So Man of Steel came out and made a gang of money this
weekend. Like a hundred and twenty-five million or still, this movie has seemed
to become the most divisive movie of the year so far. With its certified rotten critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and with a lot of super vocal
fans on social media loving it or hating it and arguing back and forth the division is clear. See, I was asked to write this piece because I hate Man of Steel.
Now, to preface I've been vocal to many
people that I’m pretty much done with the superhero movie, 2012 burnt me out on
the genre. Like, real talk, after Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises what else is
there to say now? Well, for me, at a minimum all the 3D spectacle and bombast has
become played out. I want a bit more, something else to explore. So the following are my reasons for not liking Man of Steel, from a personal point of view.
I don’t really understand what this movie is trying to say
or maybe I do and I just can’t buy the cynical nature of it. I really don’t
understand the need to darken up Superman or to make it more “real” which to me
is pretty stupid because we have literally nothing in reality to base what it
would be like to have a Superman in our world or even any alien for that matter. Is it
really necessary for Superman to fight General Zod and smash through the
city of Metropolis and not once care or try to protect the people of the
city from the fight. Now there was some of that in the earlier Smallville set
piece but even then it felt like an afterthought when he saved a single solider. Superman seemed to not go out of his way to protect people once he put
the costume on. Which I feel totally
goes against what we know about the character of Superman. He’s a protector
first and a warrior second.
Another issue is whether Superman ever really makes a decision
for himself? His choices seemed to be put upon him. Now, I think that works in the
heroic journeys where the hero is a kid but Superman is a 33
year old man. He’s seen the world from what we can tell, yet he never once drives the
story. His two fathers make all of the hard choices for him. We never see
Superman make a leading decision; he’s responsive to everything that happens to
him. My father told me not to save him. My birth father told me I have to be
this heroic symbol. My birth father told me I have to stop Zod. With all the
comparison to Nolan’s Batman people are forgetting one thing in that
Bruce Wayne chose all of his actions, from learning to be a ninja, to dressing as
a bat, from using fear, to taking the rap, all the way to spying on the city to catch joker and so on.
This Superman does make one choice and it’s that choice which is getting all of the attention, his decision to murder Zod. Now I could get extra
geeky and say why that’s wrong on a character level (and then someone will drop
Superman #22 on me which, by the way broke the character also) and that it doesn't fit Superman. To me, that act wasn’t earned. It felt like the filmmakers
put him in that place so that he has to kill Zod. Superman then just screams
and gets over it. That’s it? So that’s where we go to get people to
like Superman again? Why
take a character that serves to be something we can aspire to and bring him
down to that level. You have a character that can do
anything and you can’t find a way for him to stop Zod without murdering him? Really
though for me that was just the icing on the cake, I thought that Superman killing all of the
Kryptonian babies was a worse act entirely that last push over the edge
with killing Zod means that this isn’t a Superman for me. I didn’t grow up liking
Superman, actually as small child Superman the Motion Picture made me not like
Superman at all. I didn’t like Superman until 1996 with a perfect storm of the
miniseries Kingdom Come and the premiere of Superman: The Animated Series on
the WB. The two stories, one of a rookie Superman and another of a Superman who left
because the heroes didn’t care about city they protected and instead took extreme
measures, really got me to enjoy the character from a new point of view. I found his ability to hold back and always
find a way and see the good in everyone refreshing.
I really have no want to watch a "BADASS" Superman. I know it’s something that others want but to me, that's just boring. Everything is
“badass” now for some reason that is used to equate an evolution or
sophistication. It’s doesn't add any sophistication or evolution and
is pretty juvenile, not to mention that it doesn’t send the right message to children.
I’m not going to lie I want Superman to punch something too, but I just wished
what we got was a little lighter and hopeful. It’s interesting to me that as Marvel is crafting movies from their catalogue of characters they are choosing characters who are less dark and less cynical in their comic roots and everyone
loves it. They took characters made to fit into our world with stories that get really dark and decided to
take some of that away and instead make them more mythic. It seems that
Warner Bros. and DC have decided to go in the opposite direction with their
transition in order to compete. Well, if they want the "badass" crown they can have it
cause I’m out.
