# Man of Steel - anyone seen it?(open spoilers after the first post) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 12, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764 "2013-06-12T00:06:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/181 "2013-06-25T13:58:44Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > I’m surprised at the love in this thread - I thought it was a pretty crappy superhero movie, especially compared to most of the really good movies we’ve seen in the last couple of years - \*Iron Man, The Dark Knight, The Avengers \*were all much better movies than this. Here are my chief complaints. > > - The shakycam didn’t bother me, but apparently Snyder went to the J.J. Abrams School of Lens Flare Appreciation. It was quite distracting. > - I like Amy Adams a lot, but she and Cavill had absolutely no chemistry. She had more chemistry with Mr. White. It made all their scenes, especially the kiss, very awkward. > - The dialogue was _terribly_ bad. For example, characters were constantly explaining things to other people that the listener already knows, to exposit for the audience. That’s bad writing. The one that jumped out at me was Lois telling White that she was a Pulitzer Prize winner, as if he didn’t know. There were other examples, like when El and Zod were in front of the council. > - The whole battle scene on Krypton was stupid. Everyone travels in flying space tanks except Jor-El rides a winged ox? Zod is kicking ass and killing the council member and El but suddenly he’s lost the battle and is being sentenced to exile? Who defeated him? > - The “codex” of the whole Kryptonian population (?) is stored in a skull fragment? And then Jor somehow loads this into Kal’s cells/DNA? WHY?? > - How are psychic projections of Jor-El on the scout ship and later, Zod’s ship, able to interact with and respond to other characters? If he can open and close doors why can’t he disable the ship? > - The World Smasher is set up to be some kind of terraforming doomsday device, and then all Superman has to do is smash through it to destroy it. Why can’t he do that before it takes out most of Metropolis? Speaking of which, is intentionally creating a black hole in the skies above Metropolis really such a good idea? > - “This man is not our enemy.” Another clunky line. > - Oh, I just remembered that at the beginning of the movie Zod was clean shaven, but when he comes back from exile all evil and whatnot he’s got that malevolent chin beard. Subtle! > - Why was Supes so distraught after he snapped Zod’s neck? Because he didn’t want to kill anyone? That’s odd considering the hundreds of thousands of people who had just died. Why not just knock Zod away from those three people in the train station, like he had been knocking him around for the whole fight? > > Anyway, I had a lot of other problems as well but I’d rather not go on. > > Things I liked: > > - Russell Crowe was excellent, even though his role was overblown and often made no sense. He was the only major character who seemed like a real person. > - I liked that they made Lois Lane much smarter than in previous versions (although Margot Kidder was no pushover). > - I really like the “You _are_ my son” scene, and Costner was really good throughout. Both his parents were. Too bad he died so stupid. > > I’d give it a 4/10. There was the germ of a good idea in there - Superman as an outcast, finding out how he can fit into this alien world - but they tried to turn it into another paint-by-numbers brainless F/X display. This movie had more _Independence Day_ than _Dark Knight_. I’m about a quarter of the way through the thread (and probably won’t finish all the posts), but **Skammer** captured my feelings mostly, though maybe he was slightly kinder than me. Superman killing Zod destroyed the movie for me. As I left the movie, I could focus on nothing else other than the poor writing and direction that forced that scene. I also think that the post-fight scenes might have spent a few seconds showing Superman being Superman in Metropolis - finding and rescuing survivors and helping with the rebuilding. Cavill did a fine job, but there were a number of scenes where he was so pale I thought I was watching Zombie-Superman. Adams was also good. But together…not so much. I could somewhat deal with the codex MacGuffin, but MacGuffins are better the less explained they are. Making it a partial skull and encoding it into Supes DNA, however, was just stupid. Jonathan Kent’s death was just as stupid and senseless, if not more so. I understand that he was emphasizing “stay hidden” but it came out more like “I’m so tired of Martha, I prefer the tornado”. Poor execution. I often wonder if these poor choices come from the director or from the studio. I’d like to think Snyder would know better but some focus group wanted Kal-El to get revenge and kill Zod and Snyder was told from high above to make it happen. I’d at least like to think that is what happened. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/182 "2013-06-25T14:56:57Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > I often wonder if these poor choices come from the director or from the studio. I’d like to think Snyder would know better but some focus group wanted Kal-El to get revenge and kill Zod and Snyder was told from high above to make it happen. I’d at least like to think that is what happened. That’s ridiculous. Superman didn’t kill, or even fight Zod, out of a sense of revenge (save for the once time he threatened Ma). He fought Zod as a protector of Earth and humanity, and Zod had to monologue about how this was a fight to the death (just before he bear-climbed that skyscraper) and of course the heat vision scene in Metropolis’ Grand Central has Zod putting the Kryptonian he views as a moralist into an moral dilemma. Superman cries out over this Pyrrhic victory. I was happily surprised at all of this because, while I like Snyder, Man of Steel was markedly more restrained than the chest thumping of 300 or the protagonist-violence-always-equals-cool vibe of Dawn of the Dead. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/183 "2013-06-25T15:30:37Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > Zod putting the Kryptonian he views as a moralist into an moral dilemma. Superman cries out over this Pyrrhic victory. Huh. I hadn’t really connected the dots between that and Faora’s your-morality-is-your-weakness putdown – but if you squint just right, it’s kinda there. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/184 "2013-06-25T15:36:36Z")
That was a problem I had. So, Kal is a moralist because the other Kryptonians tell us so. We, as the audience, know Superman has a moral code, but nothing in the movie really _showed_ us this. We had to rely on exposition. Show, don’t tell. Within just the context of the movie, Clark did very little to show he was averse to the act of killing if necessary or that he had some moral dilemmas about the confrontations. Seems like half the movie was either people in exposition mode explaining things either to Lois Lane (who just happened to be in the right places at the right times to have gobs of exposition tossed her way) or to Clark Kent. That’s a handy superpower, especially for a newspaper reporter. Just show up wherever in the world (scientific expeditions, middle of nowhere Kansas, alien spacecraft, military operation on a C-130) and have random people explain everything to you. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/185 "2013-06-25T16:30:03Z")
> [@simster](#): > > _ **No Capes!** _ Didn’t you hear about Stratogale! April 23rd, '57! Cape caught in a jet turbine! > Metaman, express elevator! Dynaguy, snagged on takeoff! Splashdown, sucked into a vortex! I had exactly the same reaction, much to my daughter’s chagrin (she took me to the movie for Father’s Day). The other moment when I embarrassed her was when whosit, the guy who used to be the lieutenant on _Law and Order: SUV_ empties his pistol at the evil female super-villain. I was unable to stop myself from saying out loud: “Throw the gun at her - she’ll duck!” Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/186 "2013-06-25T16:30:04Z")
Is it necessary for Superman/Clark to be in such good shape? If he was out-of-shape or even obese, he would still have his superpowers, right? Does the muscle help at all, i.e. would Zod have had a better chance of defeating Superman if Clark didn’t take such good care of himself? In fact, how did Clark stay in good shape? Did he lift Everest 10 times, do 20 laps around Earth and skip breakfast every morning? I asked this in my prior post, but is it ever explained anywhere why Kryptonians evolved to look exactly like humans despite being on a different planet? ---
**Author:** ![MegaBee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@MegaBee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MegaBee)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/187 "2013-06-25T17:09:01Z")
> [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](#): > > Is it necessary for Superman/Clark to be in such good shape? If he was out-of-shape or even obese, he would still have his superpowers, right? Does the muscle help at all, i.e. would Zod have had a better chance of defeating Superman if Clark didn’t take such good care of himself? In fact, how did Clark stay in good shape? Did he lift Everest 10 times, do 20 laps around Earth and skip breakfast every morning? > > I asked this in my prior post, but is it ever explained anywhere why Kryptonians evolved to look exactly like humans despite being on a different planet? Because comic books. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/188 "2013-06-25T19:15:51Z")
I thought the cape was impractically long. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/189 "2013-06-25T19:18:08Z")
Saw it the other day. I thought it was by far the most powerful movie yet to deal with the problems brought about by illegal aliens and their anchor babies. Has anybody else noticed that in certain lighting and at certain angles Henry Cavill is kind of hot? ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/190 "2013-06-25T19:49:23Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Has anybody else noticed that in certain lighting and at certain angles Henry Cavill is kind of hot? In certain angles he BECAME John Travolta. To me at least. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/191 "2013-06-25T20:06:48Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Saw it the other day. I thought it was by far the most powerful movie yet to deal with the problems brought about by illegal aliens and their anchor babies. > > Has anybody else noticed that in certain lighting and at certain angles Henry Cavill is kind of hot? I believe my girlfriend did mention that, in a lunging-forward-to-grab-at-the-screen kind of way. No, really. It’s a good thing there wasn’t anybody in the row in front of us. And, Jenny = Jimmy… I totally missed that. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/192 "2013-06-25T20:17:50Z")
[QUOTE=the\_diego] 4. It’s ok for Kevin Costner and Diane Lane to look old, just keep Russell Crowe’s sex appeal intact. [/QUOTE] A funny (if only to me) piece of age related vanity: Did you notice the dates on Costner’s character’s headstone? > [@](#): > > Jonathan Kent > 1951-1997 Kevin Costner looks good for 58, but he doesn’t look 46. ---
**Author:** ![planetcory](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/planetcory/32/1032_2.png) [@planetcory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/planetcory)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/193 "2013-06-25T23:05:46Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Jenny = Jimmy… I totally missed that. She isn’t. It seems she was ‘Jenny Olsen’ at some point during production, but it got changed to Jenny Jurwich along the way. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/194 "2013-06-25T23:38:11Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > …And, really, if you are able to ignore the moral implications of wiping out the human race, why shouldn’t he choose Earth? It’s larger and has more resources than Mars or Venus… Earth may be a much better candidate for [del]terra[/del]kryptoforming that Mars or Venus, but it still orbits a yellow sun. The world engine isn’t going to change that. One would think a planet orbiting a red sun would be a much better candidate than Earth. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > I’d say a much worse than that. At least he doesn’t have the excuse of surviving the Holocaust and wanting to avoid a repeat. > > He was a traitorous, fascist eugenicist. And that was _before_ his planet blew up. To be fair it seems like all the Kryptonians (save Jor-El & Lara Lor-Van) had been fascist eugenicists for millennia. And let’s not forget that Zod was right; the Council was wrong. His own genetic engineering & the conditioning he’s undergone since birth are what compelled him to attempt that coup in the first place. > [@Sampiro](#): > > A funny (if only to me) piece of age related vanity: > > Did you notice the dates on Costner’s character’s headstone? > > Kevin Costner looks good for 58, but he doesn’t look 46. Eh, farming’s a hard life. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/195 "2013-06-26T00:19:57Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Eh, farming’s a hard life. Wouldn’t be hard at all once I came to realize that lil’ clark has an endless supply of energy and needs a constructive way to burn it off. What, clark? you want to turn me into the othorities? remember, you are the very definition of an ‘illegal alien’… remember that little area 51 film I showed you? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/196 "2013-06-26T00:39:29Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > And let’s not forget that Zod was right; the Council was wrong. His own genetic engineering & the conditioning he’s undergone since birth are what compelled him to attempt that coup in the first place. Meh. His solution was to double down on the eugenics. That’s not exactly being right. More like being wrong in a worse way. And blaming everything on genetics is quite passe. They may have been predisposed to careers and pushed into them by society, but that doesn’t compel somebody to attempt coup d’etats. Otherwise, why stop him in the first place? Or sentence him to the phantom zone? Predestination as excuse doesn’t work, even in an engineered society. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/197 "2013-06-26T01:52:46Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > And blaming everything on genetics is quite passe. They may have been predisposed to careers and pushed into them by society, but that doesn’t compel somebody After all, Russell Crowe was bred to be an egghead scientist, and he – mows down enemy soldiers like Maximus Decimus Meridius. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/198 "2013-06-26T01:58:49Z")
> [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](#): > > Is it necessary for Superman/Clark to be in such good shape? If he was out-of-shape or even obese, he would still have his superpowers, right? Does the muscle help at all, i.e. would Zod have had a better chance of defeating Superman if Clark didn’t take such good care of himself? In fact, how did Clark stay in good shape? Did he lift Everest 10 times, do 20 laps around Earth and skip breakfast every morning? > > I asked this in my prior post, but is it ever explained anywhere why Kryptonians evolved to look exactly like humans despite being on a different planet? In terms of muscle, eugenics / genetic engineering. In terms of looking human, I don’t know if it was intentional, but the whole outpost thing made me think there was some kind of relationship between our people, especially considering all the other Prometheus references. According to TV tropes: “Superman, Supergirl, and all other Kryptonians are outwardly indistinguishable from humans, despite obvious biological differences. Exactly how close or distant humans and Kryptonians are can vary depending on the work: According to some Silver Age stories, Kryptonians were descendants of humans plucked from Earth by a more technologically advanced race. Some Post Crisis stories imply this as well. One Superman/Flash story has the duo facing a mysterious alien race that apparently seeded both Earth and Krypton with life, at around the same time, serving as a possible explanation for this trope. It is mentioned that Jor-El chooses Earth because humans looks exactly like Kryptonians, so Kal-El could live among them without detection. Lampshaded in an issue of Starman where Jack Knight’s journeys through space and time land him on Krypton before its destruction. He is promptly arrested by the authorities, who suspect him of being a member of a Kryptonian rebel group. When Jack tries to argue that he’s an alien visitor from planet Earth, his interrogator refuses to believe him, pointing out that he looks no different from any Kryptonian. Jack wonders whether God was feeling unoriginal. Other stories suggested that the human and Kryptonian species actually were directly related: Krypton dodges the Caucasian Aliens trap via “Vathlo Island”, home to “a highly developed black race” of Kryptonians, first mentioned in 1971.” > **[Human Aliens - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanAliens)** > > When a creature from a planet other than Earth looks like a human, sounds like a human, acts somewhat like a human and can easily get confused for a human. Their internal physiology may well be different, whether a little or a lot or just none, … ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/199 "2013-06-26T04:22:34Z")
The most impressive special effect was the way they morphed Laurence Fishburne into James Earl Jones. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764/200 "2013-06-26T04:28:23Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > The most impressive special effect was the way they morphed Laurence Fishburne into James Earl Jones. No kal-el, I am your father - morpheus. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-of-steel-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers-after-the-first-post/660764.md?page=11)