try and grab a block-happy enemy, and tap the relevant on-screen icons to dodge to the left or right, or use your super-speed and heat vision special moves that charge up over time. In addition to health bars, each enemy also has a second meter that depletes after each successful hit, grapple or parry on your part; it recharges if they land a hit on you, but if you deplete it all the way their guard breaks and your next punch will knock them back into the scenery for additional damage. If you're aiming in the right direction, this can also cause a level transition, with Superman punching his foe so hard they land a few blocks away from where they started. It's pretty satisfying, yes.
"What you call an ambulance, I call a target!"
Game Superman's morals aren't much better than Movie Superman's, sadly.
The game features a longish Story mode as well as a more straightforward Survival mode. In Story, the narrative is handled by motion comic cutscenes narrated by Jor-El (read: a voice actor who sounds nothing like Russell Crowe) with a rather cartoonish, exaggerated art style that's not much in keeping with the film but is pleasing to the eye in its own right. There's 16 stages to work your way through, each with its own mix of threats, and along the way you'll fight Zod, Faora, and a few other unique Kryptonians who went unnamed in the film in addition to plenty of generic trooper types. And a few robots which are just plain weird. The difficulty curve is generally handled well, save for one huge upward spike when you take on a tall guy called Nam-Ek (mistyped as 'Namek' in my copy of the game - I choose to believe it's actually King Piccolo from DBZ cosplaying as a Space Jockey) who is an OP bastard. I did eventually beat him, but...well, that leads to another thing I'll save for a fresh paragraph. Survival mode operates on the same principles as it does in Tekken and the like: an endless parade of opponents, see how many you can beat with one health bar. The game mixes up the enemy types seemingly at random so you're always on your toes.
Presentation-wise, the game's not bad. The menus are simplistic but are easily navigated. The in-game graphics are rendered by a version of the Unreal Tournament engine, which lends the environments a hefty draw distance and throws out a lot of polygons and nice animations...probably a little too much, actually. The framerate stutters pretty often on my copy, and the Kindle Fire isn't exactly underpowered, so heaven knows what kind of portable beast of a machine you'd need to get MoS The Game to run totally smoothly. Artistically speaking, the game has a few more colours than its inspiration but the urban settings do lean too heavily on the brown end of the spectrum for my liking.
If this guy has four glowy things on his chest, does that make him
four times as strong as Iron Man? Watch out, Supes!
While the game handles well enough, it does continually brush up against the primary drawback of many iOS games - namely, there's only so much you can do with one touchscreen for input. While it's fine with basic punches, the difference between blocking and parrying (something that's crucial to beating the tougher enemies) is hard for the game to discern, and the 'pinch' motion needed to use a grab is nearly impossible to pull off regularly. I wish I had a solution to these issues, but what can you do, really, save for trying to develop the game on a format that has actual buttons and run the risk of massively inflated production costs?
The game also features XP-hoarding that can be used to upgrade Superman's many stats, plus collectable keys that open up alternate outfits. The outfits, alas, are all designs of other characters from the film, and are 90% ugly, overcomplicated messes; a few comic-inspired suits wouldn't go amiss here, guys. Of course, getting enough XP to beef up Superman for the harder missions (see Nam-Ek) will take a very long time, provided you don't splash some extra cash for buying points in bulk. Now...while I get why premium content like that exists in Tekken Revolution and other assorted free-to-play games, MoS: The Game is NOT free. I think it was at least £3.99, which admittedly isn't much but it comparable to most other mobile games, so I don't know what excuse the publishers have for trying to wangle even more cash out of gamers' pockets. Bottom line, I should not have felt like I had to do that.
Nevertheless, I'm quite enjoying MoS: The Game. Much like its inspiration it's riddled with flaws, but I think the genuinely fun core gameplay overcomes them, and it's still simple enough to be a fun distraction that doesn't demand hours of attention to be rewarding, like all good mobile games should be. Call it a 7 out of 10. Not really flying high, but leaping a few good-sized buildings nonetheless.
~+~
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