Zack Snyder, the man who, with his breakout hit 300, reinvented the sword-and-sandals epic for the video-game generation, attempts something similar here for the first, and probably still most popular superhero of all time, Superman, with the new reboot Man of Steel. He benefits from a script co-written by Dark Knight auteur Christopher Nolan and longtime comics-to-film scribe David S. Goyer.
The story basically resets the clock on the cinematic legend of Superman and begins on his dying homeworld of Krypton, at the moment of his birth to Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer), the first natural-born child on the planet in centuries, with every other baby on Krypton having been grown, Matrix-style, in a giant underwater plant nursery called a genesis chamber. Jor-El tries to convince the planet's leaders that it's time to send Krypton's inhabitants to other planets to save them from a doomed world, and asks for something called the Codex, which is apparently the genetic blueprint for all Kryptonians. He is interrupted, however, by a coup d'etat being staged by the planet's chief military officer, General Zod (Michael Shannon).
Suffice it to say, notwithstanding the chaos, Jor-El is able to obtain the Kryptonian Codex and ship it, and his newborn son Kal-El, off to a suitable planet for Kal-El to grow up (which happens to be Earth) while Zod's coup is foiled and he is sentenced to exile in the Phantom Zone, apparently scarcely moments before Krypton gives up the ghost.
One abrupt cut later, Kal-El is now thirtysomething Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) wandering around America doing odd jobs, and saving people in mortal peril while he's at it. His formative years as a super-powered alien grown up in Kansas, with his foster parents, the stern Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and doting Martha (Diane Lane) Kent, are told in flashbacks, which show that it was not the easiest childhood, but one which would prove crucial to helping shape who he would eventually become.
Clark is also a man in search of something, and when, while working at a bar, he overhears a couple of military types talking about a strange, possibly extraterrestrial find in the Arctic, he decides on his next odd job. While there, he encounters feisty, award-winning reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams), and, in finding out what the mysterious object is: his destiny.
As the second half of the story unfolds, it turns out that Clark's/Kal's destiny may also involve facing off against Zod and his minions including the fetching but deadly Faora (Antje Traue), who have escaped from their prison with the destruction of Krypton and are basically looking to make Earth their new home, even if it means wiping out everyone on it. Thus, Kal-El finds himself having to choose between the remnants of the world he was born into, and his adopted world.
The film doesn't open in the United States until Friday, but early reviews have come in and they are, for the most part, almost nothing like the near universal praise that was heaped on Nolan's reshaping of the Batman legend with his Dark Knight trilogy. A lot of the good reviews seem somewhat qualified by a number of reservations, and many of the bad reviews are downright scathing in their appraisal of the new Supes outing.
Personally, I find a lot of the bad reviews a bit unfair, and more than a few of them smack of pre-cooked disdain for the action blockbuster, but apart from the more snide comments, I appreciated some of the points they made against this film.
I'd like to get this out of the way right now: to me, this film is easily better than Superman Returns.
To my mind, Snyder and crew got a lot right here, starting with the casting. While I doubt British actor Cavill will win any major acting awards for his performance as the last son of Krypton, he does a decent enough job filling in Superman's redesigned tights (read: no red briefs), and more importantly, ably conveys the pathos of someone who belongs to two worlds yet is not really part of either, at least not until he makes a crucial choice. Credit must also go to the two actors who played the younger Clark in flashbacks, Dylan Sprayberry and Cooper Timberline, who did a commendable job of showing how difficult it was for Clark to grow up being different from everyone else. The strongest performance here comes from Crowe, playing the doomed Jor-El. I realize people regard the late Marlon Brando's take on the character as sacrosanct, but with all due respect I submit that Crowe is at least Brando's equal in the acting department, at least as far as this movie is concerned. Also, I highly doubt Brando could have squeezed into the tights Crowe rocked in this movie, let alone done an action scene in them, as Crowe did. Next up on my list are Lane's take on Martha Kent and Costner's take on Jonathan Kent. These are people who have no idea how to raise a Kryptonian but who do the very best they can, and I absolutely loved the humanity in their performance; their scenes with the actors playing young Clark are, for me, some of the very best in the movie. Even though the scene in which Pa Kent, in response to Clark's asking "can't I just go on pretending to be your son" tells Clark "you are my son" has been played over and over in the trailers, seeing it in the actual movie, complete with context, still left me a little misty-eyed. I'll have to respectfully disagree with one of the reviews I read which described this film as having no heart; to my mind that's one of the things it does have. I also enjoyed Amy Adams' take on Lois Lane, though I'll go into that a little bit more later. Shannon does a solid but not quite exceptional job as Zod, who is not quite as villainous as he is fanatical in this film. There is not a bad performance in sight here, even if some actors are more remarkable than others.
Another thing this film has going for it is the rather nifty visuals. It's been seven years since the last Superman movie and a full thirty-three since Superman II, the first cinematic appearance of General Zod, and there has been plenty of advancement in visual effects technology since then, a fact of which the filmmakers take due advantage. From the striking rendition of Krypton, previously just a bunch of crystals and staid interiors, and now a strikingly-rendered, Avatar-style alien ecosystem, to the depiction to Superman's powers, ranging from his x-ray vision to his flying abilities, to the truly massive action sequences in the last half-hour or so of the film, this film is, as a technical achievement, far and away the most impressive of any of the films in the series. The final fight sequence and the massive destruction it wreaks, while reminiscent of the Transformers films, are quite spectacular. Also, as an aside, it was gratifying to see the aftermath of all the collateral damage; one thing that really irked me about last year's smash hit The Avengers was how, even after all the destruction that the battle with the aliens caused, the New York skyline basically remained intact as shown by the long shot taken right after the battle. For gosh sakes, alien warships the size of blue whales smashed into buildings, and yet nothing seemed the worse for wear! Here, though, the cataclysmic effects of the final battle and of another crucially destructive story point (which I won't spoil) really leave Metropolis (played by Chicago, which also played Gotham City in Nolan's Bat-movies) in shambles. In the name of a PG-13 rating, though, the human face of this otherwise 9/11 style carnage is mercifully (many could reasonably argue insensitively) obscured.
Oh, and I daresay I liked Hans Zimmer's new theme. No, he's no John Williams, but the Zimmer's credit he doesn't try to be, and why he does here works. It played well throughout the film and punctuated the end credits quite nicely.
Unfortunately, the film had more than its fair share of faults. From a lot of contrived moments in the script to the done-to-death Christian iconography to the flaws in the film's internal logic, there were a lot of somewhat jarring moments in the film, many of which, again unfortunately, I cannot really elaborate upon as they involve spoiling important plot points. Now, as a fan of movies like this I take as a given the requirement of suspension of disbelief, but when a movie seems to have trouble sticking to its own internal logic then I have trouble accepting the movie.
The Christian overtones, though often present in this film's predecessors, were also a bit too blatant for my liking, like the fact that Superman is 33 years old, the same age as Jesus at the start of his ministry (and even older than Cavill actually is), a distinctly Christlike pose Superman assumes (I would argue unnecessarily) at a crucial point in the film, and the fact that Superman actually consults a priest when he is conflicted about an important decision, and actually stands in front of a stained-glass window depicting Jesus agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane! To my knowledge, Superman's creators, the late Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both Jewish so I can't help but wonder at what point in the character's history, in film or print, did he start to be identified as a Christ-like figure. Also, in that connection, the declaration by Jor-El that artificial birth control had a hand in the destruction of Krypton feels a little heavy-handed and reminded me of the Catholic Church's stance against the same thing. I couldn't help but wonder if someone was pushing a bit of an agenda for a moment there.
Another of this film's sins for me was how utterly humorless it was, which is a pretty common critique, but one which, I will argue, is a valid one. A good friend of mine said "Superman is not Batman" and while I will dispute claims that the filmmakers tried to turn Superman into Batman here, I will agree that a lot of the fun of the earlier movies was drained out of this film. It's equal parts brooding and menacing towards the end, but there are next to no lighthearted moments in this movie, which just feels wrong for a hero as colorful as Superman. About the biggest laughs I got in this movie were from how over-the-top the action during the climactic fight scene was.
(Spoiler Warning)
Worse still, and along the same lines, there's virtually none of the banter between Clark and Lois (who incidentally have zero chemistry despite an earnest performance by Amy Adams) that was a staple of not only the earlier films but of depictions of Superman in general over his seven-and-a-half-decade existence. They kiss at the end of the film, but it feels more like a product of Lois' post traumatic stress (she fell from an airplane, after all, with Superman catching her) than any actual affection she might have had for him.
The good news, however, is that this version of Lois Lane is far more credible as an ace reporter in this film as she is able to figure things out a lot better than her previous incarnations. In short, we won't have to harp on how stupid she is for not being able to see past a pair of glasses.
(End Spoiler Warning)
My other problem with this film is one of style; I really was not fond of the conspicuously desaturated colors, which made the movie look as if the filmmakers were trying to film Saving Private Ryan with superheroes. The deliberately drab look of the movie muted what could have been some very interesting visuals for Krypton, which depicted mainly in shades of brown, gray and some murky blue, though given that Superman's homeworld was basically about to explode when we were introduced to it I guess it was tonally consistent. Less justifiable for me, though, was the lack of color all throughout the rest of the movie. Again, I thought Superman was supposed to be an icon for hope, so this color palette really kind of baffled me. The worst part was that I actually watched this in 2-D, so I can only imagine how devoid of color the 3-D version must have looked. I wouldn't recommend going with 3-D for this film.
All told, if nothing else, this film sets the counter back to zero, which the franchise needed after the disastrous Superman Returns, and did so with some solid performances from some very talented actors and the very best visual effects that money can buy, so for all my reservations, I'm still giving this a thumbs-up.
I just hope they make a lot of improvements, should they ever make a sequel.
3.5/5
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