I just returned from seeing Man of Steel, and damn, if DC
doesn’t finally have a movie as good as The Dark Knight. I won’t say MoS is
better than the Dark Knight, because the Dark Knight didn’t have all the
irritating Christian symbolism (more on that in a second) and it had Heath
Ledger, but the two movies are equally good.
I’d been avoiding spoilers as much as possible for MoS, and
I wanted to go into the movie cold. First, I was very impressed that the movie
dedicated a good chunk of screen time to actually showing Krypton. Like Vulcan
and Earth in the first JJ Abrams Star Trek movie, movie Krypton was a place we’d
heard about, but never really got a chance to walk around in, and the opening
scene more than took care of that. Krypton was beautiful and weird. I’m seeing
two main influences on movie Krypton: the first is the Halo game franchise.
Halo’s design has really influenced a lot of sci-fi, because a whole generation
of artists and special effects crew grew up with that vision of the future.
Much of Krypton’s tech reminded me of the Covenant’s,
especially the ships and energy rifles. I also noticed that most of the
Kryptonian tech looked vaguely organic and subtly sexualized, lots of vaginal
and phallic motifs, which makes sense given the culture has abandoned sexual
reproduction in favor of kelp forest fetus farms. Plus, I fucking loved the
liquid metal tech, especially the hovering phone droids.
Michael Turner had a short run on the Superman comic,
illustrating Godfall and reintroducing Supergirl in a great story; during
Godfall, Superman was trapped in a kind of VR simulation of Krypton, which resembled
the world here. The dragonfly-like assault ships and the four winged dragon
weren’t specifically from that arc, but they were very Turner-like in design. I
think the art department read Godfall and went on to poach other Mike Turner
comics, like Fathom and Soul Fire for ideas. Good call on their part, because
Krypton was absolutely gorgeous. The Matrix fetus-farm/kelp forest was amazing,
and I loved Jor-El’s pet dragon (did he call that thing Argo? I couldn’t hear
clearly.) When the DVD comes out, there
better be a goddamned deleted scene where he pets the dying dragon and tells it
‘good boy’ though, because that scene needed to be in the movie.
The whole movie felt very faithful to the comics while not
being constrained by them. I loved the fact that Lois
Lane not only knows his secret identity, from
practically the first moment they meet, she is an active participant in keeping
Superman’s ID secret. The movie went out of their way to make Lois as sarcastic
and slightly vulgar as she is in the comics, but showed off her intelligence
(she figured out Clark’s identity and origin in what, a
2-3 week montage sequence?) but showed that she was honorable enough to keep
that secret a secret. For the first time, I felt Lois as a character was worthy
of Superman’s love, a feeling I’ve never really gotten from the comic book
Lois.
The movie takes great pains to establish that humanity is
worth saving. Man of Steel is a disaster movie in a sense, but it takes great
pains to show that the humans around Superman are trying to help one another
and are heroic in their own right. The fishing trawler captain responding to
the SOS from the oil rig, Jonathan Kent’s death,
Perry trying to help Jenny, “Guardian’s” heroic sacrifice, the soldiers and
cops and civilians throughout the movie all trying to help. Good storytelling
detail- the civilians in the X-Men and Avengers movies are either panicky sheep
or outright bigots, and the civies in the DCU
seem a little more likable.
I’m amazed by the quality of the guest stars this movie
fielded. I knew Russell Crow was Jor-El, but I missed that Kevin Costner and Diane
Lane were Clark’s parents. Fucking
Field of Dreams was in this movie. I also kept expecting Christopher Meloni’s
character to forcibly sodamize somebody, just he is so strongly associated with
the character of Keller from Oz in my mind. Also, he didn’t wear the incredibly
stupid blue and gold costume, but Meloni was the fucking Guardian. Of all the DCU
properties to appear in a multimillion dollar movie, they included the
Guardian. His call sign was Guardian, and he was a soldier who died heroically
saving Metropolis, so Guardian it is. I was actually very pleased to see that.
And even though they got Laurence Fishburne in this movie,
Perry White still remains the gruff newspaper editor that is no where near as
interesting as J. Jonah Jameson. Fishburne did what he could, but I don’t think
he really had much to work with. Also, I recognize the balding reporter,
Lombard, from somewhere, but damn if I can ID the actor. I’m curious- I’d heard
they flipped Jimmy Olsen’s gender and made her Jenny, but seriously, there’s
nothing on screen to indicate that Jenny is anything other than some random NPC
named Jenny. Will they develop her more in the sequel?
There were plenty of Easter eggs, of course. Jor-El’s cool
liquid metal hologram displayed Krytponian statues very similar to the enormous
chrome statues of his parents that decorated Superman’s Fortress of Solitude
pre-Crisis, and other elements of the chrome hologram were lifted directly from
panels in Lenil Yu’s awesome Birthright miniseries. In addition to Guardian,
lots of other military call signs recalled various DC properties, but I’m not
sure if that’s intentional or merely coincidental. The only direct Lexcorp
Easter egg I noticed was the tanker truck thrown at Superman by Zod during the
climactic battle, but there may have been stuff I missed. And in the credits, I
noticed a character named Dev-Em- a minor Kyrptonian from the Legion era, but
damn if I could identify him on screen.
Now for the part I didn’t like. The Christian symbolism. I’d
gone into the movie expecting more overt symbolism, especially given the news
that Warner Brothers was starting a whisper campaign among Evangelical clergy
to put the word out that MoS was, if not an explicitly Christian film, a
Christian-friendly one, but the elements in the movie were far more
superficial. Basically, Superman starts his heroic career at 33 and flies in a
cruciform pattern a few times, and Jor-El, in voice over narration keeps
talking about how he sent his Son to save mankind.
However, Superman is ethical without being religious, which
is about as it should be. I did however, question the wisdom of Superman
confiding in a priest (who used to be the school bully who beat up little Clark
back in the day). That scene added nothing, and though we as the audience were
supposed to believe that Clark’s refusal to hit back helped the priest to find
God, given what I know of rural Kansas politics and theology, I find myself
wandering what this priest-character does the other 364 days out of the year
when he’s not (badly) advising Clark Kent. Is this guy still a bully, only
instead of bullying teen-Kent, does he bully women out front of the only
abortion clinic within 75 miles of Smallville?
Also, did anybody else get the vibe that Jonathan Kent might
have been an atheist? It was very subtle, but when Pete Ross’s dipshit mom
started blathering on about Clark miraculously saving
everybody, using evangelical memes and word choices, did you notice Jonathan
sorta rolling his eyes. I get the feeling that he really held Mrs. Ross in
contempt, but was only being polite to her because rural Kansas
social mores demanded him to be, and Jonathan didn’t seem emotionally strong
enough to actively fight to change an unjust culture- witness his advice to his
son. Still, it was kind of subversive, you’ve got Clark who was raised by an atheist?
Or at least non-believer, and he’s flying in the sun, saving the planet, and
Pete Ross, raised by an evangelical house-mouse is a small town schlub managing
an IHOP. To what degree did the two men’s religious upbringing, or lack of the
same, define their futures?
Still, Pete Ross was likable- his arc was minor, he went
from bullying Clark, to offering comfort secretly, even
if like Jonathan he lacked the balls to directly stand against an unjust
society. Though Pete Ross’ heroism was understated, and weak, there was still a
little heroism there; he kept Clark’s secret and was
better for knowing him.
One thing I wonder about is the role of the American
military in superhero movies like this. In the Bay Transformers films, in
Avengers, in Iron Man, in the horrible Battleship, ect, you’ve got ordinary
American forces up against full on MDC
Rifts-style monsters, and while the military is portrayed as heroic, decisive
and honorable, the soldiers get slaughtered by the HUNDREDS.
Years back, when I wrote D20 Decade: the 1980s, I noted that
a shopping mall gets annihilated in tons of movies, Day of the Dead and The
Blues Brothers being two of the best known examples. It was like movie makers
realized that though malls offered convenience, there were killing something
vital of the old America,
and took great pleasure in destroying one. We need the mall, but we also sorta
hate it because we intuitively understand the consequence of its presence, so
let’s have some catharsis by blowing one up on screen. Is the modern, post 911
military the same thing. We need these guys, but after Abu Garib, and PRISIM
and all the other bullshit, we kinda hate them too. So we put soldiers in our
big budget summer block busters just so they can die like heroes, but most
importantly, so they can just DIE. (And by the way, though I’ve definitely got
some opinions about that whole PRISIM clusterfuck, I’m sure as shit not talking
about it on line. Those who know what I did in the Navy can guess why.)
Anyway, something to think about. Faint reservations aside, I'll definitely be buying
this one when it comes out on DVD.
Blessed Be,
CHRIS
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