The Modern Day Superman In Film Review Series - The Inevitable Comparison

Written In April 2014

Now let’s get into the basic criteria, I’ll be grading these movies by:

1. General Plot Development And Overall Simplicity In Story Telling
2. Quality Of The Action
3. Best Superman
4. Best Lois Lane
5. Best Villain
6. Best Supporting Cast
7. Who Told The Story Best

So, Khan, my dear friend, if you would please.

Plot Development And Story Telling Simplicity

This part’s easy. I can pretty much tell you what Man of Steel is about in one sentence without actually mentioning anything about Superman; “Two members of a dying alien race are forced into conflict over the future of Earth with one ultimately being forced to kill the other to protect this planet." Can I do the same with Superman Returns? Not really. "An alien traveler returns to earth after having left five years earlier in order to see if his home planet was truly gone. Meanwhile, his human partner has moved on from him and his old enemy has come out of hiding in order to seek a new way to cause chaos. The traveler hopes to rekindle his old love affair but finds that he can’t do to her being committed to another man. However, when the traveler’s former lover and her new family are placed in jeopardy, the traveler must sacrifice himself to save them. But the traveler is inexplicably saved by his old flame and finds that his former partner’s child is his own, and so then promises to never abandon his new home.” It may seem like I’m making Returns more complicated than it is, but that’s really the best I could actually some it up. That’s not to say that complicated stories are a bad thing, but a simple story to tell usually works best in Superhero, Scifi, Action, and Fantasy based movies. Now this again doesn’t apply to all movies of that genre, The Lord of the Rings films have multiple subplots and side storylines going at the same time as the main plot which is to get this one object back to the place it was created at so it can be destroyed. But the thing there is, those films, while they work fine on their own, they work best as three parts of one whole movie. There’s a film like Star Trek II: The Wrath of KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!

I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that. There’s a film like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, that is a fairly complicated film. It’s a movie about hate, revenge, life and death, youth, age, hope, gay aliens, etc. All of these themes are present in one movie alone, but the movie primarily focuses on two characters only. William Shatner’s Admiral James T. Kirk and Ricardo Montabalhan’s Khan Noonien Singh. This movie tries to focus on four characters. Lex Luthor, Superman-The Superhero, Superman-The Creepy Ex-Boyfriend, and Clark Kent. And then it tries to give a smaller amount of attention to Lois’s current beau and their kid. Singer, there are two things people hate when it comes to fiction. Kids and Love Triangles. You’ve unknowingly given everyone who was interested in seeing this movie the bird by giving us this.

Man of Steel however, while an origin story, only ever shows things that are integral to the plot or the development of the characters. We see Clark before he becomes Superman working at a Canadian bar. Why? Because it’s here we see A. This Clark Kent cares a great deal about people. When a female coworker is being harassed by some douche, he tells him to knock it off or he’s going to have him leave. And B. It sets up the next scene where we meet Lois and Clark finds out who he really is. Everything is shown with deliberate intentions.

While with Superman Returns, you can tell that Bryan Singer and the writers thought that certain ideas could be really cool, but had no idea how to correctly execute them. “Let’s give Superman an illegitimate son! A lot more people these days are having children out of wedlock than they were in the late 70s and early 80s, maybe this will make Superman more relatable to modern audiences!” Except you’re forgetting that Lois has no idea she ever slept with Superman, you idiots! You’ve basically made Superman not only a stalker ex-boyfriend AND a deadbeat dad, you’ve made it so that he’s an implied rapist!

So yeah, like I said. Easy answer, MOS told it’s story much better.

Quality Of The Action

Well again, that’s an easy question. Man of Steel was done by an action director! I mean Singer’s done great action before, like I said in my Superman Returns review, X2: X-Men United has some of the best action I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie. It’s intense, it’s kinetic, it’s well choreographed, it’s well acted, the stakes are high

And this is 2006, we are not before the time when CG can create intense and exciting action sequences. We are three years after the Return of the King, two years after Spider-Man 2, one year after Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and a year after this we’ll be given Transformers, Zack Snyder’s 300, Spider-Man 3, and Die Hard 4! You can make great action sequences with CGI!

And yet, pretty much all this Superman was relegated to was stopping bullets and catching or lifting heavy things. And in one scene, he outright takes a beating from Lex when exposed to massive amounts of Kryptonite. Singer, I understand that you wanted to make Lex the villain and so you don’t have a lot of opportunities for big set pieces, but give me something here man! I know you can do action, show me something cool!

Besides the eyeshot thing, oh my God!

Meanwhile, Zack Snyder not only did 300 (and produced it’s recent sequel) he also directed 2009’s Watchmen! Which was not short on action! Take a look at this sequence with Rorschach. Screw cops, right? So you know what I’m saying when I say that in Man of Steel, Snyder stepped up his game big time! Take a look at this thing of beauty. C'mon Singer, give me something here! What about that scene where Lex’s thugs beat Superman up, what do you got there?

Okay, something I find noteworthy in both scenes is Superman is seen trying to get away from his foes. You know what the difference is? In the former scene, Clark is trying to get away quick enough to get back on his feat so he can keep fighting, while at the same time trying to get the bad guys just a little bit further away from the civilians. While in the latter scene, it comes off like Clark is trying to run away. He doesn’t try to fight back, except for when he grabs Lex’s foot, It comes off like he’s given up and he just wants to the pain to stop. This is something I take genuine issue with. Superman is the kind of guy who would fight back even if he were powerless. If he came to stop Lex Luthor and found out that he was weak here, he’d still give it his everything.

So yeah, once again, I’m giving this to Man of Steel.

And now for the big question, Best Superman

This one, is not as a question to answer because these two actors were going for different things.

Brandon Routh was basically directed to give his best Christopher Reeve impersonation, which I think he pulls of nicely. While Henry Cavill, the first and only British actor to play Superman, is the first big screen actor to go for a separate take from Christopher Reeve. His Superman has to convey authority to the point that you feel the need to listen to him, but not to the point that you’re genuinely intimidated by him. And also, his Superman is the first one to be a badass! This guy gets into some serious fights throughout this film, and he even wins a couple of ‘em! I know Reeve’s Superman fought Zod and his cronies back in Superman II, but do you really consider this to be an acceptable action piece? Personally, I don’t think so.

Now I think there are two moments in these movies that are unequivocally Superman to me. One is this scene where Superman tells everyone not worry about flying, it’s still a very safe way to travel. The other is when Supes is being interrogated by Lois and the General.

Ultimately, I wanna call it a tie, but I’m gonna go ahead and say Henry. He just reminds me a lot of the Superman I loved to watch as a kid when I turned on Cartoon Network to watch Justice League. Always authoritative, but never intimidating. Always polite, but never a pushover. Perfection!

And that’s no slight towards Brandon, he does the best with what he has!

Best Lois Lane

Which of these ladies would you say looks like a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist? Which of these ladies would you say looks like someone who has worked in journalism for over a decade? Which of these ladies looks like a woman who could single handedly piss off people like the Pentagon? If you’re confused, I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the girl in purple.

No, but seriously, it takes several years to get a degree in journalism and then a good while to get an actual job writing something and then even longer to actually come up with something worth winning a Pulitzer Prize over. They don’t just hand those things over to anyone. So based on that, Kate Bosworth was unqualified to begin with. She was 23 at the time of this movie’s release! Amy Adams however turned 39 two months later.

But even looking at the actual performances, Amy comes off like she IS Lois freaking Lane! Kate comes off more like a really smart girl on the school paper. I could easily see her one day becoming Lois Lane, but as is, I cannot see her as Lois Lane now. Point for Man of Steel!

Best Villain

Now THIS is the tough part. Not only do you have two amazing actors in these roles, but their both playing two of the most iconic Superman villains ever brought to life.

In Superman Returns’s corner, we have the great Kevin Spacey as Lex flippin’ Luthor! In Man of Steel’s we have the one and only Michael Shannon as the mighty General Zod! These two gentlemen turned excellent performances, in fact, while I am extremely excited to see Jesse Eisenberg as Lex, I would have loved to see Man of Steel 2 pull a Casino Royale and bring back Kevin. After seeing him as Frank Underwood on Netflix’s House of Cards, he could’ve owned it as this new DC Cinematic Universe’s Lex! But hey, we’ll see what Jesse brings to the table, I’m sure it'l be great!

But speaking of Man of Steel, we’ve got a certain General to talk about. Now, after seeing this movie in theaters, I decided to do a review series on Michael Bay’s directorial efforts, and what I gathered from it is that Michael Bay really knows how to waste talented actors! Especially Michael Shannon, and what’s worse is he wasted the guy in two separate movies!

Here he is playing a fool in Pearl Harbor

And here he is playing a racist fool in Bad Boys II, which is a God awful movie! It’s far worse than anything you could possibly hate about these movies.

Anywho, let’s talk about the villains themselves. Zod is the definition of Lawful Evil. He outright spells it out, I will do anything and everything to ensure the survival of my race, even it means destroying a whole other race. You can tell at times, he doesn’t want to be doing these things, but he feels like it was the only way to ensure what he needed to ensure.

Lex on the other hand has ZERO moral qualms with anything he’s doing. When his henchwoman, Kitty, asks him if billions of people will really die because of what he’s doing, he simply says yes. He doesn’t even given the tiniest indication that the idea of killing the majority of the world population is anything he genuinely has any thoughts about, in fact, if you’ll recall the confrontation he had with Lois earlier, he even seemed kind of excited by it. I think his best moment in the movie isn’t actually the scene where he stabs Supes with the Kryptonite shank, but just a couple minutes before it where he outright calls Superman an alien.

If I were to compare the two with other villains, I would say Lex is the Davros to Superman’s Doctor, while Zod is his Master. The former is a character who believes that his own will is supreme and that his intelligence makes that so. While the latter is the only other member of Superman’s race and would sooner kill them both than surrender to him.

I again, want to say it’s a tie, but Michael Shannon’s Zod really leaves more of an impact, it’s partly for the same reason why I think Henry was better than Brandon. This guy got to do his own thing, he had no one else to live up to, while Kevin and Brandon were both doing a version of the same thing someone else did. Terrence Stamp’s Zod was just a megalomaniac even more so akin to the Master than Shannon’s, while Michael’s Zod is a military man who wants desperately to do what he thinks is right even if it goes against the very nature of being a decent person.

Kevin, you’re fantastic, but point goes to Michael!

And now for the final two, starting with Best Supporting Cast

Returns pretty much only had Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and Lois’s beau, Richard. I mean, you could maybe count the little kid and Lex’s crew, but Jason doesn’t do anything, and the only one actually says anything is Parker Posey’s character.

On the other hand, Man of Steel had Perry, Jor-El, Ma and Pa Kent, Steve Lombard, two military guys who have something resembling a character arc, Zod’s own henchwoman (Faora), and Emil Hamilton! And what’s great about them is they serve a purpose within the movie! To be honest, there’s really not much point to Superman Returns’s cast. So yeah, another point for Man of Steel.

And finally, Who Told The Story Best

Look, I did genuinely like Superman Returns! I don’t think it’s a crappy movie, I just don’t think it’s an especially great movie! I can honestly say I’d rather sit through this than something horrible like Sharknado! But, I have to say, I don’t think this really works for what it was going for. It’s some sort of weird limbo between the full reboot we got with Man of Steel and the original Christopher Reeve films. I understand that Bryan Singer wanted to make his own little tribute song to those first two Superman movies, and I can understand why. I mean I grew up loving the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, and I’d love to make my own little homage sequel to those movies, but even then you have to move the story forward. While Man of Steel takes Superman in new and exciting story directions, Superman Returns just leaves the series off slightly better than it was after Superman III came out.

What I like about Man of Steel over Superman Returns could really be summed up pretty well in a Frozen quote, “I’m never going back, the past is in the past!” In other words, you needed to let it go Singer. The Christopher Reeve films were done with. I think what you did was an interesting experiment that could pay off with other stories, but not yours I’m afraid to say.

As for you Snyder, you told the best story you could and you told it brilliantly! And once again to quote Frozen, I don’t care what they’re going to say. This movie was perfect, and I’ll have no arguments otherwise. This movie said, screw the old stories, this is our story and we’ll tell it how we want to! If it flops, it flops. If it’s critically panned, it’s critically panned. And what’s life without a gamble every now and again? Unless you’re a recovering gambling addict in which case, hang in there buddy!

So when it comes right down to it, I’m going to give the prize to Man of Steel.

Thank you for reading this and have a wonderful day!

The Modern Day Superman In Film Review Series - Man Of Steel (2013)

Written In April 2014

“Superman murdered Zod!”

“Superman destroyed Metropolis!”

“This movie had too much action!”

“Zack Snyder is a fucking hack!”

“Man Of Steel’s Superman didn’t care about people!”

What part of

are you idiots not getting?

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

The planet Krypton faces imminent destruction due to its unstable core, the result of depleting Krypton’s natural resources. The ruling council is deposed by the planet’s military commander General Zod and his followers during a coup d’état. Knowing that the use of artificial population control has ruined their civilization, scientist Jor-El and his wife Lara launch their newborn son Kal-El, the first naturally born Kryptonian child in centuries, on a spacecraft to Earth after infusing his cells with a genetic codex of the entireKryptonian race. After General Zod kills Jor-El, he and his followers are captured and exiled to the Phantom Zone. However, they are indirectly freed after Krypton explodes.

Kal-El’s ship lands in Smallville, a small town in Kansas. He is raised as the adopted son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, who name himClark. Clark’s Kryptonian physiology affords him superhuman abilities on Earth, which initially cause him confusion and ridicule. He gradually learns to harness his powers and uses them to help others. After revealing to a teenage Clark that he is an alien, Jonathan warns him not to use his powers in public out of concern that he will be rejected by society. After Jonathan’s death, an adult Clark spends several years living a nomadic lifestyle, working different jobs under false identities, anonymously performing good deeds, and struggling to cope with the loss of his adoptive father.

Clark eventually infiltrates a U.S. military investigation of a Kryptonian scout spaceship in the Arctic. When Clark enters the alien ship, he uses a Kryptonian “control-key” from the ship that brought him to Earth, which allows him to communicate with the preserved consciousness of Jor-El in the form of ahologram. Jor-El reveals Clark’s origins, the extinction of his race, and tells Clark that he was sent to Earth to bring hope to mankind for a better future. Lois Lane, a journalist from the Daily Planet newspaper who was sent to write a story on the discovery, sneaks inside the ship while following Clark and is rescued by him when she is injured by its security system. Lois’s editor Perry White rejects her story of a “superhuman” rescuer, so she traces Clark back to Kansas with the intention of writing an exposé. After hearing his story, she decides not to reveal his secret.

Meanwhile, Zod and his crew seek out other worlds that the Kryptonian race colonized long ago, only to find out that none of the outposts survived after Krypton abandoned them. Zod and the others eventually pick up a Kryptonian distress signal sent from the ship Clark discovered on Earth. Zod arrives and demands that the humans surrender Kal-El, whom he believes has the codex, or else Earth will be destroyed. Clark accepts, and the military hand him and Lois over to Zod’s second-in-command, Faora, at Zod’s request. Zod reveals that he intends to use a terraforming ”world engine” to transform Earth into a new Krypton and use the codex to repopulate the planet with genetically-engineeredKryptonians, killing all of Earth’s indigenous life in the process. Clark and Lois escape Zod’s ship with Jor-El’s help, Clark defeats Faora and another Kryptonian, and convinces the military that he is an ally. Zod deploys the world engine and initiates the process in Metropolis and over the southern Indian Ocean, increasing the Earth’s mass and atmosphere.

Clark, now called “Superman”, destroys the world engine, while the military uses the spacecraft that brought him to Earth in an aerial strike on Zod’s ship over Metropolis, sending Zod’s forces back into the Phantom Zone. Only Zod remains, and he engages Superman in a destructive battle across Metropolis using his newly developed powers. When Zod attempts to murder cornered civilians as revenge for his defeat, Superman is forced to kill him. Some time later, Superman warns the government that, if it wants his help, it will be on his terms. To create an alias that gives him access to dangerous situations without arousing suspicion, Clark takes a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet.

So yeah, if you didn’t gather it from that intro, I do not understand the criticisms of this movie. I thought the action was exciting and entertaining. The destruction in the movie didn’t seem any better or worse than the destruction in any other big blockbuster. People said it had more destruction than Avengers, I actually think Avengers had more, and for the record, The Avengers is a movie that I LIKE! I’m not dissing Marvel. I think really the only reason that people think the destruction was so severe in this movie was the lighting. The battle of New York in the Avengers was shot in broad daylight, the fight between Superman and Zod in Man of Steel was mostly shot at about late in the day/early in the evening, so subsequently the city was darker and looked grimmer. Now, let me take a moment to criticize not the complaints people had when they saw the movie, but the ones they had BEFORE they saw the movie.

Grace Randolph, writer of the BOOM! Studios comic book series, Supurbia, reporter for Bleeding Cool, and the YouTube personality behind Beyond The Trailer and Think About The Ink, was a very early negative speculator for the film, at one point outright theorizing that Man Of Steel would goes so far as to not only change the look of the costume, but outright refuse to destroy Krypton. People in general were speculating that this movie was changing so much about the superman mythos. I asked then how do you figure? And I ask now, how much different is this guy from the one in the comics? It, like a lot of comic book movies, was written as a patchwork of different stories to make the filmmakers’ own story. It derives from John Bryne’s Man of Steel, Mark Waid’s Superman: Birthright, Geoff Johns’s Superman: Secret Origin, J. Michael Straczynski’s Superman: Earth One, Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, and so much more. I’m not going to criticize the ignorant masses who mostly don’t read comics for not knowing this, but if you’re a comic book fan who regularly follows Superman, you should bloody well recognize at least a couple of these elements. I mean hell, in that first teaser trailer that they released in front of The Dark Knight Rises, you either had a narration from Kevin Costner as Pa Kent, talking about how one day Clark, whether he became a good man or a bad man, would one day change the world, or you had a narration from Russell Crowe as Jor-El giving Jor’s speech from All-Star Superman! The promotional material did not show anything you’d never seen before if you know your right from your left in comics.

But enough of my complaints with people, they are a silly a bunch. Let’s get into few issues with this movie and my high praise for the rest of it!

PROS:

• Henry Cavill as Superman. You couldn’t have hired a better guy, you just couldn’t have. There’s no two ways about it. Thank you Zack Snyder!
• Amy Adams as mother fucking Lois Lane! The minute I went over the casting for this movie and saw Amy Adams’s name next to Lois’s I just sat back and proclaimed “Oh My God Yes!” Again, I don’t think there’s a woman out there, who could do a better Lois than this woman!
• I never really knew who Michael Shannon was before this movie, but watching him here, I want to find out! Because he not only made me hate Zod as a person and love him as a villain, but he legitimately made me feel sorry for the guy. He outright says it more than once in the movie, his entire reason for existing to ensure the protection, the security, and the safety of Krypton and it’s people, even if it means being destructive. You get the feeling at certain times that he doesn’t actually want to hurt anyone, but he feels that he has to in order to ensure the survival of his people. The scene where he holds the ashes and gravel from his destroyed ship and laments “Look at this. We could have built a new Krypton in this squalor, but you chose the humans over us. I exist only to protect Krypton. That is the sole purpose for which I was born. And every action I take, no matter how violent or how cruel, is for the greater good of my people. And now… I have no people. My soul, that is what you have taken from me!” It leaves you not knowing how to feel, you get the feeling that Zod is about to attack Superman (and he does) but at the same time, you feel genuinely awful for the guy. He has literally lost his entire reason for existing. The fact that Shannon can convey so much as just one character speaks volumes to me! I really want to check out more of his work!
• I have loved Russell Crowe ever since I saw him in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, when I heard he was Jor-El I was so happy! I was already excited when I heard the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen was directing a Superman movie produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan, but when I saw that one of my favorite actors was playing Jor-El I leaped with joy! And I did an even bigger leap when I saw how awesome the guy was in the movie! The minute I saw the movie in theaters I just said to myself, “Screw Superman! I want a fucking Jor-El prequel!” And I stand by that! Snyder, Goyer, DC, Time Warner, give me my Jor-El prequel! 
• Now you know who else I love? Laurence Fishburne! Look at this guy Doesn’t he just scream awe- Oh wait! Shit! That’s not Laurence Fishburne! Okay! There! That’s Laurence Fishburne! In fact, that’s Larry Fishburne himself as Perry White in this movie! While Frank Langela played it a bit more J. Jonah Jameson, Fishburne plays it strait up serious newspaper man. And kicks some serious ass at it!
• Diane Lane and Kevin Costner not only kill it as Ma and Pa Kent, the destroy it! Every scene they have with Clark they make it fucking count! And they have terrific chemistry with the scenes they have with Henry, and young Clark actors, Dylan Sprayberry and Cooper Timberline. You really feel the difficultly they had with raising their child to be a good man, but at the time telling him, you can’t actually go out and show people who you can do, it won’t end well. The last scene with Kevin as Jonathan Kent, is absolutely heartbreaking. You can see every fiber of Clark’s being wants to run strait over there and save his father, especially after the terrible thing he’d only just told him, and Jonathan tells him don’t. Don’t expose yourself, not to save me. Please son. It’s fucking horrible. And every single scene with Diane is terrific! She is just such a mommy! It’s wonderful really!
• In case you don’t actually follow me on here, I am a HUGE House of Cards fan! I LOOOOOOOOVE that show! And one of the things I love most about is Michael Kelly! The guy is such a great actor who does great here as Steve Lombard, the sort office dickhead who sort of makes some good natured, but somewhat irritating, ribbings at his coworkers, particularly Lois. But what I really like here, is that he may be a bit of a dick, but he’s not a terrible person. In the scene where the World Engine is leveling Metropolis and Perry is trying to get their coworker, Jenny (Olsen(?)), out of large chunk of debris. You can see he briefly considers leaving them behind to save his own skin, but says screw it, and grabs a fallen street sign and helps try to save his coworker. He may be a dick, but even dicks can be decent human beings.
• Hans Zimmer’s score is fantastic! I can’t wait to hear what he and Pharrell Wiliams are gonna do together for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and I REALLY hope he comes back for Man of Steel 2! It’d be really awesome to hear him come up with a completely new Batman theme!
• The action throughout is incredible! More so in the Smallville fight than the Metropolis fight, but that was still pretty fucking awesome too!
• Harry Lennix is in this movie.
• Christopher Meloni is also in this movie.
• If you’re a Smallville fan, there’s a couple guys from the show with very small roles but you might recognize them. The guy who played Lex’s disfigured clone in season 10, who set Lois up as a scarecrow like the jocks at school did to Clark back in season one, plays the Kryptonian scientist aboard Zod’s ship. And the guy who played Emil Hamilton in 14 episodes actually has a small role here as one of the army guys at the Canadian base where Lois first meets Clark. I’m not sure if these guys were purposefully put in here, but it’s a nice little coincidence.

CONS:

• I think it’s kind of dickish of Jor-El to not try to make a computer program for Lara’s consciousness so that she could see their son too.
• This one’s more of a nitpick, but what exactly is Zod and his crew’s ages supposed to be? Michael Shannon is 39, and Antje Traue, who played Zod’s second in command, Faora, is 33. But they spent 33 years in outer space. I mean, I know your body ages more slowly in space, and you can tell Zod’s a little older. He’s got some grays on his head, and he’s got a goatee with a lot more gray, but everyone else looks pretty much the same. So how old are they supposed to be exactly?
• This isn’t a con with THIS movie, but I really wish Snyder had done at least one solo sequel before bringing in Batman and Wonder Woman. But that’s a minor quibble.

What am I going to give this movie? Do I need to tell you? … Well, yes, I do, I guess that’s part of the review. I’m gonna give Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel an 8.5 out of 10!

I loved the hell out of this movie, and I can’t wait for the second movie in 2016! Especially since it comes out the day before my birthday! In any case, please stay tuned for my comparison of these two films, I hope you enjoyed this review and have a terrific day!