Man of Steel (SPOILERS)

[snoop101]

......

 

[Frank]

If these friends feel the need to defend the super mega tyrant murderer known as Superman, I don't need 'em!

Well didn't it serve the purpose of the MOS plot? It's not like you have any attachment to his comic book origins... or do you?

 

[Zen Mutiny]

I think too many people have an odd expectation that this film in some way has to reflect the Donner movies. News flash - Donner is not the source material, the comics are. MoS did a pretty good job reflecting the comics.

 

[Rorywan]

I was just expecting a good movie, I got it, well half of one anyway.

 

[Dr.Mirakle32]

I think too many people have an odd expectation that this film in some way has to reflect the Donner movies. News flash - Donner is not the source material, the comics are. MoS did a pretty good job reflecting the comics.

People say that, but then forget the Donner movies have been an inspiration to the comics for the last thirty years. Just look at LAST SON, which introduced Zod into modern continuity and influenced the plot of MOS, in that Zod and his Phantom Zone buddies want to establish a New Krypton on Earth. It was co-written by Donner. BIRTHRIGHT borrows lines and situations freely from the 1978 movie, and there was a point a couple of years ago, where comic book Supes was literally Reeve.

Sure, MOS is faithful to the overall plot of some of the comics. It's just the tone and characterization that bothers some people, like writer Mark Waid:
https://thrillbent.com/blog/man-of-steel-since-you-asked/

 

[Dr.Mirakle32]

I was just expecting a good movie, I got it, well half of one anyway.

There are some wonderful aspects about MOS (You can find ALL of them in the trailers.) But this is one film where the parts are absolutely better than the whole. The reviews and box office reflect that (ie, big opening, so/so word of mouth.)

 

[thenammagazine]

Sure, MOS is faithful to the overall plot of some of the comics. It's just the tone and characterization that bothers some people, like writer Mark Waid:
https://thrillbent.com/blog/man-of-steel-since-you-asked/

The author of one of the best Superman stories ever written, Kingdom Come. He pretty much agrees with what those of us who "didn't get it" keep saying:

But about the time we got to the big Smallville fight, my Spider-Sense began to tingle. A lot of destruction. A lot of destruction–and Superman making absolutely no effort to take the fight, like, ONE BLOCK AWAY INTO A CORNFIELD INSTEAD OF ON MAIN STREET. Still, saving people here and there, but certainly never going out of his way to do so, and mostly just trying not to get his *** kicked. (I loved Clark Kent’s pal, Pete Ross, and not just because they cast pre-teen Mark Waid as Pete Ross.)

And then we got to The Battle of Metropolis, and I truly, genuinely started to feel nauseous at all the Disaster Porn. Minute after minute after endless minute of Some Giant Machine laying so much waste to Metropolis that it’s inconceivable that we weren’t watching millions of people die in every single shot. And what’s Superman doing while all this is going on? He’s halfway around the world, fighting an identical machine but with no one around to be directly threatened, so it’s only slightly less noticeable that thousands of innocents per second are dying gruesomely on his watch. Seriously, back in Metropolis, entire skyscrapers are toppling in slo-mo and the city is a smoking, gray ruin for miles in every direction, it’s Hiroshima, and Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich are somewhere muttering “Too far, man, too far”…but, you know, Superman buys the humans enough time to sacrifice many, many of their own lives to bomb the Giant Machine themselves and even makes it back to Metropolis in time to catch Lois from falling (again), so…yay?

And then Superman and Lois land in the three-mile-wide crater that used to be a city of eight million people, and the staff of the Planet and a couple of other bystanders stagger out of the rubble to see Superman and say, “He saved us,” and before you can say either “From what?” or “Wow, these eight are probably the only people left alive,” and somehow–inexplicably, implausibly, somehow–before Superman can be bothered to take one second to surrender one ounce of concern or assistance to the millions of Metropolitans who are without question still buried under all that rubble, dead or dying, he saunters lazily over to where General Zod is kneeling and moping, and they argue, and they squabble, and they break into the Third Big Fight, the one that broke my heart.

See, everyone else in Zod’s army has been beaten and banished, but General Zod lives and so, of course, he and Superman duke it out in what, to everyone’s credit, is the very best super-hero fight I’ve ever seen, just a marvel of spectacle. But once more–and this is where I knew we were headed someplace really awful–once more, Superman showed not the slightest split-second of concern for the people around them. Particularly in this last sequence, his utter disregard for the collateral damage was just jaw-dropping as they just kept crashing through buildings full of survivors. I’m not suggesting he stop in the middle of a super-powered brawl to save a kitten from a tree, but even Brandon Routh thought to use his heat vision on the fly to disintegrate deadly falling debris after a sonic boom. From everything shown to us from the moment he put on the suit, Superman rarely if ever bothered to give the safety and welfare of the people around him one bit of thought. Which is why the climax of that fight broke me.

Superman wins by killing Zod. By snapping his neck. And as this moment was building, as Zod was out of control and Superman was (for the first time since the fishing boat 90 minutes ago) struggling to actually save innocent victims instead of casually catching them in mid-plummet, some crazy guy in front of us was muttering “Don’t do it…don’t do it…DON’T DO IT…” and then Superman snapped Zod’s neck and that guy stood up and said in a very loud voice, “THAT’S IT, YOU LOST ME, I’M OUT,” and his girlfriend had to literally pull him back into his seat and keep him from walking out and that crazy guy was me. That crazy guy was me, and I barely even remember doing that, I had to be told afterward that I’d done that, that’s how caught up in betrayal I felt. And after the neck-snapping, even though I stuck it out, I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the movie.

 

[jye4ever]

Lets say that he saved billions by sacrificing millions, the movie was still more stiff than a corpse on viagra.

 

[thenammagazine]

Lets say that he saved billions by needlessly sacrificing millions, the movie was still more stiff than a corpse on viagra.

I can agree with this statement now.

 

[jye4ever]

I can agree with this statement now.

Yeah, he definately could've done a little bit better.

Ok Nam, brace yourself for the "he was still learning" argument.

 

[DGTWoodward]

The author of one of the best Superman stories ever written, Kingdom Come. He pretty much agrees with what those of us who "didn't get it" keep saying:

But about the time we got to the big Smallville fight, my Spider-Sense began to tingle. A lot of destruction. A lot of destruction–and Superman making absolutely no effort to take the fight, like, ONE BLOCK AWAY INTO A CORNFIELD INSTEAD OF ON MAIN STREET. Still, saving people here and there, but certainly never going out of his way to do so, and mostly just trying not to get his *** kicked. (I loved Clark Kent’s pal, Pete Ross, and not just because they cast pre-teen Mark Waid as Pete Ross.)

And then we got to The Battle of Metropolis, and I truly, genuinely started to feel nauseous at all the Disaster Porn. Minute after minute after endless minute of Some Giant Machine laying so much waste to Metropolis that it’s inconceivable that we weren’t watching millions of people die in every single shot. And what’s Superman doing while all this is going on? He’s halfway around the world, fighting an identical machine but with no one around to be directly threatened, so it’s only slightly less noticeable that thousands of innocents per second are dying gruesomely on his watch. Seriously, back in Metropolis, entire skyscrapers are toppling in slo-mo and the city is a smoking, gray ruin for miles in every direction, it’s Hiroshima, and Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich are somewhere muttering “Too far, man, too far”…but, you know, Superman buys the humans enough time to sacrifice many, many of their own lives to bomb the Giant Machine themselves and even makes it back to Metropolis in time to catch Lois from falling (again), so…yay?

And then Superman and Lois land in the three-mile-wide crater that used to be a city of eight million people, and the staff of the Planet and a couple of other bystanders stagger out of the rubble to see Superman and say, “He saved us,” and before you can say either “From what?” or “Wow, these eight are probably the only people left alive,” and somehow–inexplicably, implausibly, somehow–before Superman can be bothered to take one second to surrender one ounce of concern or assistance to the millions of Metropolitans who are without question still buried under all that rubble, dead or dying, he saunters lazily over to where General Zod is kneeling and moping, and they argue, and they squabble, and they break into the Third Big Fight, the one that broke my heart.

See, everyone else in Zod’s army has been beaten and banished, but General Zod lives and so, of course, he and Superman duke it out in what, to everyone’s credit, is the very best super-hero fight I’ve ever seen, just a marvel of spectacle. But once more–and this is where I knew we were headed someplace really awful–once more, Superman showed not the slightest split-second of concern for the people around them. Particularly in this last sequence, his utter disregard for the collateral damage was just jaw-dropping as they just kept crashing through buildings full of survivors. I’m not suggesting he stop in the middle of a super-powered brawl to save a kitten from a tree, but even Brandon Routh thought to use his heat vision on the fly to disintegrate deadly falling debris after a sonic boom. From everything shown to us from the moment he put on the suit, Superman rarely if ever bothered to give the safety and welfare of the people around him one bit of thought. Which is why the climax of that fight broke me.

Superman wins by killing Zod. By snapping his neck. And as this moment was building, as Zod was out of control and Superman was (for the first time since the fishing boat 90 minutes ago) struggling to actually save innocent victims instead of casually catching them in mid-plummet, some crazy guy in front of us was muttering “Don’t do it…don’t do it…DON’T DO IT…” and then Superman snapped Zod’s neck and that guy stood up and said in a very loud voice, “THAT’S IT, YOU LOST ME, I’M OUT,” and his girlfriend had to literally pull him back into his seat and keep him from walking out and that crazy guy was me. That crazy guy was me, and I barely even remember doing that, I had to be told afterward that I’d done that, that’s how caught up in betrayal I felt. And after the neck-snapping, even though I stuck it out, I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the movie.

Thank you for finding that 'Nam, that absolutely sums it up for me...the validity of the source makes this message 100 times more potent.

 

[Frank]

Kingdom Come? Talk about an adaptation those guys at WB don't have a snowball's chance in hell at doing right.

Poor Mark Waid!

Come to think of it, poor us.

 

[jye4ever]

Kingdom Come? Talk about an adaptation those guys at WB don't have a snowball's chance in hell at doing right.

Not even in cartoon format.

 

[Frank]

Not even in cartoon format.

So there's hope in stop motion?

 

[Zen Mutiny]

So there's hope in stop motion?

Grab some action figures and a camera, post it, and we'll see.

 

[Frank]

Grab some action figures and a camera, post it, and we'll see.

I'd still need CGI to add another 20 points of articulation to those Alex Ross "figures".

 

[AIR]

I loved this movie. I've been craving to see it again.

 

[thenammagazine]

Kingdom Come? Talk about an adaptation those guys at WB don't have a snowball's chance in hell at doing right.

Poor Mark Waid!

Come to think of it, poor us.

Sad thing is, if they followed the same format Snyder followed with Watchmen, using the comic as storyboards (with a few minor exceptions), it would be cinematic gold!

 

[abake]

The author of one of the best Superman stories ever written, Kingdom Come. He pretty much agrees with what those of us who "didn't get it" keep saying:

Well, it's still the same argument exposed by many on this forum, just probably better written.

Just goes to show that what we have here is an irreconcilable division.

 

[Frank]

Sad thing is, if they followed the same format Snyder followed with Watchmen, using the comic as storyboards (with a few minor exceptions), it would be cinematic gold!

Good call, Ross was at his all-time best. He was a real morale booster during the 1990's ****storm of mediocrity with his movie poster quality work on every panel. I'd love to see someone really take a stab at replicating his style.

However...

By the time WB/DC rereboots Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman, DisMarv will have been able to combine the MCU for a Marvels adaptation... all before a successful Justice League movie comes out in 2050.