I’m wondering about something. Everyone says Man of Steel was terrible, and I believe them, but it seems like a lot of people are saying this having seen for themselves. And it seems a little different from other notoriously bad movies.
Usually, if a movie gets bad word of mouth after opening weekend, people just don’t go to see it, and that’s that. Why waste time and money on something known to be bad, when there’s always a movie out there that is worth seeing? MoS seems to be an exception, though, for two reasons. (Seems, mind you; I could be wrong.)
First, it also seems that last summer was weak overall. Pacific Rim was good, but it didn’t merit Star Wars/Titanic multiple viewings, and after you’d seen that, uh…crickets. Second, the “I survived” factor. A lot of people said of MoS that they’d never seen a movie that bad, that they’d never known a movie could be that bad, and that “You just wouldn’t believe it if you haven’t seen it.”
So has anyone here seen MoS, post opening weekend, just to witness the trainwreck, or does anyone know people who have? Maybe it’s just the people I hang out with, or maybe it was a common occurrence last summer. Not much else in the cinemas + wanting the cachet of having seen The! Worst! Movie! Of! The! Decade! = more viewers than a fiasco normally gets.
I didn’t see the movie, but there were a lot of positive reviews. And the negative reviews I read mostly focused on how badly the movie distorted the character of Superman, and not on inherent deficiencies in the movie’s craft. The general impression I got was that, if you wanted to see a Superman movie, it was pretty bad, but if you just wanted to see a summer action flick where Stuff Blows Up Real Good, it was passable.
I saw it during the second week of release, and the theater was pretty crowded. Also, I liked it; it was FAR from the worst movie of the year. I think your friends might have been put off by the many differences between the movie and other Superman stories, but I would have been bored stiff by a movie that regurgitated the “Kryptonite/Mr. Goody-Goody” aspects of the character. Different strokes for different folks.
For a “trainwreck” the movie still got a 56% on RottenTomatoes.com, only 4 points short of a “Fresh” rating. It can’t come close to Summer 2013 releases like After Earth (11% RT rating),* Hangover 3 (19%), R.I.P.D.* (14%) or* Grown Ups 2* (8%). And it’s not even in the running for worst movie starring a DC superhero; remember Green Lantern (26%) or Batman and Robin (12%; I can’t believe 12% of ANYONE liked that piece of crap)?
I saw it near the end of it’s theatrical run and enjoyed it quite a bit. Like others here, i would not have been nearly as interested in a traditional telling of the Superman story, even if it were otherwise thought to be a superior film.
I saw it about 2 weeks after opening, mid-week matinee.
I knew from the trailers and the thread here on SDMB that it would focus on different aspects of the Superman story/character than the Christopher Reeve series and the Brandon Routh movie.
I wasn’t disappointed. I plan on buying the DVD, probably for Christmas.
I didn’t see it opening weekend, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the reviews, good or ill. I thought the movie had some interesting aspects and was somewhat better than the previous effort (damning with faint praise, to be sure), but I can’t say I was awed by it. There was significant room for improvement.
I guess so. One guy said that the final conflict boiled down to “Henry Cavill looking stoic and buildings being smashed. Cavill looking stoic again and more buildings being smashed. That’s it.” But most of us are Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve diehards, so M does V.
I didn’t see it, but I don’t remember hearing anything about Man of Steel being considered the worst movie of the decade, or even the worst movie of the summer. It was my impression that it was considered more a big “Meh”.
It’s just the internet hate machine, pay it no heed. That said, I haven’t seen MOS yet, but it seems the sort of hate from the IHM being directed toward it.
It lost 62.3% of its audience in its second week of general release. That’s a good-sized drop-off but not unprecendented.
Here’s some other second week drop offs:
The Purge - 71.7%
Fast & Furious 6 - 65.1%
The Wolverine - 58.2%
The Lone Ranger - 58.1%
Iron Man 3 - 57.9%
After Earth - 57.4%
Pacific Rim - 53.7%
Elysium - 53.6%
World War Z - 50.3%
R.I.P.D. - 48.2%
White House Down - 46.5%
Star Trek Into Darkness - 41.3%
Now You See Me - 33.3%
Now granted, some of these movies avoided sharp drops by never climbing all that high to start with. R.I.P.D., for example, opened at seventh place. But this gives you a feel for how “word of mouth” affected ticket sales.
Man of Steel benefited from having its general opening on the weekend of June 14–16. That was a weak weekend. The only other two significant movies that opened that weekend were This is the End and The Bling Ring. And June 7-9 had also been a weak weekend so there were no strong second week competitors. Then the June 21-23 weekend hit Man of Steel hard with the opening of World War Z and Monsters University.
It seems that people are incapable of any sort of nuanced views of movies these days, its either the Best Thing Ever or The Worst Thing Ever with nothing inbetween.
Personally I avoided almost all of the publicity for the movie and went in to see it cold, I was disappointed and thought it was distinctly average. I didn’t like the depiction of Superman, thought the action scenes were overblown, the atmosphere was all wrong and the plot was a mess.
I think the most damning thing I can say about it is that the two best scenes didn’t actually feature Superman!
But then I liked Superman Returns and don’t understand the hate directed towards that movie, so what do I know?
Honestly, the most interesting stuff was the ‘how do I live with this’ stuff in the beginning and middle. I could have lived without the final fight and not been let down. Superman as a character study is something that should be done better.
It’s not just word of mouth - with so many reboots, remakes and sequels, you’re also going to get a lot of front-loading from the people who might want to see the movie already knowing they want to see the movie. Anyone likely to hear someone say “Go see Fast & Furious 6” has probably already heard someone say “Go see Fast & Furious 5”, watched it and so decided to see the next movie in the series without needing to be told again.
For me, it was a mediocre summer punch-em-up/effects fest. But I don’t like those. I would have loved to see a Superman movie, but to me, two aliens who don’t care about humanity or collateral damage* isn’t remotely interesting to me. So…I saw it once and don’t plan to buy the DVD or ever see it again.
At least Green Lantern, for all it’s myriad flaws, had some resemblance to the comic book.
*Routh’s 10 seconds of protesting, and then just going for the fight rather than try to push Zod out of the city or running so Zod would follow him, doesn’t count.
I’ve said in another thread that I enjoyed Green Lantern and think its unfairly maligned, but then I don’t have much connection to the character so just took the movie as presented.
That’s true and it kind of falls apart towards the end, but Man of Steel has no scenes that can compare to Superman saving the security guards or airplane in Superman Returns. With all its heavy atmosphere and doom-laden portentousness it doesn’t even have any light-hearted moments like the grainy CCTV footage of Superman tackling a common thief in ‘Returns’.