Grant Morrison once called Superman “man’s greatest invention.” Superman is a symbol of every ideal that man sees in itself, a man who always wins the day and does the right thing. Man of Steel purports to seek out our human connection with the last son of a dying planet. This is a connection that is integral to making Superman work as an interesting character, but one that is so often lost in the telling of his stories. Superman is always a draw from movie fans and comic book readers, but those stories so rarely seem to achieve the promised spectacle or relate to their audience in a satisfying way. With a retold origin and a fresh design sense removed from comparisons to previous films, does Man of Steel have the stuff required to capture our imaginations again?
Christopher Nolan may get a producer credit on Man of Steel, but this is not a Nolan film at all. His involvement has clearly been oversold. This turns out to be both a good and a bad thing, as evidenced by the early sequences on Kyrpton. There is no question that Zack Snyder is a visionary director. This sounds like hyperbole every time, but one only needs to look at his vision for Krypton to get a sense of the kind of spectacle and grandeur that Snyder is capable of. Much time is spent there, establishing very clearly a world that is visually and technologically nothing like our own, but perhaps philosophically mirrors the very types of debate that hamstring our societies on Earth. We are given a sense of Jor-El’s nobility and his good intentions for both his own world and the worlds that span the universe. These early scenes inform what Superman will become as much as the scenes of Jonathan Kent raising the young Clark will. These scenes also show us a version of Kyrpton that technology has not afforded us until now. Jor-El soars through the now volcanic-looking Kyrpton, crumbling all around its people in warfare.
Later on Earth, Superman will face Zod and the Earth will face much devestation that seems to parallel what we saw earlier. This is also where the imagination of the film loses much of its luster. As Superman does battle with Zod and his troops, the special effects are splendid, but the battle fails to stimulate. Snyder finally captures the sense of speed and Earth-warping strength that Kal-El possesses in a way that has not been captured on screen to date, but the moments of true spectacle on Earth are few and far between. Zod and Superman trade blows, either at vantage points framed too closely to appreciate or so weightlessly that they feel inconsequential. Sure, CGI buildings crumble, but Zod is careful enough to leave the Sears and IHOP signs fully intact and prominent. This battle takes up a rather large chunk of the movie – it could be argued that the 2nd half of the entire movie is one long battle with Zod. This will certainly please Summer blockbuster fans who love to watch cities turn to ash, but the film seems to drop so much of what made it thematically interesting in the first half, paying little more than overly obvious lipservice to its themes.
Man of Steel is at its best when Superman or Clark Kent is in a wayward, contemplative state. Clark’s struggle with humanity weighed against his alien origins is a well-tread concept in the Superman canon. Man of Steel is one of the best handlings of this theme, based on the strength of Henry Cavill’s performance. Most of this is worn on his face, as he struggles to decide who he can trust. This is not only the most subtle performance work, but also an unexpectedly subtle visual exploration from Snyder. Cavill embodies the human side of the mumble, restrained Clark Kent. And though this version of Jonathan is a little more cautious and pessimistic than most other interpretations, a clear line can be drawn from Kevin Costner’s performance as the humble farmer to Cavill’s polite, soft-spoken Superman.
In fact, all of the performances in the film are very good. Amy Adams imbues Lois Lane with pluck and confidence, which keeps her from feeling like the afterthought that the script almost makes out of her. Michael Shannon is menacing and tragic, while Russell Crowe is noble and hopeful. Both give life to some potentially corny sounding sci-fi jargon. Shannon doesn’t ham it up, when he easily could have. Instead, he plays the role seriously, with the volume turned up much of the time. He takes the role as seriously as Zod takes his duty to Krypton, which gives the character legitimacy and layers. Their performances and Snyder’s matured visual senses elevate a script that is, frankly, serviceable at its best and actively dry at its worst. While each of these actors eke emotion out of a handful of scenes, David Goyer’s script gives them nothing in the way of a true voice, nor anything clever to say. That is, unless it’s lifting good lines from Grant Morrison comics. The few jokes in the movie fall extremely flat (except for a brilliant visual gag early on in Clark’s story), which is par for the course in a film that is dramatically flat.
Continued belowSmallville becomes the most interesting character in the film, because of how beautifully Snyder shoots it. It is at once quaint and modest, while gorgeous and serene. The decidedly midwestern American color palette informs the characters as much as anything else. There’s a patient minimalism to these scenes that plays so beautifully into the themes of Superman’s role alongside humanity that it’s a shame that this all falls away to a bunch of CGI stuff crashing into other CGI stuff. Superman is more interesting when he’s wandering through a cornfield, than when he’s a blip on the screen, crashing into Zod. Instead of remaining a majestic figure of power and duty, he becomes a blunt instrument, and the film loses track of his actual character.
If you’re reading this site, you’ll probably see Man of Steel. You should. But the early Smallville scenes and the very final moments of the film demonstrate the potential of the character and this franchise – not the noisy, confounding Metropolis action sequences. Snyder has proven a more than capable hand for guiding Clark through emotional journeys, but a punchier, less generic script and a more balanced pace for the inevitable fight sequences would have gone a long way toward making this the complete take on the character that it clearly could have been.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – A true Summer blockbuster, for good and bad.
