TMOS Review & Speculation Thread (Spoilers) - Part 3

[marcvader]

Personally it's because there was a dearth of '****, that's Superman' scenes as a viewer. Scenes that are iconic and would have me cheering.

It's a major I had gripe with the action sequences. Every superhero film that I've truly enjoyed has had an organic feel to its action and also evoked the core of the hero and brings out that sense of wonder at their powers.

For example, Batman's return in the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises. Or even when he goes 'I'm Batman' in Begins. Same like the tracking shot in the Avengers or when you see the heroes back to back and ready to kick rumble. There's other films too, but memory's fuzzy.

The action in Man of Steel felt very...technical. It was visually perfect but that emotional feeling wasn't there and just happened without much joy. Fans of the action genre probably enjoyed it, but it's not for me.

I prefer a sense of wonder to the action even if it's not as technically proficient as what was presented in Man of Steel. Kind of why the duels in the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi win over the prequel ones.

I agree 100%. The movie just seems like it lacks spirit or something to me. Seemed very calculated and cold and the relentless devastation seemed too much after a while.

 

[sf2]

Understood. The hero saving innocent or property while fighting against the villains. Then we see thru the innocent eyes how awe n thankful s/he is that the hero present right before them; with a friendly smile would be perfect.

So without the scene, MOS automatically sucks?

 

[BatLobster]

Man, I loved TDKR before and I think MoS only made me appreciate the Nolan Bat-films even more.

The thing is, even though TDKR and MoS both have that very fast pacing that makes things feel a bit choppy in places...TDKR is able to get away with it, mainly because it's a threequel and we've now spent 2 films establishing the universe and emotionally investing in the characters. Because of MoS was the first film in a franchise, they needed to lay a little more groundwork for the characters. In a lot of ways it feels like an origin film and a sequel smashed together.

Bottom line, TDKR (and all of the Nolan Bat-films) HAD me from frame one to the end. I never stopped being emotionally invested. I don't know if MoS had me at all. It felt like a bunch of amazing images just whizzed by my face. And the emotional flashback stuff there was just didn't land with me. Overall, I just feel like the "Nolan approach" was AMAZING for Batman and less-than amazing for Superman.

So yeah, MoS has finally showed me what people who didn't like TDKR must have felt like. On that note, I respect the opinion of those that felt the movie worked. A second or third viewing might change my mind. I'm listening to the Modern Myth Media podcast and all of them LOVED the movie. I always respect their opinions and usually agree with them. This might be the first time I had a radically different reaction than them.

 

[BlueLantern]

Understood. The hero saving innocent or property while fighting against the villains. Then we see thru the innocent eyes how awe n thankful s/he is that the hero present right before them; with a friendly smile would be perfect.

So without the scene, MOS automatically sucks?

Are you purposefully misinterpreting people's views or just misunderstanding them?

A large majority of people who've voiced issues have still gone on record saying that the film as a whole was fine but struggled in certain places.

 

[sf2]

Are you purposefully misinterpreting people's views or just misunderstanding them?

A large majority of people who've voiced issues have still gone on record saying that the film as a whole was fine but struggled in certain places.

Therefore it's valid for nonstop whining?

 

[BlueLantern]

Therefore it's valid for nonstop whining?

Irony meet sf2. Sf2 meet irony.

Most of us are having constructive discussions concerning the merits and demerits of the film and then you roll in with 'Amagad this film is amazin! How can u no like MOSes?'

Join in with the constructive discussion or keep doing what you're doing it. It doesn't matter, but don't misconstrue people's sentiments.

 

[Rock Sexton]

Irony meet sf2. Sf2 meet irony.

Most of us are having constructive discussions concerning the merits and demerits of the film and then you roll in with 'Amagad this film is amazin! How can u no like MOSes?

Join in with the constructive discussion or keep doing what you're doing it. It doesn't matter, but don't misconstrue people's sentiments.

+1 ..... very well said. You had me laughing too with the highlighted part.

 

[sf2]

Constructive discussion???
Hmmm... the result must be very fruitful I guess.
U r like broken recoder... repeat repeat n repeat... whining whining n more whining.

Anyway have put u in my ignore list.

 

[~.:/|T-MaN|\:.~]

Man, I loved TDKR before and I think MoS only made me appreciate the Nolan Bat-films even more.

The thing is, even though TDKR and MoS both have that very fast pacing that makes things feel a bit choppy in places...TDKR is able to get away with it, mainly because it's a threequel and we've now spent 2 films establishing the universe and emotionally investing in the characters. Because of MoS was the first film in a franchise, they needed to lay a little more groundwork for the characters. In a lot of ways it feels like an origin film and a sequel smashed together.

Bottom line, TDKR (and all of the Nolan Bat-films) HAD me from frame one to the end. I never stopped being emotionally invested. I don't know if MoS had me at all. It felt like a bunch of amazing images just whizzed by my face. And the emotional flashback stuff there was just didn't land with me. Overall, I just feel like the "Nolan approach" was AMAZING for Batman and less-than amazing for Superman.

So yeah, MoS has finally showed me what people who didn't like TDKR must have felt like. On that note, I respect the opinion of those that felt the movie worked. A second or third viewing might change my mind. I'm listening to the Modern Myth Media podcast and all of them LOVED the movie. I always respect their opinions and usually agree with them. This might be the first time I had a radically different reaction than them.

Agree x 1000000

 

[BlueLantern]

Constructive discussion???
Hmmm... the result must be very fruitful I guess.
U r like broken recoder... repeat repeat n repeat... whining whining n more whining.

Anyway have put u in my ignore list.

 

[iamsilvio]

I'm in total shock of how many people actually are liking this film in the slightest. I mean this is more than a bad superhero movie, it's a bad movie in general. Now, every film will have it's plot holes, but this is complete Swiss cheese. The editing was terrible. The effects were terrible. The acting was flat. Superman killed more people than he saved. "you can save them all......except the millions you just killed". I mean there was ZERO wonder in this film at all. The first two Reeve films had wonder. You got excited when he saved Lois from the helicopter and when he asked Zod to step outside. But in MOS...nothing. So much was wrong. Lois being told to stay in side cause it will be below 40 degrees. Two seconds later she is in rough terrain in the bitter cold with a hat and a scarf. Come on! No one knew what the hell was going on in this film. Why would Lois know more than Superman on how to save everyone? Why is Jor-El hanging around opening doors like a wizard? Did he die? Superman flopping around trying to learn to fly? Who is he, the great American hero? Did he lose the instruction booklet? If the general knows Superman grew up in Kansas, Lois knows who he is, the kids on the bus know who he is...why he is still hiding? Everyone meet Clark, who is Superman, Superman this is everyone. Well not everyone in Metropolis....only Perry, the bald guy, and Jenny Olson seemed to live. And did Johnathon Kent really go out like that? He waved good bye as the Tornado gently carried him away? The town knows about Clark, why he still hiding his powers to save his Dad? Oh, and the scene where Clark is wearing the red cape, running around the back yard...who is he pretending to be? Did anyone was to take a moment to discuss the fact that there were aliens? No one was shocked. No one cared that millions died? I thought Superman would have. We need to bury this one and hope someone and really bring Superman back better than this. We deserve it.

I totally agree with you. Whats sad is that the movie goers today can no longer tell what is a good film. Think about the classics like Terminator 2, Predator, Die Hard. Those were great action films!

 

[Hcmarvel]

Oh my God...the scene that may have been the absolute worst in the film was this:

Jenny Olson gets trapped under rubble. Kal-El has no connection to this character. The audience has NO connection to this character. I should say, I didn't care that they made Jimmy Olson a girl but at least if this had been Jimmy in peril, at least the audience would know "oh, that's Jimmy, eventually he'll be Superman's pal. I hope he doesn't die." But no one in the audience knows that except internet geeks. So we don't care about this girl.

And then we have Perry and House of Cards guy trying to save her, which is nice, but shouldn't we see them doing this as a direct result of being inspired by Superman? Isn't the theme of this movie, or one of them, that Superman will inspire us to be a better species? If Perry is already a good enough dude to try to save Jenny, then superman isn't really here to raise us to new heights, just prevent us from dying. And we're only dying because he's on our planet.

I dunno, that one sequence just typified a lot of the problems this movie had.

 

[Rock Sexton]

Oh my God...the scene that may have been the absolute worst in the film was this:

Jenny Olson gets trapped under rubble. Kal-El has no connection to this character. The audience has NO connection to this character. I should say, I didn't care that they made Jimmy Olson a girl but at least if this had been Jimmy in peril, at least the audience would know "oh, that's Jimmy, eventually he'll be Superman's pal. I hope he doesn't die." But no one in the audience knows that except internet geeks. So we don't care about this girl.

And then we have Perry and House of Cards guy trying to save her, which is nice, but shouldn't we see them doing this as a direct result of being inspired by Superman? Isn't the theme of this movie, or one of them, that Superman will inspire us to be a better species? If Perry is already a good enough dude to try to save Jenny, then superman isn't really here to raise us to new heights, just prevent us from dying. And we're only dying because he's on our planet.

I dunno, that one sequence just typified a lot of the problems this movie had.

Ya, I would've left that whole scene on the cutting room floor.

 

[sabrecmc]

New here, though I've been lurking mainly on the Star Wars forums for awhile now. Saw MoS this weekend along with 4 other, very varied, people (my 62 year old mom, younger gamer brother and his Batman-fan wife, and my co-worker who is a Star Trek/Dr. Who geek). So, an interesting mix. Really, we all ended up with basically the same reaction. It was strongly...ok. Not awful. We liked the guy playing Superman. But, we all left feeling "meh."

The across the board complaints were:

• Plot Device!Jor-El! Enough already. Information and escape did not feel earned, just doled out to move things along.
• Collateral Damage Fail. Everyone was really bothered by the fight scenes. You can get from across the world to Metropolis in a couple minutes but can't move that fight to a less populated area? Maybe at least try to avoid buildings? As my mom said, "You boys need to take that outside!"
• Where's the joy? We all missed the joy and humor of earlier films. Even our Batman-fanatic/Nolan worshipper said that the tone felt wrong. No one cracked a smile until almost the end of the film. Our theater was dead silent.
• Paging Mr. Editor! At least 30 minutes too long.
• Jar Jar Attacks! Seriously, Krypton looked like prequel trilogy stuff.
• Hans Zimmer, you, sir, are no John Williams.

A majority of us, though not everyone, did not find Amy Adams' Lois Lane to feel like Lois, though this may be because we are Donner-era/Lois & Clark/Smallville people. She was smart and brave and kind and understanding and just.not.Lois, who is sometimes obnoxious and self-centered. But, I always thought Supes kind of liked a bit of the bad girl or he'd have stayed with Lana. Anyway, that was just one point of view and not shared by everyone in my little circle.


Ok, so that was a downer. But, all in all, we also felt like we wanted to see more. A better movie seemed to be in this cast somewhere. We all really liked HC as Superman. We liked the point that he was essentially an alien and this was first contact for us lowly humans, so it was A Big Thing. We liked the idea of the sci-fi elements, the pre-destination vs. choice theme, nature vs. nurture, etc., just not so much the execution of the Krypton scenes.

None of us have read Superman comics, so I'm sure some of the above is probably from some particular comic or era or whatever. I'm just reporting thoughts of general audience members who love sci-fi and comics in general and want to see more of this stuff. We all wanted to love the movie, really. I don't know if our expectations were too high or what (I did see Sucker Punch, so I really don't think mine were that high, lol). Anyway, that was our take.

 

[Rock Sexton]

A better movie seemed to be in this cast somewhere. We all really liked HC as Superman. We liked the point that he was essentially an alien and this was first contact for us lowly humans, so it was A Big Thing. We liked the idea of the sci-fi elements, the pre-destination vs. choice theme, nature vs. nurture, etc., just not so much the execution of the Krypton scenes.

None of us have read Superman comics, so I'm sure some of the above is probably from some particular comic or era or whatever. I'm just reporting thoughts of general audience members who love sci-fi and comics in general and want to see more of this stuff. We all wanted to love the movie, really. I don't know if our expectations were too high or what (I did see Sucker Punch, so I really don't think mine were that high, lol). Anyway, that was our take.

I was saying the same thing. The foundation was there for a great film, especially because of the themes in play. The problem became that they didn't know how to properly execute those same themes without verbally re-stating them over and over again. They just kept beating that drum the whole movie.

I'm also a fan of non-linear editing and I thought my boy Snyder needed to lay off it after a while and let the movie flow naturally. Goyer's script just wasn't good enough to utilize that method.

 

[Paladin-Hoss]

Ok, just for the record, i haven't seen this movie yet...

To those complaining about the destruction during Supes fight with Zod etc, the main complain seems to be; Superman just didn't seem to care about the wanton destruction he caused! 'etc etc..'why didn't he try to save the people?

Well...isn't stopping Zod then the main focus if he's trying to save people? i mean, rescuing people while Zod still around causing mayhem would be pretty stupid...

Like i said, i don't know all the facts,i haven't seen the movie yet, so i dunno ablout all the details...

 

[batman1115]

Well...the GA loves it.

As did I.

but am i wrong in anything I posted? did anyone see the same movie i did?

 

[batman1115]

I totally agree with you. Whats sad is that the movie goers today can no longer tell what is a good film. Think about the classics like Terminator 2, Predator, Die Hard. Those were great action films!

It's just weird that everyone who liked it seems to just let all this go.

 

[chamber-music]

Just saw it and I loved it.
A 9 out of 10 movie for me.
I thought it was great.

 

[BlueLantern]

Ok, just for the record, i haven't seen this movie yet...

To those complaining about the destruction during Supes fight with Zod etc, the main complain seems to be; Superman just didn't seem to care about the wanton destruction he caused! 'etc etc..'why didn't he try to save the people?

Well...isn't stopping Zod then the main focus if he's trying to save people? i mean, rescuing people while Zod still around causing mayhem would be pretty stupid...

Like i said, i don't know all the facts,i haven't seen the movie yet, so i dunno ablout all the details...

Let me break down a relatively simple scene for you. It's not a game breaker in terms of the plot. Don't worry.

Clark is fighting Nam-Ek and Faora. Something or the other explodes and one of the choppers firing at the three of them begins to fall from the sky. As it does, an Officer falls from the chopper and Superman creates a window of time so that he can fly up to save him. Clark brings him to the ground.

He asks him if he's okay, but before he can respond, Nam-Ek punches Clark out of the shot. To make matters worse, whilst he was saving that one guy, the chopper crashes into the ground and **** goes south. Now call me crazy, but a simpler move would've been to fly upwards towards the chopper, put the guy in and land it during that window.

He had enough time. But instead the filmmakers were more obsessed with continuing the fight in a fairly monotonous fashion where just more stuff similarly got crashed into, crashed, exploded or got thrown at by the involved parties.

More so, Clark was gladly fighting in restaurants and public spots with the simple dialogue of 'go indoors, it's not safe (but hey, I'll be crashing in through the windows soon enough!)'

The emotional stakes were low and the popcorn stakes were sky high. It could've been done better. But it wasn't. It's that kind of stuff that's irked others and myself. The film itself is very good, it's a 3.5/5 but the 1.5 is fairly big stuff and not just cosmetic things.

 

[Senator Pleasury]

Oh my God...the scene that may have been the absolute worst in the film was this:

Jenny Olson gets trapped under rubble. Kal-El has no connection to this character. The audience has NO connection to this character. I should say, I didn't care that they made Jimmy Olson a girl but at least if this had been Jimmy in peril, at least the audience would know "oh, that's Jimmy, eventually he'll be Superman's pal. I hope he doesn't die." But no one in the audience knows that except internet geeks. So we don't care about this girl.

And then we have Perry and House of Cards guy trying to save her, which is nice, but shouldn't we see them doing this as a direct result of being inspired by Superman? Isn't the theme of this movie, or one of them, that Superman will inspire us to be a better species? If Perry is already a good enough dude to try to save Jenny, then superman isn't really here to raise us to new heights, just prevent us from dying. And we're only dying because he's on our planet.

I dunno, that one sequence just typified a lot of the problems this movie had.

A nice idea indeed.

But you see, they thought it would be great that the world didn't know Superman but a group of Kryptonians. That way what makes Superman, "super" would be diluted in a chaotic alien invasion and the world would never see Superman's feats as the most wonderful thing they have ever seen. Cool, ain't it?

 

[Daybreak_st]

New here, though I've been lurking mainly on the Star Wars forums for awhile now. Saw MoS this weekend along with 4 other, very varied, people (my 62 year old mom, younger gamer brother and his Batman-fan wife, and my co-worker who is a Star Trek/Dr. Who geek). So, an interesting mix. Really, we all ended up with basically the same reaction. It was strongly...ok. Not awful. We liked the guy playing Superman. But, we all left feeling "meh."

The across the board complaints were:

• Plot Device!Jor-El! Enough already. Information and escape did not feel earned, just doled out to move things along.
• Collateral Damage Fail. Everyone was really bothered by the fight scenes. You can get from across the world to Metropolis in a couple minutes but can't move that fight to a less populated area? Maybe at least try to avoid buildings? As my mom said, "You boys need to take that outside!"
• Where's the joy? We all missed the joy and humor of earlier films. Even our Batman-fanatic/Nolan worshipper said that the tone felt wrong. No one cracked a smile until almost the end of the film. Our theater was dead silent.
• Paging Mr. Editor! At least 30 minutes too long.
• Jar Jar Attacks! Seriously, Krypton looked like prequel trilogy stuff.
• Hans Zimmer, you, sir, are no John Williams.

A majority of us, though not everyone, did not find Amy Adams' Lois Lane to feel like Lois, though this may be because we are Donner-era/Lois & Clark/Smallville people. She was smart and brave and kind and understanding and just.not.Lois, who is sometimes obnoxious and self-centered. But, I always thought Supes kind of liked a bit of the bad girl or he'd have stayed with Lana. Anyway, that was just one point of view and not shared by everyone in my little circle.


Ok, so that was a downer. But, all in all, we also felt like we wanted to see more. A better movie seemed to be in this cast somewhere. We all really liked HC as Superman. We liked the point that he was essentially an alien and this was first contact for us lowly humans, so it was A Big Thing. We liked the idea of the sci-fi elements, the pre-destination vs. choice theme, nature vs. nurture, etc., just not so much the execution of the Krypton scenes.

None of us have read Superman comics, so I'm sure some of the above is probably from some particular comic or era or whatever. I'm just reporting thoughts of general audience members who love sci-fi and comics in general and want to see more of this stuff. We all wanted to love the movie, really. I don't know if our expectations were too high or what (I did see Sucker Punch, so I really don't think mine were that high, lol). Anyway, that was our take.

Welcome aboard! You make good points. Some people like my parents didn't care for it, especially the killing at the end. I have to say the elements that stood out as good:

Lois Lane's integration into the film as a whole. It gave her something to do, make her feel relevant and gave some needed substance to her relationship with Superman. Now it makes sense. I know some people prefer the love triangle but honestly it never made sense. She just comes off looking silly especially in modern setting.

Effects were all great.

Stuff that didn't work:

Like you said the tone just felt off to me. It had a melancholy/somber tone throughout. And for me at least there was zero sense of Wonder. that is what sells these movies to me. That sense of awesomeness and wonder at what these characters can do. That was all left behind in favor of wanton destruction. I like action but a little balance would've helped. Honestly a little tweaking and it could've been a great film. As it is it just felt descent.

 

[Paladin-Hoss]

Let me break down a relatively simple scene for you. It's not a game breaker in terms of the plot. Don't worry.

Clark is fighting Nam-Ek and Faora. Something or the other explodes and one of the choppers firing at the three of them begins to fall from the sky. As it does, an Officer falls from the chopper and Superman creates a window of time so that he can fly up to save him. Clark brings him to the ground.

He asks him if he's okay, but before he can respond, Nam-Ek punches Clark out of the shot. To make matters worse, whilst he was saving that one guy, the chopper crashes into the ground and **** goes south. Now call me crazy, but a simpler move would've been to fly upwards towards the chopper, put the guy in and land it during that window.

He had enough time. But instead the filmmakers were more obsessed with continuing the fight in a fairly monotonous fashion where just more stuff similarly got crashed into, crashed, exploded or got thrown at by the involved parties.

More so, Clark was gladly fighting in restaurants and public spots with the simple dialogue of 'go indoors, it's not safe (but hey, I'll be crashing in through the windows soon enough!)'

The emotional stakes were low and the popcorn stakes were sky high. It could've been done better. But it wasn't. It's that kind of stuff that's irked others and myself. The film itself is very good, it's a 3.5/5 but the 1.5 is fairly big stuff and not just cosmetic things.

Hmmm..does these kind of things happened pretty much throughout all the fight scenes?

To me it sounded like it's missing proper build up, no sense of escalation.

The major thing that made the action scenes in Avengers so satisfying is because it had proper build up.There was a sense of escalation.

Snyder in my opinion is a good director, the man just lacks patience. he always seems to be in a hurry to get to the next big scene.But he did things properly in Watchmen, so not sure what happened here. Maybe it's a case of too many hands in the cooking pot.

 

[Rock Sexton]

Hmmm..does these kind of things happened pretty much throughout all the fight scenes?

To me it sounded like it's missing proper build up, no sense of escalation.

The major thing that made the action scenes in Avengers so satisfying is because it had proper build up.There was a sense of escalation.

Snyder in my opinion is a good director, the man just lacks patience. he always seems to be in a hurry to get to the next big scene.But he did things properly in Watchmen, so not sure what happened here. Maybe it's a case of too many hands in the cooking pot.

Snyder can only piece the movie together based on the material he is given. That is where the conflict manifests in this movie. I'll say it again, Goyer really let him down.

 

[kalhawj]

Hmmm..does these kind of things happened pretty much throughout all the fight scenes?

To me it sounded like it's missing proper build up, no sense of escalation.

The major thing that made the action scenes in Avengers so satisfying is because it had proper build up.There was a sense of escalation.

Snyder in my opinion is a good director, the man just lacks patience. he always seems to be in a hurry to get to the next big scene.But he did things properly in Watchmen, so not sure what happened here. Maybe it's a case of too many hands in the cooking pot.

Go watch the movie for yourself before you start making conclusion from other people's view. Everyone will always see movie differently. I for one love this movie as is with some minor change. too much and we don't get this epic action sequence movie. My favorite CBM all time... People forget this movie had lots of emotional scenes on top of the awesome action... I don't ever remember any CBM with this mix...