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  • Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by Zettel at 01:31 on 15 June 2013
    All the ‘Fs’ but one: this is a Fascist Fairy tale Fantasy with Fabulous graphics, Fantastic editing and as usual with modern Hollywood, Fetishised technology, especially the multiplicity of devices to kill people with.

    The sadly and critically missing ‘F’ is Fun. In those long gone innocent days in which Superman was really born – in the 1938 pages of Action, then DC comics and later in the wonderful 15 minute Saturday Morning Picture reels, it was thrilling enough to spark the imagination that a man could fly, could see through all solids except lead and even kick sand in Charles Altlas’s muscle-bound face. It was fun: kids tied towels and curtain oddments around their necks rushing up and down the street believing for all the world that if they could only get up enough speed they’d take off; one be-fisted hand straight ahead, the other dutifully by one’s side as we were scientifically sophisticated enough to know that aerodynamics required an elongated shape.

    Snyder and Christopher Nolan’s ‘hero’, carrying his 75 years pretty well considering - is a dour, dull bit of very beefy cake. Henry Cavill seems a likeable enough guy off screen but brings none of Christopher Reeves’ self-mocking charm and ironic insouciance that both endeared the actor to us and whatever else, made those first big screen incarnations of the man of steel both exciting and so light-heartedly entertaining.

    Most Art needs some sense of necessity, of limit, to challenge the artistic imagination into overcoming it: the sculptor who can chisel from implacable and unyielding granite an impression of sensuous curves and lightness of line belying the unforgiving essence of his raw material. The painter, limited to two-dimensional canvas and the limited possibilities of pigment and texture, creating a sense of depth both of perception and imagination.

    The trouble with modern CGI and graphics technology is that it has now reached such a level of sophistication that it is virtually (sic) without limit. There is no physical event in the world, however physically impossible or scientifically absurd that the geniuses of modern cinematic technology cannot absolutely convince us is actually happening before our eyes. Unfortunately, the inherent, visual naturalism of cinema allied to the exponential power of the digital computer, is a triumph of literality over imagination. Modern Hollywood action movies leave no aesthetic space for the imagination – young or old. If modern kids even bother to dress up as their heroes they will be contemptuously dismissive of towels and curtains; their impersonations requiring, and easily getting, fully detailed, proper costumes or authentically (trademarked) pictured tee-shirts and hoodies etc. It is the two-edged sword of American genius to have merchandised the imagination and commoditised art.

    Snyder and Nolan’s revisionist re-invention, not of the original source material, but of the original Superman movies, is a wilfully indulgent 143 minutes (no limit again) of unremitting smash and bash: an orgy of physical destruction lacking any constructive visual or aural cadence and thus suffering a gradually accumulating law of diminishing dramatic returns. Arty farty fiddling with the chronology of the Earthly development of Ma and Pa Kent’s (Diane Lane and a wasted Kevin Costner) alien adoptee and the death of his home planet is just plain perverse, fragmenting any sense of identification with the ‘growing pains’ of a super-being. It also denies us all those wonderfully anticipatory moments, often deliciously amusing, when the school bully or high school creep is about to get their more than just come-uppances.

    The essence of the Superman myth is a delicious fantasy of the powerlessness of childhood in an adult world being overcome; of the empowerment of the innocent bullied over the bully-led threatening group - of the triumph of right over wrong, of justice over power. However corrupted by the cynicism of modern politics and the exploitation of this morally obtuse movie - that was the American way Superman stood for.

    Pa Kent loads this poor interplanetary cuckoo with so much ethical and Existential angst even his super-powers can’t prompt his vestigial personality into anything that might vaguely interest us. It doesn’t need to of course as his few momentary pauses in single-handedly destroying the physical universe are filled with dialogue that even George Lucas would regard as banal. My God what happened to the intelligent perceptiveness of the Christopher Nolan of The Dark Knight?

    Planet Krypton is dying from irreversible ecological exploitation. A Brave New Worldian society, baby Kryptonites are decanted outside the womb in a chillingly deterministic way to rigid hierarchical pre-determined roles like worker bees and warrior ants etc. This dystopian vision is glossed over as if pretty normal though the Els – (Daddy) Jor (Russell Crowe) and wife Lara bring baby Kal into the dying world the fun way. (No mention is made of Ernie – he was probably off playing celestial golf somewhere).

    Jor nicks the Krypton genetic code thingy and blasts Kal off to an unsuspecting Earth. For absolutely pointless reasons General Zod (Michael Shannnon as his usual freaky self) and some chums are banished to the Ghostly region of space. Some punishment – escaping the annihilation of the rest of Krypton, safely tucked up in a space ship. Zod of course resolves to seek out Kal, recover the genetic thingy and recreate the Krypton race. There are frequent evocations of some very dark sub-text assumptions in this movie.

    Ma and Pa Kent find Kal, hide his spaceship and raise him to keep his super-powers secret as human beings are obviously too stupid to cope with the truth. In a classic moment Pa Kent rushes into the path of a tornado to rescue the family dog. Outcome? Well it’s not a spoiler to say that of course, as it is an iron-clad rule of Hollywood – the bloody dog makes it. The other consequence of this moment is lazily and gratuitously dumb but required by the plot – so who cares?

    When Zod and the Zoddy-men’s spaceship creates a top secret stir up pops Amy Adams’s Pulitzer Price-winning Lois Lane. This irreducibly bland actress is as far removed from the legendary feistiness of Ms Lane as it’s possible to get and delivers lines like “when you’ve stopped measuring the size of your dicks” as if she were judging a sponge pudding contest.

    Meanwhile Zoddy is threatening the end of the human race unless Kal is given up to him. In the profoundly murky moral climate that runs through this ethically chaotic movie, the perfidious politicians, mostly indistinguishabe from the military, decide to accede to these demands even before Clark decides to hand in his cape of his own accord. A very great deal of destruction then ensues; half of New York collapsing in images cynically exploiting the iconography of 9/11. Endless mayhem rules with the main protagonists bewilderingly favouring crashing through walls rather than, well, opening the odd door or two.

    The battle between Kal and Zod assumes a dumb, head-bashing war of attrition without imagination, plan or strategy. This is the American way of war: overwhelming force meets overwhelming force – might is right because might always prevails in the end. It’s just the right might - powerful enough. Leaving for example, half of New York a smouldering ruin: collateral damage I suppose.

    Snyder sticks in a few pointless changes of detail: the name ‘Superman’ is studiously avoided until very late on because the ‘S’ on his chest means ‘Hope’ in Krypton. Profound stuff eh? Episode 2 is set up with unconvincing almost indecent haste as we leave Clarky donning Buddy Holly specs in the last few hastily cobbled together moments as a new reporter on the Daily Planet run by a mis-cast Laurence Fishburne as Perry White.

    I know we shouldn’t take this tosh seriously but this movie is a corruption of the albeit simplistic moral clarity of the original children’s comics. A true myth asks ethical questions and offers moral choices and conflicts without defining solutions. Just as Art needs a limit so it was always a central issue in the Superman myth as to what were the limits, enforced by necessity or chosen freely, to his super-powers. It needed imagination and thoughtfulness to pose and mediate these conflicts: two qualities almost totally lacking from every aspect of Man of Steel – except the computer graphics and special effects.

    As with many other Hollywood action blockbusters, underlying Man of Steel is a pervasive air of paranoia, reaching out to military power and force as the only way to deal with an ever fragile sense of safety. It flirts with genocide as a dramatic device and seems oblivious to the visual and dramatic brutalism it tacitly endorses. Literally overkill.

    Thinking the unthinkable can be a valid artistic enterprise; but the blithe acceptance of millions of deaths as the inescapable price that must be paid for the eventual triumph of might is a Fascist message even if trivially dressed up as a harmless slice of popular entertainment. The line between cinematic fantasy and political reality is becoming increasingly blurred as for example the gungo-ho jingoistic illegal invasion of Iraq, the quagmire of Afghanistan, extraordinary rendition practices and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden all serve to suggest.

    The hundreds of million dollars sunk into Man of Steel will of course, render a profit but this shiny but shoddy commoditised exploitation of a simple, even simplistic little piece of 75-year-old imaginative invention does little credit to anyone involved. Such a disappointment. And an unworthy one.

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  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by alexhazel at 20:31 on 15 June 2013
    At least Lois Lane came across as a capable investigative journalist, in this incarnation. In the Margot Kidder incarnation, she couldn't spell and seemed more strong-opinioned/bossy than investigative, while in the Terri Hatcher incarnation she was too thick to notice that Superman looked and sounded exactly like Clark Kent without the glasses.

    But I agree that Clark's "disguise", when he got around to using one, was hardly a convincing way of concealing the Superman appearance and persona. So far, only Christopher Reeve's take hides the identity convincingly (brilliantly, in fact, in that scene in the first Superman film immediately following Lois' interview with Superman).
  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by Terry Edge at 12:50 on 17 June 2013
    Z, great review again. I'm not looking forward to this film.

    Alex, in 'Smallville', Lois Lane was a strong (but not ball-breaking), independent woman; Clark's boss for a while - and she continued to be a key character in his life after she found out he was, well, super. Lana Lang in the same series transformed into a very powerful, multi-faceted character; and the new-to-DC character, Chloe was, probably the pivotal character of the entire set of series.

    I think this is the problem, now: that TV can do super-heroes (and lots of other movie-stuff) better than the movies, because they have more time to develop the characters. Didn't Steven Spielberg and George Lucas recently say something similar: that movie companies are now only making one or two massive films to make a massive profit, and therefore they have to be full of bangs, crashes, fights, etc (to make a trip to the cinema worthwhile), leaving the more character-based stuff to TV.

    Smallville got round the disguise angle by making our superguy 'The Blur' instead, i.e. the public never saw his face so couldn't compare him with Clark. And - SPOILER ALERT - he only wore the S costume in the last minute of the last programme in the last ever series.

  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by alexhazel at 19:35 on 17 June 2013
    Terry, I would say the film is well worth seeing, despite Zettel's evident dislike. It does a good job of showing just what it might be like to grow up with super powers if you couldn't let people know about them. All different from the comics, of course, where he was Superboy before becoming Superman.

    I would also dispute the use of the word "fascist". If you were faced with an Adolf Hitler-type with super powers and advanced alien technology, you might well decide that stopping him was an absolute priority which trumped almost everything else. The original, human version was bad enough.
  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by Zettel at 00:09 on 18 June 2013
    Alex - I wasn't arguing that Superman as such is a fascist - all the necessary qualifications are there as to why he is supposedly having to act the way he does. My point was that the underlying perspective of the film is 'fascist' in tone - it is a battle of power vs power and presented that way necessarily power wins. No doubt we did lots of pretty 'bad' things on the way to defeating Hitler but even allowing for a bit of post hoc denial I don't think we would want to accept or argue that we came to worship at the shrine of might is right and therefore became literally as bad, as fascist, as our enemies. It becomes greyer and greyer as the years pass though especially with the Nagasaki bomb.

    It is for me clearer with Iraq: we now know that regime change through overwhelming force and superiority of numbers was a wilful impatience and determination to circumvent non-military solutions. And we are still paying the cost in Afghanistan; while the Iraquis and Libyans are paying the cost in their countries.

    The tone and perspective of Man of Steel for me celebrates power and force, relishes the destructive power of violence and invites us to do the same. The offered without comment flirtation with eugenics and genocide also seems a gratuitous way to try to crank up drama the easy way instead of using imagination and insight - which of course Nolan did so well in The Dark Knight only to throw it all away with the much inferior Dark Knight Rises.

    Many of my criticisms could be applied to other Hollywood Comic-book hero blockbusters but there eg. with the latest Iron Man the tongue in cheek style and tone - fun, rescues them from the unremitting self-important tone in Man of Steel. For me.

    The brilliance of the graphics and special effects definitely make MOS worth seeing. In one sense I did 'enjoy' it. I was just trying to tease out some underlying issues that are beginning to emerge within Hollywood action movies post-9/11

    thanks for the comment though

    Z
  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by Zettel at 00:20 on 18 June 2013
    Terry

    I agreee entirely about TV series offering 'space' to develop characters and therefore genuinely satisfying narratives and plot-lines.

    I don't think Hollywood has even begun to realise what a threat this poses to their main-line, cash-cow, increasingly repetitive blockbuster mentality.

    My suggestion is that they should take a leaf out of tv's book and do some co-ordinated, timed releases initially perhaps 3 linked movies: the Dragon Tattoo trilogy would have been ideal but they've blown that as Fincher doesn't seem to want to do the second and third so the momentum behind 'Girl' has been squandered. If the three were made and then released with say 1 month between - world wide so as not to undermine impact, I think people would get just as excited for the next instalment as they do with TV.

    best

    z
  • Re: Man Of Steel ** Zack Snyder
    by Terry Edge at 09:57 on 24 June 2013
    Well, we saw the film last night, in the very civilised Greenwich Picture House. We thought about going to see it in Imax 3D at the Odeon but that would have worked out at about £38 for two, which seemed a bit excessive.

    Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Yes, as you say Z, there's far too much building-bashing. But I don't agree with you on the fun element. Well, I agree there isn't any but I think the tone of this story didn't need it. Maybe because I grew up reading comics, I never liked the so-called 'fun' side, at least not when it's the creators winking at the viewers/readers as if to say, "Hey, we're like you: this is all silly crap, really." I like fun characters, but that's a completely different writing task. I like the fact that the Iron Man character is funny and witty (and Pepper Potts); and Joss Whedon has always written funny dialogue. But Whedon also never takes the piss out of the form. That kind of fun, I feel, is so that middle-class snobs can have their cape and eat it.

    I think the tone suited the size of the story - the death of a huge, advanced civilisation; the possible annihilation of the human race . . . My main concern is how they will treat the next one. I noted a 'Lexcorp' lorry getting trashed at one point. If they must bring back Lex Luthor, let's hope they do him like Smallville did - made him intelligent, sensitive, warped but at a subtle moral level, not a jokey bad guy trashing people level; also, importantly, made him understandable, even if you didn't agree with him. Also, key to much of the great drama in Smallville, was that his trust in Clark was betrayed by Clark and not particularly because Clark was protecting anything important; he was just protecting himself.

    As a side issue, for me Christopher Nolan is good when he's regulated by an origins story like this. His first Batman film was very good but the two that followed were a mess: over-stretched and illogical plots with virtually no character development at all.