Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and vicious, unrelenting violence and destruction
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.13
Grim, humorless and unpleasantly brutal.
Not to mention boring and
redundant, particularly during the interminable, body-slamming final act.
No fun at all.
Director Zack Snyder has
delivered a Superman film with the nasty, cataclysmic tone he employed so well
— and much more appropriately — in 300 and Watchman: a dark, dour mood that
also suited Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but is wholly out of place
here. No surprise: Nolan shares story credit here with David S. Goyer, with
whom he co-wrote those Batman epics. All things considered, then, Snyder, Nolan
and Goyer have concocted precisely the sort of Superman we should have expected
from them.
I do not approve.
All concerned desperately need to
take lessons from Joss Whedon, when it comes to choreographing the real
estate-leveling carnage of a melee between super-powered beings. As Whedon
proved with The Avengers, he understands the importance of the occasional wink
and nod, not to mention his recognition of the fine emotional line between
necessary collateral damage and a callous disregard for brutalized civilian
bystanders.
Snyder obviously relished the
opportunity to envision what it really might be like for a being such as
Superman to be tossed through half a mile’s worth of office buildings; the
director and his special-effects wizards certainly beat such scenes to death.
But, speaking of death, it’s impossible to overlook the hundreds (thousands?)
of fragile humans who’d be maimed and killed along the way, as a result of each
super-powered punch ... which turns Superman’s “code against killing” into
something of a joke.
Hell, he must kill scores of
people every time he slams his evil, super-powered adversaries through said
buildings. Ironic, then, that his code eventually becomes an important — if
ill-defined — plot point.
On top of which, the various
Metropolis-shattering skirmishes go on for so long, and thus to such
diminishing returns, that they become no more meaningful than watching Godzilla
stomp and flatten a miniature cardboard Tokyo in all those 1950s and ’60s
Japanese monster flicks.
Then, too, the notion that our
poor planet would survive the terraforming consequences of the third act’s big,
bad whatzis machine, is just too laughable for words. No residual earthquakes?
No disrupted weather patterns? Seriously? Somehow, everything gets put right
again, entire cities apparently resurrected in mere weeks, if not days, just in
time for an epilogue that delivers the single solitary line — “I think he’s
kinda hot” — that draws the only mild chuckle granted during the entire film.
No, no, no.
Such an overwrought, overblown
mess.
Thank God for Amy Adams’ turn as
Lois Lane. She, at least, injects some sparkle and spunk into these
proceedings. Everybody else — and I’m including Henry Cavill’s dreary Superman
— seems to be competing in a scowling contest.
I’ve already missed Christopher
Reeve for all sorts of reasons, but never more so than during last week’s preview
screening of Man of Steel.
The comparison is both apt and
ironic, not only because Reeve granted the character all the warmth, compassion
and expressive depth that Cavill’s blank-faced Superman lacks, but also because
Goyer and Nolan borrow heavily from the template of that 1978 film’s first act.
Goodness, Russell Crowe’s dour,
tight-lipped Jor-El practically channels Marlon Brando’s performance in the
same role, all those years ago. Except that Crowe apparently feels that Jor-El
should be equally adept as both scientist and warrior. (This is what happens
when an ego-laden star re-shapes a character to suit his own image.)
Familiarity aside, the lengthy
Krypton prologue remains a good place to begin a film tasked with re-booting
Superman’s origin. Jor-El and his wife, Lara (Ayelet Zurer), have defied
Krypton’s genetic laws by having a baby the old-fashioned way; additionally,
the Kryptonian Council of Elders continues to ignore Jor-El’s warnings that
their planet is becoming increasingly unstable.
In a nice nod to contemporary
real-world events, Jor-El blames this pending catastrophe on the depletion of
natural resources, and an ill-advised, longstanding program of extracting
materials from deep within the planet’s crust. A lesson to be learned, for
those paying attention.
The debate is forestalled by the
militaristic Zod (Michael Shannon, at his foaming, mad-dog best) and his elite
warriors, intent on staging a coup d'état. The uprising fails, but not before
panicking Jor-El and Lara into blasting their infant son, Kal-El, into space
for safety: destination, Earth. Zod and his minions are banished to lengthy
prison terms in the “phantom zone,” and — shortly thereafter — Jor-El’s
prophecy comes true, as Krypton’s core erupts.
Time passes.
In one of their few genuinely
clever touches, Goyer and Nolan introduce the now-grown Clark Kent (also
Cavill) as a wary, wandering loner who clandestinely helps people here and
there. Key moments of his childhood and recent back-story emerge through
occasional flashbacks that show how Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and
Diane Lane, both quite moving, if inherently sad) helped their adopted son
learn to control abilities that flourished in our own, superior planetary
environment.
The ongoing moral dilemma comes
from Jonathan, who rightly worries that — because people fear what they do not
understand — the world likely wouldn’t welcome an extraterrestrial being with
Clark’s powers ... which expand and improve, year by year. It’s an intriguing
notion, and one that deserves to fuel water-cooler debates.
But Lois Lane, ace reporter with
Metropolis’ Daily Planet, has become intrigued by a pattern of “guardian angel
incidents” that stretch all the way back to small-town Smallville. She
similarly signs on when U.S. Gen. Swanwick (Harry Lennix), Col. Hardy
(Christopher Meloni) and their research team discover an ancient
something-or-other buried beneath the ice in an outlying region of Canada.
In Lois’ mind, everything points
to a long-concealed visitor from another world, a theory she soon proves. But
any further discussions about whether Superman should “come out” are rendered
moot with the arrival of Zod and his forces, conveniently freed by Krypton’s
destruction, who’ve tracked Kal-El while collecting all sorts of weapons long
abandoned on other planets by failed Kryptonian settlements. (One can’t help
wondering why they all failed. At best, this is a sloppy plot point.)
Zod isn’t a happy guy, and he’s
perfectly willing to wreak havoc on Earth, in order to obtain Kal-El. Actually,
Zod also has other plans, which suit his equally savage followers just fine.
The nastiest of these is Faora-Ul, a warrior bad girl played with malevolent
intensity by Antje Traue. And, sadly, these baddies benefit from the same Earthian
atmosphere and sun that granted Kal-El his powers.
Cue the first of many
landscape-leveling sequences that’d be more at home in an average issue of
Marvel Comics’ Hulk.
In another mildly clever touch,
both sides are granted vulnerabilities. Kal-El loses his powers when exposed to
any aspect of the Kryptonian atmosphere that fills Zod’s warship (nope, no sign
of radioactive green Kryptonite); Zod and his minions, in turn, can be
overwhelmed by the sensory overload of Earth-granted powers that Kal-El has mastered
for two decades.
But this doesn’t slow the fight
scenes a jot.
In between the various clashes,
Laurence Fishburne gives a solid performance as Lois’ boss, Perry White; I
liked the brief editor/reporter squabbles between these two. I also enjoyed all
the quieter moments involving Costner and Lane, and getting to see both of them
throughout the film — thanks to the aforementioned use of flashbacks — nicely
anchors the story each time, at least briefly, as things spin out of control.
Lennix and Meloni make solid
military types, and Richard Schiff is memorable as a scientist who plays a key
role in the third act.
Other key players in the
long-established Superman mythos get little more than name-checked, though,
such as Lana Lang (Jadin Gould) and Pete Ross (Jack Foley as a boy, Joseph
Cranford as an adult). They’re present solely to elicit smiles from über-fans
who’ll also appreciate touches such as a tanker truck bearing a logo for
LexCorp.
Production designer Alex McDowell
clearly had a lot of fun, and the film’s many examples of Kryptonian technology
range from intriguing to way-cool. Cinematographer Amir Mokri lends a
refreshingly gentle tone to the various Kansas sequences in Smallville, but
gets no chance for artistry once things get chaotic. And the 3-D effects, added
after the fact, are pointless; don’t waste your money.
Hans Zimmer’s noisy, monotonous
score too frequently pounds us into submission, much like Snyder’s approach to
the lengthy third act.
Actually, the whole film is
self-indulgently excessive, and in no way justifies its 143-minute length.
(Once again, Whedon’s The Avengers, coming in at precisely the same running
time, had no trouble holding our attention.)
I hate to think that Snyder,
Goyer and Nolan might return for another round, should this film prove
financially successful; I’m not even that wild about seeing Cavill again. I
fully intend to renew my acquaintance with Reeve’s 1978 film, just to remove
the taste of this maladroit, misanthropic mess.
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