Man of Steel
Directed by Zack Snyder
Written by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan
Starring Henry Cagill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, and Russell Crowe
143 minutes

Warning: there are some spoilers here.

Based on several trailers, I went into Man of Steel dreading it as another movie dripping with teen angst. I’m pleased to announce that the filmmakers dodged that bullet. Indeed, there are the makings of a very good movie in here… unfortunately, the filmmakers chose to hide it behind an extended film version of Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots.

I can only hope, for the rest of the viewers, that the excessive volume was a flaw in the theatre, rather than a failing of the movie itself. But looking beyond that, there’s a lot to recommend the latest reboot of the Superman franchise.

In this film, Krypton is a major, well-realized presence, a world suffering its final death throes. Into this world is born a baby, the first in hundreds of years. The baby’s father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), is a man literally bred to be his planet’s leading scientist. He recognizes the planet’s forthcoming doom, and knows that he can do nothing to save the planet, but just may be able to save their culture. His one-time ally, General Zod (Michael Shannon) has similarly been bred to his role in society. In Zod’s case, leader of the military and defender of the planet. This Zod may be the first Superman villain to truly embody the literary dictum that no villain thinks of himself as a villain. In Zod’s mind, he is a noble figure, doing everything in his power to save his planet. Nevertheless, his actions lead to murder and an attempted coup d’etat, and he is sentenced to long-time imprisonment in the phantom zone. And here we stumble across one of the movie’s big logical failings: the leaders of a planet on the brink of death sentence their chief villain to… live?

Flash-forward to Earth. We don’t get the story of Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) in linear fashion, but rather bounce back and forth between his childhood and the evolution of his adulthood. It works. The adult Clark is hiding from notice, living on the fringes of society (the film has updated the Clark Kent mythos to present day, so our growing hero has to hide not only from the government, but from cameras in cell phones). Actually, he quite reminded me of Wolverine in his origin film (even unto the settings of the Arctic and sub-Arctic). Young adult Clark lives quietly, occasionally forced to reveal his abilities to save someone, and then moving on to another town, another identity.

The child Clark is a stranger in known land, and his loving parents (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) raise him, help him to control his abilities, and train him to hide them from the larger world, knowing that he is here for a reason.

Eventually, the different eras of Clark merge when he finds something buried in the Arctic, something that helps him learn who he truly is, and from whence he came.

Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is also in the Arctic, being an annoyance to the US military while chasing a story, little realizing that her story and Clark’s will intersect.

After they meet, and he disappears, she uses her skills to piece together his past, learning who this mysterious hero is.

And then, General Zod appears, and demands the surrender of Kal-El, or he’ll destroy Earth.

Up to this point, it’s been a good, thoughtful movie, with occasional doses of superheroic abilities, but relatable characters doing real things in a world in which Kryptonians exist. But once Clark and Zod cross paths, it just goes off the rails. We get battle scenes, fight scenes, absolutely interminable punching matches with occasional shooting thrown in. Military aircraft are used and destroyed, and still the Kryptonians keep fighting. Smallville is trashed, and still they keep punching. Metropolis suffers far more damage than The Avengers wreaked on New York City, and still they keep punching. Do you see where this is going?

I’m a big fan of Superman, the man of steel, the strongest, fastest, ablest physical hero that ever was. But the Superman I know is also a smart man. And he should have figured, long before all the innocent bystanders were killed, that going toe to toe with someone who has equal physical abilities and a military background to boot, would not end well or easily. This was a problem he should have thought his way out of, but that’s not the movie we got.

Eventually, Kal-El succeeds. He wins the one-on-one battle for no good reason except that he’s the hero. And then he has to help the military win the battle for control of the planet, before the evil Kryptonians can destroy it. And success eventually comes, but at a great cost. Unfortunately for our presumed hero, the cost is the self-sacrifice of heroic Earth men, not Kryptonians.

Early on, Jor-El tells his son “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They’ll race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.” It’s a noble sentiment, the basis for a wonderfully uplifting movie. Unfortunately, this is not that movie.

Clark’s interactions with the people are Earth are brief, fleeting, and not at all in keeping with Jor-El’s prediction. The Earth people who accomplish wonders do so because of who they are, regardless of their contacts with the Kryptonian in the super suit. And that, I think, is the movie’s biggest failing: it sets out to tell an inspirational story, but gets side-tracked into a meaningless action film, and then even the action gets tiring.

Minor notes: If I never see another lens flare in a movie, I’ll be satisfied. I was unhappy with J.J. Abrams’ decision to put them in nearly every scene of his first Star Trek movie, and now Zack Snyder has apparently decided he loves them, too. They’re distracting, and add nothing, especially in three-d.

My viewing companion, Randee Dawn, also pointed out the long, panning shot through space that stops, backtracks, and picks up on the distant tiny focal point of the scene. It was interesting the first time it was used, but it’s already being overused, and will, in the future, be one of the dated camera effects dating a movie to this decade.

She also mentioned something that I’ve apparently become inured to, something much more disturbing. The amount of destruction we witness in modern action films is orders of magnitude greater than it used to be. Especially in the world of constant terroristic warfare. For instance, keeping the concept within the Superman realm, the 1978 incarnation of this movie (starring Christopher Reeve) had a climactic battle between our hero and Zod on the streets of New York City. They destroyed a number of cars, several neon billboards, and a few storefronts. That was during the era of the Cold War, when Mutually Assured Destruction was the concept that kept us away from nuclear war. The same filmic battle in this movie destroyed all of Smallville’s Main Street, and then moved to Metropolis to destroy dozens of fully occupied skyscrapers. Is Hollywood subtly (or not so subtly) training us that perhaps MAD is no longer the theory, but rather that victory might be found, even with ever greater levels of death and destruction? As much as we tear our hair and beat our breasts over senseless individual deaths, are we being taught to accept large numbers of deaths in the name of greater victory? I don’t know, but when she mentioned it, I started to wonder… and I started to worry.