FILM: Man Of Steel

I’ve never liked comic book superheroes. They always struck me as the embodiment of juvenile power fantasies, written by and for teenage boys who are bullied in school, so they could express their desire to beat the tough bad guy and win the girl at the end. The characters are always stupid, one-dimensional stereotypes, the stories are predictable, and the visual style is both asinine and juvenile. Despite this, there are two comic book superhero films of recent years that I actually like. The first is The Dark Knight trilogy, from director Christopher Nolan, a sophisticated take on the Batman character employing some truly dark and philosophical themes concerning the human condition. The second is Watchmen, from Zack Snyder, which is less morbid and sinister, but no less interesting. Both are very well written, have well established characters, and are truly thought-provoking in their own right, and notably, both stories significantly downplay all supernatural elements, if any. Man of Steel is a film which I feared would try far too hard to be The Dark Knight, and subsequently fail from having to live in the shadow of such a fantastic film. Evidently, however, I needn’t have worried.

I’m going to be upfront about this film. Man of Steel is horrendously bad in every way. It is a film which is drowned in so much bullshit, that I don’t even know where to begin in criticising it. I wanted to walk out of the film - something I never do, because I prefer to see where a film takes itself to the end. However, watching this film to the end is something I actually regret; just when I thought it was going to end, I looked at the time and (to my dismay) found it had another forty minutes left.

As I mentioned above, I’m not a fan of superhero stories, and among my least favourites would have to be Superman. I remember watching Superman Returns, and thinking of how unbalanced and stupid his character was. Superman is essentially indestructible and is capable of almost any miraculous feat imaginable - and without weaknesses he cannot be a compelling character. For him to be interesting we need a second character to bring out some of his personality, but Man of Steel barely bothers to characterise anyone.

For a while I thought that Man of Steel embodied the reasons I dislike superheroes in general, but on reflection it embodies almost everything I hate about modern films in general. It’s hardly a superhero film; merely another generic science fiction film,  which there have been a lot of this year so far. Terrible characterisation, a dull, simplistic plot, bad writing making every event seem hollow and superficial, action scenes that outstay their welcome, and a reliance on special effects for quality. Solid writing can easily compensate for below-average production quality; however, an expensive budget and a polished production can never make up for poor writing. In other words, Man of Steel is a textbook example of “style over substance”. 

This film is so bad I don’t even know where to begin. But, as I have to start somewhere, I might as well start with the petty gripes. Firstly, you cannot take any character seriously if his name is “Zod”. This is a science fiction naming trend which should have ceased thirty years ago - throwing in random ‘z’s and ‘x’s in your characters’ names does not make them seem “more alien”; it just makes them sound stupid. I know that General Zod is a main character from the original stories, but that doesn’t excuse it. I would have thought a re-imagining of Superman in this film would have taken the opportunity to improve it, rather than play to the fans. 

Man of Steel lost me within the first five minutes, which consisted of a long, boring action scene where aliens were shooting each other with “futuristic” laser guns. As the film progressed, it became more and more clear that it was little more than another generic science-fiction action film. It is boring, tedious, repetitive, and devoid of even a single original thought or idea, like all the others of its kind that have been released this year.

The thing is, the trailer made it out to be a re-imagining of Superman as a character and as a franchise. Moral and philosophical questions were raised about the responsibilities of a superior man, and with Christopher Nolan’s name plastered over the trailer I had suspected Superman would be getting the Dark Knight treatment - that is, a deconstruction of the very nature of the character. But Man of Steel turned out to be about as generic as can be, and even makes Superman Returns look half-decent. What’s worse is that the most interesting scenes in the actual film were all in the trailer. It definitely sold me the film and made me curious to watch it, but Man of Steel was falsely advertised in this regard. Watching the trailer on repeat for two and a half hours would probably be more interesting than watching the actual film.

I actually like what they started to do with the character in this film. It seemed like there was a lot of potential to explore him in a much more in-depth fashion, and I like the concept of a lone, superior man, who can see further than the rest of humanity, driven to solitude because of his nature. A man who cannot reveal his true nature, and must therefore hide it at all costs. I would like to see a film where we can delve into Superman’s inner conflicts and angst much more. We see a glimpse of this idea in a few scenes toward the beginning of the film, notably when he is seen hitchhiking and backpacking across the country, as well as scenes from his childhood. There was great potential for something truly spectacular, which might have even had a deeper meaning, but all pretense of any such thing was abandoned fairly early on.

What’s remarkable is that by comparison, even the first Spider-Man movie (the Tobey Maguire one), which was by all accounts bad in its own right, managed to explore Peter Parker as an interesting human character fairly well. It focussed on the decisions and conflicts he faced in being who he was, and the risks he took with his dual identity. Even if it was done poorly, it was better than Man of Steel, where every character is wooden and stale and devoid of any complex personality. Clark Kent’s character is barely established or explored on any level. It makes it difficult to take seriously if we are dealing with characters we can’t relate to because they are simple and one-dimensional.

There has been a trend in recent years for films to go for longer than two hours. Personally, I am a fan of this, because it allows far more depth in films than what has traditionally been possible. However, the downside is that if a film is both bad and long, it’s only rubbing salt into the wound. Man of Steel’s length is unnecessarily padded by boring action and fight scenes, which go on for far longer than is needed to make the point. I’m going to make this point: film should be a medium to convey and showcase new ideas to the public, and a means in which to make people think. It doesn’t need to all the time; films can also be fun, and don’t necessarily need to contain thought-provoking ideas. But highly-produced action and fight scenes are neither of these things. They are not interesting to watch, nor are they exciting or enthralling in any way. Perhaps they were when this level of special effects was a new thing, but we’ve gotten to the point where this level of production is going to be difficult to top, and we are getting diminishing returns as we continue to expand our technological capabilities for film production. Unless films want to spiral into mediocrity, they need to start once again relying on solid writing and interesting plot ideas - they need to have substance. Not merely style - this brand of filmmaking is superficial and has a very limited shelf-life.

I already said I don’t like superheroes, and by that account some may accuse me of bias. Perhaps I am biased - but if that’s the case, I’m biased in favour of Man of Steel, because of the men behind it. Maybe the reason this film incited such vitriol and hatred in me is because I expected much more from a Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder collaboration. The latter, who made the great Watchmen film; and the former, who has produced nothing but gold since Following, are both capable of so much more, and together they could have made this film amazing. Instead, Man of Steel is nothing more than overproduced, generic, unoriginal, derivative rubbish. And I refuse to believe Nolan watched this film and decided it was good enough to be released.

In fact, watching this film kind of put me off the future of the film industry in general. I honestly don’t remember seeing a film this atrocious for a long time. It’s one of those rare films which made want to leave, but not just because it was a waste of money. Mainly, Man of Steel was a waste of my time, which I believe is a first for me. My final word on Man of Steel is to avoid - save your time and money. On a somewhat lighter note, why has no one learned from The Incredibles about the uselessness of capes?