Rate MAN OF STEEL......once and for all

[Rodrigo90]

Watching it now and I'm 25 minutes in. I'll give updates of my assessment.

In the first 25 minutes, I'm blown away by the effects.
If Snyder painted pictures the way he shoots on film, I'd buy them.

Now, my criticisms. The constant music in the background...I hate **** like that. It happens a lot nowadays, it's very distracting and takes you out of what the characters are trying to say. It doesn't enhance anything. Is it done because they know that some of the dialogue is not that great or the performances and to distract from Shannon's constant mumbling?
The whole Kryptonian codex thing...is it really that necessary? What's the point of Jor-El infusing it into baby Kal? How does it preserve the Kryptonian race, if there's no way for Superman to personally extract it from himself later on and use it...for whatever reason Jor-El thinks he may use it for? The holographic memory of him never instructs Clark to use it, it just sort of gets forgotten about.They could've done without it because it really doesn't add anything, it's just a plot device to get Zod going after Superman. The whole terraforming plot would've been sufficient enough.

And this Clark/Superman is written very dull. I can understand why the flashbacks are used; to detail the reasons why he's isolated from society and always on the wonder.
But in Batman Begins, the flashbacks were used effectively for the plot of the story. The flashbacks here just used to excuse why the character is dull and they serve no bearing on the main story.

Oh and little Clark's line
"The world's too big, mom" What 5 year old says that and why did he?

An hour and 15 minutes in.

Not much to say. It's buildup of Clark's character, Lois' involvement and the arrival of Zod.

So, to comment on Clark's character. Jor-El explains where he came from and about choice of destiny (still no mention of the codex) and from there, it's about Lois tracking him down.
And you can see where the previous flashbacks came into reason, just so that we know what Lois was referring to by tracking down Pete Ross.
And again, when she does track down Clark, it's explained, once more, through flashback.
It's over relying on them to explain away everything.

And the film is extremely guilty of bowing down to ways of inserting Lois into the plot, almost to the point of absurdity...She conveniently manages to spot Clark entering the ship...and conveniently brought upon Zod's ship, for reasons unknown.
Then is conveniently brought along on the ride later on.

 

[Rodrigo90]

Finished it....

And I still can't love it. I've tried, and God loves a trier.

I stand by what I say. All its first half is exposition. Constant expository dialogue and exposition within flashbacks. There's no dramatic weight or payoff to anything. They're just explaining everything that you should know from Superman The Movie.
I couldn't care less about the plot, because it's pretty much all over the place. The film has no clear direction about what it's trying to tell, and if it does, it certainly doesn't do anything to convey its message clearly, because I have no idea what it is.

It's just an hour setting up Superman in the most blandest way, and then another hour having him fight the villain.

I have no issue with what he did to Zod, as many still do. It was foreshadowed in Zod's words before the fight, and what he said makes sense if you placed that sentiment onto Superman.

But I still can't forgive that ending...He's just done a totally shocking thing, that leaves the aghast...then it's totally forgotten about after that. Never addressed to give anybody watching some sense of closure.

I'll go into deeper if I must, but my score as a whole, is 6/10.

 

[kguillou]

Man of Steel is a beautifully looking, edge of your seat production of a filmsy script, with average performances. That's the problem I've always had with rating this movie; in some senses it's a great movie, in others it's terrible.

My biggest problem is the characters don't feel lived in, at all. Change isn't bad, but we should've really gotten to know Lois, Perry White, Ma Kent. I feel like Warner Bros is launching a cinematic universe before they even launch Superman properly.

Tonally, I would preferred something in between what we got and the original Donner films. I'm okay with this being a serious film, but Superman should be inspirational, and leave you with a sense of hope. A film can be uplifting without being silly, and I found Man of Steel was anything but uplifting.

I went with average. This is a 4/5 star film visually, with a 2 star script.

I could dig this assesment. There definitely needed to be more character development and world building for sure. But it is a gorgeous looking, thrilling film.

 

[Stefon]

Excellent return to form after the dire Superman returns.

The scene where clark beehotch-slaps Zod through a cornfield, made me geekgasm like a 15 year-old fangirl at a Hunger Games premiere.

 

[Rodrigo90]

Such reckless behaviour.

Leaving his mother behind with the rest of the crew, not knowing what they could've done to her, as he got angry with Zod.

Reckless

 

[Rowsdower!]

Such reckless behaviour.

Leaving his mother behind with the rest of the crew, not knowing what they could've done to her, as he got angry with Zod.

Reckless

As opposed to ditching earth without telling anyone but his mom so he could go look around a dead rock for 5 years?

 

[SiegePerilous]

I voted "Very Good." If I were to give a letter grade, it would probably be B/B-.

Most of my problems stem from the stilted and exposition heavy dialogue, and even that was only distractingly bad in a couple instances ("dicksplash" being the big one, Holy God). My other issues include the Jesus symbolism which could have been toned down a few notches, the Pa Kent death scene not being executed 100% (would have been better if Clark was younger I think) and touching on the aftermath of the battle.

Otherwise, a lot of the common complaints that this movie gets don't hold up when actually examined:
- Jonathan Kent is apparently an abusive psychopath who bathes in the blood of children: Yeah, no. All we got is an extremely half-assed "maybe" which we learned was total BS during the tornado scene where he dies saving a dog. Clark clearly got his altruistic side by learning from his father. Speaking of which:
- Superman doesn't care about anybody: I guess spending all those years helping people, saving the guys on the oil rig, saving that one soldier who was shooting at him not minutes before, saving Lois repeatedly, saving the entire planet from genocide and saving that family from Zod at the end all indicate that he doesn't care anything about the puny humans.
- His code against killing isn't adequately established: He avoids getting into fights all his life because he is afraid of merely hurting people. It's not much of a logical leap to assume he's not down with killing, which is generally frowned upon more by society than injuring someone.
- Superman never kills: He totally does. He killed Zod multiple times in the previous films and comics, kills Mr. Mxysptlk in Alan Moore's story, and most famously killed Doomsday, to say nothing of the many nameless mooks he killed in the Golden Age. MoS Clark comes across like much less of a sociopath than many of these other versions.
- Everything is Superman's fault: Clark may have accidentally alerted the Kryptonians to his existence, but nobody forced Zod and his crew to start killing everybody. To say otherwise is disrespecting the agency of the villains. They made their own choices. And Superman intervening (by himself, on his first day on the job against an army of genocidal warriors all better trained in combat than he is, let's cut the guy a break) didn't make things worse in anyway, because not doing anything at all would result in everyone everywhere being dead, and I think that's a little worse than a few city blocks being wrecked by the bad guys.
- Speaking of the bad guys, Zod and Faora > every Marvel villain except maybe Loki, and even he could get tedious if they use him too much. And that's even with Goyer's flawed script. With Terrio on board, and the Big Guns like Joker, Luthor, Darkseid and others on the way, the competition is about to get wrecked in terms of villains.

Overall, MoS is definitely inferior to the Dark Knight trilogy, and Marvel films like Avengers, TWS and GoTG ( and will likely be lacking in comparison to their respective sequels). But I think it's as good or better than anything else Marvel has given us.

I mean, it isn't Thor.

 

[BH/HHH]

Watching this film again the other night, it honestly just gets better for me everytime I see it. I find Clark's journey so satisfying, his uncertainty & pain as a child (brilliantly portrayed by Cooper Timberline and later Dylan Sprayberry) all the way to Henry Cavill's spot on performamce as Clark/Kal El when we see him become more assured, confident and finally knowing his purpose in life is amazing to watch. They really couldn't have cast anyone better for the role in the modern day.

On the other side Amy Adams gives us the best version of Lois Lane yet, she feels like a real character and not only there to be saved by Superman. She does a hell of a lot of saving herself.

Michael Shannon is superb as General Zod, this interpretation is nothing like Terence Stamp's portrayal (which is the correct decision for this movie). He's in many ways not even a villain, he's very much a man who is doing what he believes is right. A very bold move and a great one.

There are other performances I could gush over but I won't go over those again for this.

The score is fantastic, instead of trying to recreate what John Williams did they gave us something new. Something to fit this generations Superman. The new theme is simply amazing, it creates the sense of hope that any Superman theme should but it also fits the theme of the movie. My favourite part of the score is the music in the Escape From Blake Zero scene (which also happens to be my favourite segment of the movie), it has an 80s sci fi/action feel to it that I love.

When it gets down to it Man of Steel took risks and is better for it, they finally gave us that Superman action we had been craving in a modern Superman film and it's just unbelievably brilliant.

I really can do nothing more than praise Snyder, Nolan, Goyer etc for delivering this movie. They took some risks (Jonathan Kent's reluctances, Superman snapping Zod's neck, etc) but they worked and gave us what in my opinion is the single best comic book film ever made. I just hope Batman v Superman is as good and if it's better then I'm in for an even bigger treat.

 

[BH/HHH]

Posted by mistake

 

[Neovangelon]

As opposed to ditching earth without telling anyone but his mom so he could go look around a dead rock for 5 years?

Amen, brother. Preach it! Returns is truly full of fail.

Loved Man of Steel. It has its flaws, but the new Krypton stuff was a breath of fresh air.

I always hated the Logan's Run-meets-Hoth Krypton is the 70's movies.

 

[Keehar]

I like the movie, but from the posts in this thread it sounds like some of you have watched it more times than you can count, which I don't get.

I've watched it three times. That's more than I watch most movies, and for now, I'm done.

Some movies are easier to watch multiple times than others. The Godfather is not a movie I'd watch many times over, even though it's brilliant, because it's so long and heavy, and I need to be in the mood to watch it.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Amen, brother. Preach it! Returns is truly full of fail.

Loved Man of Steel. It has its flaws, but the new Krypton stuff was a breath of fresh air.

I always hated the Logan's Run-meets-Hoth Krypton is the 70's movies.

Yeah. MOS has it's flaws, but I've maintained from day one that ALL of these movies do. Sure, some have more than others, but for my money, MOS got a lot more right than it got wrong and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experiences that I've watched many times. SR was a snoozefest and the writers clearly had no idea what to do with Superman, hence the reason he barely spoke (other than to occasionally rehash some lines from the Donner film) and had practically no personality.

 

[Rodrigo90]

As opposed to ditching earth without telling anyone but his mom so he could go look around a dead rock for 5 years?

This Superman fella is a truly dispicable creature!

 

[HAMMER]

SR was a snoozefest and the writers clearly had no idea what to do with Superman, hence the reason he barely spoke (other than to occasionally rehash some lines from the Donner film) and had practically no personality.

Funny, your criticisms of Clark in SR are my criticisms of Superman in MoS. He was wooden, uninteresting and had no charisma. Couple that with nonsensical over the top action that serves no other purpose then to Bay it up, and to me MoS was the snoozefest.

I'm not partial to Superman Returns either, but for entirely different reasons.

 

[Infinight888]

- His code against killing isn't adequately established: He avoids getting into fights all his life because he is afraid of merely hurting people. It's not much of a logical leap to assume he's not down with killing, which is generally frowned upon more by society than injuring someone.

But the people he avoided fighting with were bullies and thugs, not murderers and their like. There's a big difference between killing someone who is a minor irritation to you and killing somebody who goes out of their way to kill other people.

Batman begins very clearly established that Batman doesn't kill in the beginning, giving a scenario where he was expected to kill a criminal, and refused. So when Bruce let Ra's die at the end, bending his own rules (though not actually breaking them), there was some sense of loss. I didn't feel that when Superman killed Zod, even with his scream and the music telling me that I should.

 

[DawnOfJustice16]

Excellent, my favourite comic book movie of all-time. It was everything I wanted in a Superman movie.

Same here .

 

[The Batman]

Michael Shannon is superb as General Zod, this interpretation is nothing like Terence Stamp's portrayal (which is the correct decision for this movie). He's in many ways not even a villain, he's very much a man who is doing what he believes is right. A very bold move and a great one.

You just described 95% of every modern CBM villain. IMO, In the larger scheme of things, there is nothing particularly bold or innovative about MOS. Bold for a Superman film maybe (And I stress the word maybe), but most of the things MOS does, other CBM's have done.

 

[Rodrigo90]

Ra's al Ghul was a far superior villain in that regard...AND....he didn't mumble

 

[I Am The Knight]

6/10. It's a movie you watch mostly for the visuals and score.

 

[SiegePerilous]

But the people he avoided fighting with were bullies and thugs, not murderers and their like. There's a big difference between killing someone who is a minor irritation to you and killing somebody who goes out of their way to kill other people.

Batman begins very clearly established that Batman doesn't kill in the beginning, giving a scenario where he was expected to kill a criminal, and refused. So when Bruce let Ra's die at the end, bending his own rules (though not actually breaking them), there was some sense of loss. I didn't feel that when Superman killed Zod, even with his scream and the music telling me that I should.

True, but we don't know that Clark didn't encounter more serious problems like murderers and rapists during his travels. Even without directly fighting them, someone with his powers would be able to stop human criminals with little effort. The danger of them actually succeeding in killing their targets while Clark is around is significantly smaller than with Zod, who actually poses a threat to someone of Clark's power level.

I don't really feel that the film needed to establish Clark's stance on killing before the Zod encounter. The average person isn't really gung ho about killing anyone, and despite his alieness, Clark lead a pretty normal life in a small town. Most people like that would have a pretty traumatic reaction to killing someone for the first time, no matter if it was the right call to make.

And this scene is probably the equivalent of that scene with Bruce in Batman Begins. They both establish the main character's "no kill" code for future installments. And unlike Bruce, Clark wasn't preparing himself for getting into brutal fights against hardened criminals, so there really isn't any reason for why he should think about such a scenario ahead of time.

 

[BH/HHH]

You just described 95% of every modern CBM villain. IMO, In the larger scheme of things, there is nothing particularly bold or innovative about MOS. Bold for a Superman film maybe (And I stress the word maybe), but most of the things MOS does, other CBM's have done.

In your opinion.

Zod in MOS was unlike any villain I've seen in a CBM before. Admittedly there are similarities in that the villain doesnt think they are but Zod truly cared about Krypton and Kryptonians.

 

[BH/HHH]

Ra's al Ghul was a far superior villain in that regard...AND....he didn't mumble

Thats your opinion but again you finush it off with some childish comment. I'd say you're borderline trolling in this thread with the little snide remarks you keep making.

 

[Naked Shia]

I voted "Very Good." If I were to give a letter grade, it would probably be B/B-.

Most of my problems stem from the stilted and exposition heavy dialogue, and even that was only distractingly bad in a couple instances ("dicksplash" being the big one, Holy God). My other issues include the Jesus symbolism which could have been toned down a few notches, the Pa Kent death scene not being executed 100% (would have been better if Clark was younger I think) and touching on the aftermath of the battle.

Otherwise, a lot of the common complaints that this movie gets don't hold up when actually examined:
- Jonathan Kent is apparently an abusive psychopath who bathes in the blood of children: Yeah, no. All we got is an extremely half-assed "maybe" which we learned was total BS during the tornado scene where he dies saving a dog. Clark clearly got his altruistic side by learning from his father. Speaking of which:
- Superman doesn't care about anybody: I guess spending all those years helping people, saving the guys on the oil rig, saving that one soldier who was shooting at him not minutes before, saving Lois repeatedly, saving the entire planet from genocide and saving that family from Zod at the end all indicate that he doesn't care anything about the puny humans.
- His code against killing isn't adequately established: He avoids getting into fights all his life because he is afraid of merely hurting people. It's not much of a logical leap to assume he's not down with killing, which is generally frowned upon more by society than injuring someone.
- Superman never kills: He totally does. He killed Zod multiple times in the previous films and comics, kills Mr. Mxysptlk in Alan Moore's story, and most famously killed Doomsday, to say nothing of the many nameless mooks he killed in the Golden Age. MoS Clark comes across like much less of a sociopath than many of these other versions.
- Everything is Superman's fault: Clark may have accidentally alerted the Kryptonians to his existence, but nobody forced Zod and his crew to start killing everybody. To say otherwise is disrespecting the agency of the villains. They made their own choices. And Superman intervening (by himself, on his first day on the job against an army of genocidal warriors all better trained in combat than he is, let's cut the guy a break) didn't make things worse in anyway, because not doing anything at all would result in everyone everywhere being dead, and I think that's a little worse than a few city blocks being wrecked by the bad guys.
- Speaking of the bad guys, Zod and Faora > every Marvel villain except maybe Loki, and even he could get tedious if they use him too much. And that's even with Goyer's flawed script. With Terrio on board, and the Big Guns like Joker, Luthor, Darkseid and others on the way, the competition is about to get wrecked in terms of villains.

Overall, MoS is definitely inferior to the Dark Knight trilogy, and Marvel films like Avengers, TWS and GoTG ( and will likely be lacking in comparison to their respective sequels). But I think it's as good or better than anything else Marvel has given us.

I mean, it isn't Thor.

great post, both funny and interesting. I agree with all your points, save for your conclusion.

 

[DeadPresident]

I voted "Very Good." If I were to give a letter grade, it would probably be B/B-.

Most of my problems stem from the stilted and exposition heavy dialogue, and even that was only distractingly bad in a couple instances ("dicksplash" being the big one, Holy God). My other issues include the Jesus symbolism which could have been toned down a few notches, the Pa Kent death scene not being executed 100% (would have been better if Clark was younger I think) and touching on the aftermath of the battle.

Otherwise, a lot of the common complaints that this movie gets don't hold up when actually examined:
- Jonathan Kent is apparently an abusive psychopath who bathes in the blood of children: Yeah, no. All we got is an extremely half-assed "maybe" which we learned was total BS during the tornado scene where he dies saving a dog. Clark clearly got his altruistic side by learning from his father. Speaking of which:
- Superman doesn't care about anybody: I guess spending all those years helping people, saving the guys on the oil rig, saving that one soldier who was shooting at him not minutes before, saving Lois repeatedly, saving the entire planet from genocide and saving that family from Zod at the end all indicate that he doesn't care anything about the puny humans.
- His code against killing isn't adequately established: He avoids getting into fights all his life because he is afraid of merely hurting people. It's not much of a logical leap to assume he's not down with killing, which is generally frowned upon more by society than injuring someone.
- Superman never kills: He totally does. He killed Zod multiple times in the previous films and comics, kills Mr. Mxysptlk in Alan Moore's story, and most famously killed Doomsday, to say nothing of the many nameless mooks he killed in the Golden Age. MoS Clark comes across like much less of a sociopath than many of these other versions.
- Everything is Superman's fault: Clark may have accidentally alerted the Kryptonians to his existence, but nobody forced Zod and his crew to start killing everybody. To say otherwise is disrespecting the agency of the villains. They made their own choices. And Superman intervening (by himself, on his first day on the job against an army of genocidal warriors all better trained in combat than he is, let's cut the guy a break) didn't make things worse in anyway, because not doing anything at all would result in everyone everywhere being dead, and I think that's a little worse than a few city blocks being wrecked by the bad guys.
- Speaking of the bad guys, Zod and Faora > every Marvel villain except maybe Loki, and even he could get tedious if they use him too much. And that's even with Goyer's flawed script. With Terrio on board, and the Big Guns like Joker, Luthor, Darkseid and others on the way, the competition is about to get wrecked in terms of villains.

Overall, MoS is definitely inferior to the Dark Knight trilogy, and Marvel films like Avengers, TWS and GoTG ( and will likely be lacking in comparison to their respective sequels). But I think it's as good or better than anything else Marvel has given us.

I mean, it isn't Thor.

Dat logic tho

 

[Rodrigo90]

Thats your opinion but again you finush it off with some childish comment. I'd say you're borderline trolling in this thread with the little snide remarks you keep making.

Childish comment?
Trolling?
Snide remarks?

Me?