Man of Steel sucks and here’s why

Directed by Zach Snyder

Starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, Morpheus, Antje Traue, Diane Lane, Kevin Cosner, and Christopher Elephantdick Meloni

** MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW**

I was super excited for the new Superman. That’s saying something. That carries more clout that fanboy mouth-frothing, because I’ve never had any interest in the character, the movies, the comics, etc. I think Superman is boring, both in the cape and the eyeglasses. For me to be excited about this movie speaks to my faith in Chris Nolan, Zach Snyder (who I’m more willing to defend than most), and David S. Goyer, and the effective marketing campaign preceding the film’s release.

In addition to the strong production team behind this feature, Man of Steel benefitted from the bar being set at an all-time low. There hasn’t been a good Superman movie in 35 years and the last attempt, 2006’s abysmal Superman Returns, was, as Kevin Smith so gloriously put it, ‘the whiny emo version of Superman where Superman doesn’t even throw a punch.’ From the get-go, it seemed pretty hard to fuck this up, but I guess Zach Snyder is the type of guy who really relishes a challenge because he fucks this one up hard.

The film is an origin story. It opens with the crumbling of Krypton. The planet’s advanced and hyper-regimented civilization has taxed natural resources beyond reason, but the Kryptonian elders refuse to admit fault or take necessary steps to preserve what remains. As the abidingly patriotic General Zod (Michael Shannon) stages a coup, warrior/senator Jor-El (Russell Crowe) defies the government by having a natural-born son and sending that progeny in a capsule bound for Earth along with Krypton’s digital archives. Jor-El gives his life to protect his son’s escape and, he feels, the survival of his civilization.

Flash-forward 33 years and Kal-El (Henry Cavill) has been raised in Kansas as Clark Kent, now wandering the Earth, keeping a low profile, and using his Kryptonian superpowers to rescue people. Before long, though, Zod comes looking for him and Krypton’s ‘codex,’ stopping at nothing to reclaim what he feels is the final hope for rebuilding the home he swore to defend. Clark now has to choose sides between his Kryptonian blood and his adoptive planet, the fate of which hangs in the balance.

I understand that you don’t have all day and there are about 230,000 things I don’t like about this movie, so let me just (for now) highlight the most important ones.

The film’s core failing is Zack Snyder not understanding how human beings work. If you’re going to make a movie focusing on an alien, and the crux of his character arc is finding or defining his humanity, then you should probably understand how human beings work. There’s an early scene wherein Clark gets into a rowdy bar dispute trying to protect a female colleague from harassment. He gets a beer poured over him; he shows restraint while the crowd looks on. The problem: the crowd includes two CF soldiers. There is no universe in which two CF guys in uniform don’t come between a trucker and the waitress he’s sexually harassing. I promise you that.

Then there’s a scene where Clark reveals to his aged mother Martha (Diane Lane) that he uncovered relics from Krypton’s past and knows a bit more about his family history. She gets emotional and starts crying. He just chuckles (a bit condescendingly, I thought) and says ‘Aw, shucks, no worries Ma’, I’m still your son.’ Or some shit like that. As an only son who loves his mother, I can tell you when your mom starts to cry, you start to cry too. That is hard-wired. To simply laugh that shit off means you’re a sociopath. Seriously.

Later still, Zod’s spacecraft lifts off out of the desert in front of a company of soldiers and FBI agents. The craft’s propulsion turbines kick up a giant dust cloud and not one of the dudes covers his face with his hand. They may as well be like:

I love you, sand! Come into my eyes, sand!

 

It’s fair to argue that these are minor points and that I’m nitpicking. I bring them up for two reasons. First, I don’t want to re-hash the same comments that other critics have made, so I probe a bit deeper. Second, at fear of sounding like a broken record, if you’re going to make a movie about a dude discovering his humanity, you need to populate that movie with flesh-and-blood humans. Real people, not robots. The devil is in the details and they need to ring true, no more or less than the major arcs. Every character in this movie behaves like a robot except for Christopher Meloni, who fuckin rules shit.

The film’s second fatal flaw is its failure to capitalize on one of its most interesting plot points: the existential dichotomy between Superman and Zod. MoS sets it up brilliantly: it posits Superman as the first natural, non-engineered Kryptonian birth in centuries (hence, the first in centuries to have a blank slate and agency in the course of his life), and Zod as a guy who was designed and programmed to be the guardian of his civilization, which is now on the brink of extinction. Right there, you have a template for one of the most profound moral and philosophical explorations of free will and utilitarianism in the entire superhero canon. It gets tread over for a cumulative three minutes, maybe. Superman = good; Zod = bad, they punch each other, guess who wins. Such waste.

My third quarrel is with the actual punching. The action in this movie sucks huge amounts of camel dick. I read a great review that described action as consequence. Action is made meaningful by the audience’s emotional investment in the characters and genuine concern that they are at risk. As per point one, none of these people are actual humans so your investment is zero. The only minute of action in this movie that made my dick even remotely hard was when Meloni survives his helicopter being shot down, escapes the wreckage, and fires about 50 rounds point-blank at Kryptonian baddie Faora (Antje Traue). Upon seeing the bullets bounce off her like Nerf darts, Meloni practically fuckin YAWNS, pulls out a buck knife, and stands up all like: ‘Alright let’s dance, E.T.’

'Hope you brought your A-game, 'cause I trained at Fort Yolo, motherfucker.'

I care about this dude. Meloni for President. Klingons would surrender to this fuckin guy. They should have made the movie about Meloni and called it Balls of Steel. People would watch that movie and care about the action, not because things explode hugely, but because the risk of him being injured or superkilled is significant and because you are moved by his courage and selflessness in the face of danger and death. That is what humanity is about.

Zach Snyder clearly slept through the day in film school when students were taught that action doesn’t have to be huge to be meaningful. Neo fights Agent Smith three times in the Matrix trilogy. Which is the best one? Subway in the first movie, right? Yet it covers the least physical space, has the least FX, and is the shortest in duration. It is the best because Neo is mortal (makes emotional stakes higher), the buildup to it is superbly executed, and it carries weight and resonance in the scope of the movie – it is more about Neo overcoming his own self-doubt than it is about him defeating a computer-generated bad guy.

In a single sentence, MoS spends its two-hour running time shouting ‘LOOK AT ME’ without delivering something worthy of attention other than the shouting itself. It paints itself as a dark, brooding, character study but achieves at none of these things.