So when I found out that Snyder was going to be in the director's chair for Man of Steel, it would be fair to say that I was not the most optimistic of individuals. But then footage began to bleed into the public mainstream. Promotional teasers and trailers started to reveal something that looked different, enigmatic and down right exciting. I decided to completely forget about Snyder's previous productions; focusing all of my attention instead toward the fact that a brand new era of Superman was soon going to explode onto our screens.
The previous installation of Superman hit the silver screens back in 2006. The result of that film was quite a sad experience really. It was a loose continuation of the original Christopher Reeve's universe and was directed by X-men's Brian Singer. The trailers were truly exciting; stuffed to the nines with camp nostalgia and cutting edge special effects. Superman was coming to the 21st century and it looked like he was going to arrive with a bang, not a whimper.
Unfortunately, the film tanked and Singer was dropped by studios. It was at this point that Warner Bro's decided to not continue the timeline of this universe and were going to start from scratch. In a world of reboots, this was Hollywood's inevitable second move.
In all honesty, I actually kind of enjoyed Superman Returns. I felt that it was a huge, multimillion dollar film that actually managed to somehow become a character driven drama piece along the way. There was something quite charming about a film of this size managing to be so small in its contradictory epic scale. It was also drenched in heavy dressings of nostalgia, something which always seems to win me over. But the film was still incredibly flawed and what really made Singer's version so weak was the fact that it decided to lift a majority of the story from Richard Donner's original 1978 film, making it come across as down right lazy in terms of storytelling. Also, after getting over that initial character driven element to the film, the whole thing felt sort of...well...boring. It's never good when a film which cost around $270 million comes across as boring.
Nonetheless, I was still quite sad to see Brain Singer and Brandon Routh get the axe. I was quite looking forward to seeing what direction this interpretation of the series was eventually planning on going in. But I can see why it was axed. The film failed to make its money back, and in a production of this size, commissioning a sequel would have been nothing more than financial suicide.
The death of Returns inevitably made way for Snyder's 2013 reboot. A film which plans to take the story back to its roots and avoid the confusion that was brought to modern audiences back in 2006. Here we were promised to see something new, exciting and different. This was Warner Bro's attempt to bring Superman back into the mainstream consciousness once and for all.
Early box office results pretty much suggest that Man of Steel will not be repeating the same financial disaster that the last feature did. But never mind the financial figures, what is the film itself like?
I saw this film last night and my first response is this: part of it is absolutely fantastic, whilst the other part is a bit of an over the top mess. This all gets meshed up to make the film strangely an overall decent experience. There are some truly outstanding moments in this film, but there are also some seriously sloppy pieces which get in the way of all those magical occasions.
The first half of the film is genuinely my favorite part of Man of Steel. It mostly focuses on Clark Kent wondering through the lands; taking up odd jobs and staying underneath the public radar. As he goes about his business, random objects result in him looking back to his childhood. This is where viewers are invited to explore how Clark grew up with his otherworldly powers. He struggles with trying to control his abilities (see-through vision, heat vision powers, mind reading trickery and all that jazz), is aggressively bullied for being an outcast and is hopelessly terrified about who he is and what he will one day grow up to become ("did god really do this to me?").
These scenes are the best moments of the film. I honestly cannot express enough how much I loved them. This idea of Clark growing up to be an outcast is an idea which is absolutely wonderful. What makes these scenes even more captivating is the breathtaking performance by Kevin Costner; who plays Clark's stepfather, Jonathan Kent.
Jonathan knows that his son will one day grow up to be an outstanding life form who will change the direction of humanity. He's convinced that the world will ultimately reject his son; for he is different from that of the rest of society. Throughout the series of flashbacks, it becomes clear that Jonathan is working to help his son control his godly powers; pushing him away from the temptations of using his abilities for darker motives.
What makes this back story even more sublime is how Costner chooses the execute his role as Jonathan Kent. He's subtle, does not take center stage during these character defining moments and subtly reveals his character's motives through carefully executed dialogue and facial expressions. Ironically, this subtle, non-center stage, acting results in Costner stealing all of the scenes that he's in. He draws the audience in, hammering his intentions all the way home. Through his performance we know exactly why he is doing what he is doing. He loves his son, he doesn't want the world to reject him and he will do anything to raise Clark into becoming a man of greatness (even when that means stopping him from retaliating when bullies attack and dehumanize him).
Even though I saw the film no more than 24 hours ago, I'm already certain that these are the scenes which I will remember for a long time to come.
The film begins to loose most of its magic around the half way point, however. This seems to happen around the point where Amy Adams' Louis Lane makes her way into the plot. I honestly don't know what is the real problem here; David S Goyer's portrayal of the character, or Adams' performance. Which ever one it is, Louis Lane comes across as an emotional robot who takes everything far too seriously.
Her mono toned earnestness becomes very annoying considerably quickly and drains all belief from the story's love plot. When Clark and Louis are standing together in the desert, it's very difficult to believe that these two characters really care for one another. Not only does Adams' earnestness make her appear to have zero feelings for Clark, but it's also incredibly difficult to believe that Clark can possess any feelings for someone who is as close to a robot as any life form will ever be. By the time they finally kiss, I'm just not buying a single second of it. There may have intended to be a love story in this film, but the emotions of that theme were lost somewhere within the story (or acting. I still cannot tell).
Then there is the final act (or the final 45 minutes should I say), where the entire film just goes absolutely insane. Seriously, the action is just far too much. It feels like a head on collision between Dragonball Z and Transformers. Half of Metropolis is destroyed, spaceships and villains fly around the earth like characters that have escaped from a bonkers anime series and there are enough explosions in each scene to blind a man standing on mars. It's utterly insane and when you think its all over, things become even more frantic.
But in all fairness to this film, it's nowhere near as bad as Transformers. In fact, it was quite cruel of me to compare it to that garbage. For a start, a lot of the crazy action does at least make some sense. Plus, there are actually some great action set pieces amongst all of this chaos. The main problem, however, is that as soon as things start to look quite impressive and entertaining, everything goes ape shit once again; sending one's senses into yet another meltdown.
Then there is the opening scene. On its own, I kind of like this sequence. In the context of the entire film, however, it's just totally out of place. Yes, the film is far fetched and more akin to a comic book/video game hybrid than that of a realistic portrayal of Superman. Yet the scenes with Russel Crowe are on a completely different level to the rest of the story. Everything is ten times as over the top and is at least seven steps further away from our reality than the rest of the feature is.
You could argue that this huge gap in reality is to do with the fact that the opening scenes of the film are set on Krypton, whilst the rest of the story is set on earth. This is a fair assumption, but it is still highly distracting and out of place. We open with a story that is essentially Skyrim meets Avatar; next up we get those beautiful scenes surround Clark and his stepfather; only to then fall into the realms of Dragonball Z colliding with Transformers.
It all just becomes a tad too much for the senses to take. All these different films, colliding head first into one another. It was, at times, quite a disorienting experience; making it very difficult for me to figure out exactly what sort of film I was suppose to be watching. Am I suppose to be watching Russel Crowe battling an army of alien spacecrafts on the back of a dragon? Is this meant to be an exploration of societies' rejection toward those whom they fail to understand? Or am I suppose to be watching Goku versus Optimums Prime?
I am starting to sound grossly unfair, as I actually did enjoy this film quite considerably. Ok, so there were some issues with Amy Adams, the action goes a little bonkers from time to time and there are a number of different ideas bouncing off of one another in a disorientating manner. But what the heck, this was something totally different and unique in the context of Superman (at least in terms of films. I've never read the comic book source material, so this could very well be what all Superman stories are like). This was something entirely different from the camp, fun era of the original movie line and it ventured down some new and hugely interesting paths. It was a comic book movie that tried to do something incredibly different to most. I do admire it deeply for that and I couldn't help but feel that everything going on was a breath of fresh air.
As my friend Patrick mentioned (yes, you just got a mention in my blog, I hope you're proud), what wonders a good rewrite for this film would have done. He's bang on the nail here. There was a lot of outstanding potential lurking within this story, but a lot of that potential was drowned out by the oceans of chaos and clashing ideas.
Large portions of the film were something of a shambles, but seriously, the good parts really do make up for it. It may sound as though I thought otherwise, but I did actually like this film.
I do recommend checking it out, but before doing so, can I just recommend one bit of advice? Skip the 3D version. For those who don't know, I'm a fan-turned skeptic when it comes to 3D. When I saw Avatar back in an Imax theater in December 2009, I was absolutely in love with the potentials of stereoscopic film making. I was convinced that this was the future of cinema (even though the technology has been in some form of existence for the same amount of time as cinema itself) and I was certain that before long, everyone around the globe would be watching all their content in stereoscopic formats. In the end, I started to see 3D as nothing more than a useless method of trying to fool audiences back into cinemas. The picture quality was too dark, fast paced camera movements made scenes ghost like crazy and a majority of 3D features were so poorly designed that it was hard to even notice that the film had been given an extra layer of 'depth'.
The most obvious problem with Man of Steel in 3D is that a large portion of scenes are incredibly fast paced. Characters zoom around the screen and fight scenes are played out at an abnormal speed. The added darkness and ghosting of 3D makes it incredibly difficult to see what is actually going on for a majority of the time. Also, the 3D was almost unnoticeable during the flying scenes. This was a huge disappointment, as just under a year ago, Avengers Assemble managed to inject a bit of excitement back into stereoscopic cinema by delivering some incredibly terrific three dimensional flight scenes for Tony Stark's Iron Man.
But whether you choose 3D or 2D, do go and check this film out. Regardless of its good and bad sides, Man of Steel is something which overall feels as though it's something considerably fresh. I dearly look forward to seeing which directions they decide to take this reincarnation in during the inevitable sequels.
Superman is back.
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