Reviews Film / Man Of Steel

It's a common theme in such movies that, no matter what good you do, if you're different from ordinary people, you will be labeled a freak. Frankly, I'm surprised the bus scene surprised you that way.

Second, I think you missed the point of the tornado scene. Clark didn't forget anything. His father was forbidding him from exposing himself in front of that whole crowd of people. Jonathan knew quite well he could die in the process, just to protect Clark's secret.

So the line should've been like, "This only ends with one of us dead!" Whatever. It doesn't have any substantial effect on the plot.

I concede that the kiss seemed a bit out of place.

I took Jonathan to be Jor El's foil. Jor El keeps talking about how Clark should trust humanity, while Jonathan refuses to let Clark be himself in front of people. He dies because he can't trust humanity. When Clark turns himself in, he specifically states he's turning himself over to humanity and by stepping out of his father's shadow, proving him wrong.

If that's really what his reaction amounts to in regards to saving a bus of children (I haven't seen the movie yet) then wow, that IS idiotic.

On the tornado scene, what was his father doing in a tornado? Going off that tidbit alone, why DIDN'T he let Clark take care of whatever it was instead of getting killed and leaving his son behind? That sounds pretty stupid too.

Blegh, I'm not really starting to feel this movie now, especially when key moments like his dad's death are born out of contrived stupidity in an attempt to be tragic....

Don't you know, everything has got to be dark and gritty and filled with childhood trauma and 9/11 allegories, just like the Dark Knight! Because hey, it sold well then, and apparently DC properties are interchangeable.

Mouse, I would not judge the whole of the movie based on two anecdotes that you don't have the full context over.

Jonathan's reaction isn't so much to Clark saving a bus full of children but to the parents of those children knocking on his door and calling Clark a freak. This is what shapes his thinking later on when they're caught in a tornado (for perfectly routine reasons; it is Kansas, after all). He insists that Clark get Martha to safety, and in doing so, forbids Clark from mounting a superpowered rescue. In Jonathan's eyes, the world is not yet ready for Superman, and he does everything in his power to ensure that no one else finds out Clark's secret, even if it means giving his own life.

The parents actually called it an act of God, rather than specifically complaining about Clark saving their children's life. The context is that the father really wants Clark to keep his powers a secret, to the extent that it is worth sacrificing innocent lives (children's lives, as well as his own). I could understand not wanting the young Clark to end up as a pariah, but no good father figure would ever have their priorities that out of order. I can't imagine Uncle Ben ever saying to Peter Parker, "don't bother with saving people's lives, it's not worth the fuss."

Well, don't forget that he said "maybe" and not "yes".

^What's the difference?

"maybe you should've let them die"

vs

"yes you should've let them die"

And if what manihat says is true, the yeah, these are stupid moments regardless of intent.

Difference being that he was conflicted about it and would probably never have said yes.

It's sad that there even has to be this discussion. The "your powers make you a freak among men" trope has been played to death, and it's frankly insulting to expect the audience to believe that people will react so poorly to someone using superpowers to save their lives that Superman (of all people!) must treat his true identity like a dark secret. Leave that sort of stuff to the X-Men.

That's not what it was about. Old man Kent was concerned about what Clarke represented, that being proof of alien life, which people would definitely freak out about. On top of that, his powers meant that the military would want to get their hands on him. He was kinda proven right by how distrustful the military was and how willing they were to turn Clarke over to Zod. Random acts of heroism didn't exactly sway their opinion much until he fended off the other, obviously hostile, aliens.

Okay Maninahat I've had it up to here between dealing with trolls on IMDB and now reading this so here it comes:

a) Pa Kent's duty as a parent is to protect Clark. Given how the humans in this movie shoot at him, handcuff him and prepare to drug him it is perfectly understandable that Jonathan Kent would want Clark to not expose himself, especially since he hasn't fully matures.

b) Clark would risk exposing himself which his father would not want. But seriously, remember how the authorities hunted down Lois because of what she knew. If Clark revealed himself then BOTH his parents would face suffering and he would be a pariah.

c) Did you miss the kill part? He's saying someone is going to die, and that is the one outcome he is talking about.

d) Considering how much dangers they have just faced, they might not even survive to start smooching. They were living their lives to the full, with everything considered.

So there. This movie might have problems but could you at least express them in a more sensible way.

^What wasn't sensible about those problems? I thought this was a Superman movie, not a Batman/X-men movie. Where the heck are all these sudden traumatic hate-filled moments like paranoia, gassing, shooting, and threatening others come from?

So I guess it's true what I suspected of this movie; they took the Superman story and go completely nihilistic with it, turning nearly everybody into big jerks that could in no possible way be accepting of a potential hero.

^ He may have been the people's hero, but no real world government would ever have trusted someone with that much power who they had no control over. It's not that people would NEVER accept him, but it would take more than some heroics here and there, and Zod's invasion provided him the opportunity to prove himself to the world. "Some nigh omnipotent dude comes along and everybody trusts him just like that" is a naive scenario.

There's a marked transition between when the military considers Clark and the other Kryptonians collectively as enemies (and fires on them as such) and when, after Clark saves several military personnel, the colonel himself declares, "This man is not our enemy," and stands with him. Saying the movie is completely nihilistic is simplistic at best and dead wrong at worst.

^^Well it's good to know that they at least have that. Guess I'd better shut up and watch it first...

@shinfernape

a) The humans only get the urge to arrest, drug and shoot Superman after Zod flew down in an alien spaceship and threatened to blow up the entire planet - the chances are that the same approach wouldn't be taken with a seemingly ordinary boy from the sticks who is called a miracle by the rubes.

b) The Dad is willing to throw lives away to keep Clark's powers secret...Clark's powers that enable him to save lives, that is. There is a difference between trying to keep Clark's abnormalities under wraps, and discouraging him from using his powers to help people altogether.

c) He still phrased the sentence wrong (he should have said "there is only one way this will end - one of us will kill the other"). This one is more an example of bad writing than anything else. It also feels like its supposed to have weight, as though Superman, like Batman, would do anything not to kill, and that Zod is trying to force him into some heart breaking dilemma. If that's the case, it's worth noting that Superman never mentions having reservations about killing at any point in the movie. For all the audience knows, Clark Kent is totally fine with killing for the common good, being that no precedent was established. A good writer might have made the basic set up/pay off.

d) Honestly? There is no other way in which those two characters could have had a romantic moment besides right over the bodies of all the dead?

@ maninahat

a) Ah but the humans mistreat Clark even before he becomes Superman. The classroom scene demonstrates how his powers make him a pariah, and that's only the non-visible powers.

b) This can be summed up as "you are not yet ready". It's a classic phrase to describe that the power or responsibility at that point would be too much for the group/organization/civiliation/character etc. Remember in the last minutes of the movie where Ma Kent said that Jonathan Kent knew Clark would end up a great force for good. Pa Kent just wanted Clark to mature enough and learn more about himself so that he could be that great hero.

c) Really are you being pedantic about how aliens speak english? In which case you might as well rant against how Yoda who has lived for centuries still manages to speak Basic wrong. The whole point of communicating is to convey meanings/ideas/discriptions etc. What Zod said was clear enough to be understood. How can you say Clark is ok with killing? He gave himself up to save the humans? Faora berated him for "having a sense of morality". Clark was clearly trying to SAVE lives armed with his hammers of justice. I think the audience after seeing Clark in this movie for well over an hour, restraining himself from killing bullies and truckers would know that killing isn't in his nature.

d) What you said really doesn't refute what I said earlier. It was a heat of the moment thing. Also were there any visible bodies of the dead around?

The fact that you think that Superman Returns is more fun then this movie shows a level of vidictivenes that overides any fair judgement. Superman Returns was torn to shreds by fans for it's horrid character interpretations and idiotic plot. I don't know how you can say the movie with the creepy stalking deadbeat dad Supes vs gold-digging real estate ex con is better than a movie with punch-throwing Supes vs ruthless Kyrptonian militants.

a) In fairness, Clark was acting like a weirdo kid, not a lifesaving super hero. To his classmates, he'd look practically schizophrenic - the problem stems from Clark not being able to control his power, rather than the powers being a problem. Incidentally, this happens to be a stupid scene too: when the teacher comes to get Clark out of the broom closet, she permits the entire class to crowd around and watch as Clark's Mommy tries to talk him down. Not a very good teacher.

b) Except Clark is quite clearly ready: he may have difficulty of coming to terms with what he is, but he is quite capable of saving a dog from a car.

c) Er, no, you missed what I said. I said "bad writing". The script writer is working on a 225 million dollar movie, but still makes an absurdly basic mistake with the dialogue.

Then there was the part I said about set up/payoff for an emotional climax. The thing is, we don't actually know a lot about Clark. In Batman Begins, Batman specifically states he won't kill, and that's what sets up the dilemma for the climactic battle to the death with Ra's Al Ghul. That's one of the main themes of that film. In Superman, there is never such an open declaration. I don't think refusing to murder bullies or truckers translates into outright pacifism - that's just a demonstration of personal control, and it says nothing about Superman's philosophy on genocidal aliens who want to destroy the world. He certainly has no problem punching them through buildings, which implies he doesn't care about their survival (or indeed, the survival of all those people who must be in the buildings).

d) No visible bodies, because they were crushed and burnt to ash. From a screen writing perspective, it is hard to see how any writer could have thought this would be a good moment to have the main characters kiss.

You think it is vindictive of me to prefer one movie over another? For its flaws, Superman Returns is a lot of fun. When it comes to Superman, I happen to prefer that over what I find to be excessive, heartless, brainless narm.

a) So that how people are to him when they think he has human problems. It would be immeasurably worse if they found out what he could really do. If they taunt him for being a freak when they think he's human then the reaction is hardly going to be positive once they find out he is an alien. Yeah the teacher may not win awards but no one said humans are absolutely perfect in this movie. At least she tried to reach out to Clark instead of letting him run off and disappear.

b) You think the angsty teenager is ready to be a superhero? He was helping other human beings get to safety, not just twiddling his thumbs. This isn't something just from the movie it extends to other versions. Clark Kent must remain incognito and without the Clark persona Supes begins to lose his attachment to humanity. Pa Kent was trying to ensure that Clark and therefore the humanity within Kal El would endure. If you read the new Injustice comics you find that Supes abandoning the Clark persona is a step in his path into darkness.

c) So it's bad writing because an alien who has been on Earth for less than a week hasn't perfectly mastered the English language and makes mistakes? This movie wasn't entitled "Superman perfect", it's supposed to incorporate more realism. In real life, people do not always speak perfect English. Otherwise they'd be speaking like Data from Star Trek and use no contractions.

Even if I wasn't well familiar with Superman the movie gave me new information and told me about the character. He's an American immigrant searching for answers about where he came from and more importantly who he should become. The point remains that Supes was clearly trying to save human lives. Could he really be a humanitarian and a blood thirsty killer? If anything it makes Batman's no kill policy look ridiculous because his direct actions do cause people to die. In TDK, Batman tackles Dent until he falls and dies and in TDKR he shoots the truck with Talia still in it and she dies. Batman actually does break his own rules but it doesn't seem to bother him. Now you are contradicting yourself. You say he has personal control but then you say he doesn't care about who supposedly dies because of the fighting? Either Supes is in control or he doesn't give a damn. Also, there were no visible people in those buildings. People were hightailing out as soon as the world engine started the terraforming process.

d) No bodies is no bodies. Unless you can perform a forensic examination of the area then there is no proof for what you say. What we saw were people running as you would as soon as the world engine started terraforming, they knew better than to stay in that area.

Superman Returns...fun? The bits with Kevin Spacey perhaps. A movie where Superman doesn't throw a single punch, spends time stalking his ex and getting hopelessly smacked round on an kryptonite land mass is hardly what anyone would call fun. It sounds downright disturbing and depressing and that's what it was. Even the late Roger Ebert called this movie glum. Superman Returns is actually way dumber than MOS. In Superman Returns he lifts a continent made of Kryptonite (the stuff that's supposed to weaken and kill him) and hurls it into space despite having kryptonite embedded within him. He lands on an island full of kryptonite and even Lex Luthor says he should have looked properly. Supes uses x-ray vision for snooping on his ex but doesn't think to use it on the growing land mass created by Lex Luthor. In short don't get me started on Superman Returns otherwise you'll be having to defend the movie's seemingly endless failures.

It boils down to this:

Man of Steel - made over a half a billion and still running.

Superman Returns - nearly killed the franchise.

Man of Steel simply has to have done something right and Superman Returns has to have done something very, very wrong.

>Man of Steel simply has to have done something right

That "something" is pandering to "Transformers" crowd and Nolan fanboys.

Box office has nothing to do with film's quality.

@ Use Your Delusion

Whilst I love Transformers quite a bit and I do feel that Transformers has been reusing the same plot for 3 movies I must admit that the movies have not been without some great fight scenes and it has had an effect on other adaptations.

I would agree that box office may not be a perfect indicator of "quality" (Avatar). But successful films have to be doing something right even if it is on purely a technical level.

That is why I say Mo S is doing something right. Like how Io9 praised the movie's use of visuals for the visual display of Krypton's history, whereas Superman Returns approach was "so I herd u liek crystals". Mo S was not just trying to succeed on a technical level but they tried to flesh things out whereas Superman Returns was just a bunch of copout homages.

"But successful films have to be doing something right even if it is on purely a technical level."

That something is to make adverts that make a movie look exciting to most people, and to exploit franchise familiarity to guarantee a large audience interest.

Superman Returns had the same exciting adverts and franchise familiarity (probably even more as this movie was based around the old Superman movies that seem to be most people's only familiarity with the franchise), and it failed.

Man of Steel is much better than Superman Returns (and this is coming from someone who thinks Superman Returns was okay and doesn't deserve the massive hate it gets).

Man of Steel took advantage of more than one franchise. This was post Dark Knight, and had Nolan's name and coveted grim darkness slapped all over it. Holding onto the coat tails of one of the most successful films of all time is always helpful.

^ That's not even a criticism.

It is when you remember Superman is not Batman, and the dark tone isn't the most appropriate for this kind of character.

^ I don't see why.

^^ You do realize that this tone is consistent with modern-era Superman, right? Superman isn't just the Christopher Reeve movies and Silver Age comic books, ya know. Hell, this version of Superman is actually less dark than the New 52 version, which starred a rather arrogant Superman rather than the conflicted but nice guy of Man of Steel.

I can safely say that the best thing about Man of Steel is the trailer. It was a really damn good trailer that made the movie look more fun than it actually was.

Also, that Pa Kent scene with the tornado is one of the worst scenes in a movie I have ever seen. It makes no sense on a character or conceptual level. It treats the characters as one dimensional symbols instead of people who have lived together and care about each other.

Then I guess you haven't seen a lot of movies, my friend. I'm pretty sure sacrificing yourself to insure the safety and future of someone you love is a pretty good sign of care, and the repercussions of that sacrifice are pretty long standing. I think I would have done the same thing in Pa Kent's situation. Do that, or live knowing my son will be hounded by the world when he's still barely a man, not knowing a thing about himself. The sad thing about the scene is that it highlights Superman's life as a strange one full of turmoil BECAUSE he is different, BECAUSE he is not yet ready to choose his destiny. Didn't your father ever take a blow for you, or your mother? Pa Kent was not a perfect father, but in the end, he did what he thought was right for his son, even if it meant leaving him, because he knew if Clark revealed himself then, fully, without doubt as to if it's all some "divine miracle", then it'd be over. Clark's life would be over, and the world would be a very different place, or worse yet, it wouldn't be at all. Just because a character does something you don't agree with or you don't find "logical" doesn't mean it's stupid or horrible. People do "illogical" things every day because of who they are and what they believe in. Not everyone is some perfect paragon of truth and justice and not everyone is some monster beyond the gates of Hell. Even Superman, especially here, is just a man trying to do what is right. And Pa Kent did what he thought was right as well, he stuck to his beliefs, and ultimately, he accomplished what he set out to do: to help Clark learn about himself, and set himself on the road to be mankind's light.

You would have needlessly sacrificed yourself to save a dog and left your family a widow and an orphan, all because you're worried that one of the approximately zero people who aren't running away from the tornado might see your son do something mildly heroic by pulling your leg out of a car. Wow. It doesn't even make sense because we've seen Clark reveal himself in much more obvious ways, including the time he saved the bus.

Pa Kent's sacrifice is ludicrous and selfish and senseless, and it only is done because the writers were thinking of the character as a mouthpiece for one point of view instead of an actual flesh and blood human being.

We've seen Clark reveal himself before, but it was in front of only a few people. Only Pete Ross, Lana, and a couple others saw it, and they were all kids whi were in an accident, so most people will just assume the kids hallucinated it. During the tornado scene, Clark would be more revealing (as he'd need super speed AND super strength to rescue his Dad), and since the people watching are no longer in immediate danger (they're all hiding under the overpass and watching), Clark's abilities can't be written off as a traumatic hallucination any more. So Johnathan Kent (ACTING AS A FATHER WITH HIS WORLDVIEW WILL ACT) tells Clark to let him die because neither the world nor Clark himself is ready to show off his abilities just yet, because an angsty, conflicted teenager being rejected and feared by society is not a good combination with superpowers. Johnathan Kent is trying to avoid his son turning into Superboy Prime, essentially, and it was a selfless act to do so.

Maybe you should think things through before you start mouthing off complaints. Remember, this is not a world where people like Superman are commonplace. Clark's existence will literally change the world, and if the change happens before Clark and the world are ready, it's going to change for the worse.

@Scardoll After writing my response, I feel the line "Maybe you should think things through before you start mouthing off complaints." was uncalled for (I guess I was just in a bad mood when I wrote it) even if I disagree with you, so I apologize for that.

I WILL admit that Pa Kent's sacrifice wasn't THE greatest thing to do, but it wasn't selfish and stupid, it was kind of like one of those sacrifices a person makes to help someone else even though it'll pretty much fuck them over, which it did. In fact, the act was much like many of Clark's own, helping people and such even if it'd cost him his current identity or cast real suspicion upon it. So, yeah, I'll agree that Pa Kent didn't 100% HAVE to do it, as it's still possible the whole thing would have been fine, but he was scared shitless about people and Clark. Pa Kent obviously didn't have the best opinion of people, and did what he did because of what he believed of people and his son. So I think the criticism that it "wasn't necessary" isn't really wrong so much as it is a different look at the action. I will also admit that sometimes the people in the movie do things that are more dramatic or angsty than something else, because, you know, some people in real life don't always do the greatest/best or the most self-serving thing to do in a situation, and plus, you know, it's a movie, so some characters are going to take the more dramatic route.