It’s on video now and on watching it, my question is: did they explain why they had to have the Kodex? (It’s Krypton - I’m assuming the spelling is K-centric). Zod had terraforming equipment, a ship with hyper-drive, and at least two birthing-age females who were attractive by any metric known to the universe. He could have re-built Krypton anywhere over the previous 33 years.
The codex contains the DNA for every Kryptonian that would be ever be born.
In the movie, Kryptonian society had gotten to the point where everyone was grown in vats and that natural birth was unknown. There was also a caste system where everyone’s role in life was determined before they were born.
Note Zod’s horror at the start of the movie when he found out that Laura had given birth to Superman the old fashioned way (‘Heresy!’).
There was no point in re-building Krypton without the codex, because he couldn’t have re-created the Kryptonian race.
I forgot about his outrage at natural birth; with that in mind, yeah, Zod wouldn’t have started a colony without the Kodex and a genesis chamber. Jor-El was right, he and Zod were too much both products of the old Krypton, where the old ways were always the best.
I just want to zing on this old post.
You’re not QUITE there. What Zod was doing there…is asking Superman to kill him. He’s giving him the choice knowing that it was no choice. But Zod had been trained from - literally - conception to be a fighter and striver. He would achieve his goals no matter what.
But what happens to that man when the goal is no longer - no matter what - achievable? He chose to opt out in a way that left him some honor. Essentially, Zod committed suicide by cop. Superman granted him that request.
But it’ll be interesting to see how Zack Snyder deals with that in a future movie - if they do. Which he should!
Batman will rub salt in that wound as only he could summon the righteous indignation and direct it towards the good guy who killed space Hitler.
Hard to argue with that. Superman AND Batman are both brilliant, true. But Batman has the ‘bastard’ subclass that Superman lacks.
Did anyone else have a problem with how dumb the Kryptonians were in this movie? Why did they feel the need for such and elaborate, and clearly vulnerable method of birthing ( DNA for the entire race stored in one place)
Their chief scientist told them not to mine the core of their own planet, as it would make it unstable, but they went ahead and did it anyway, rather than maybe testing it out on another planet. When the planet started imploding they just sat their and took it. Did everyone just forget about all the space tech they had lying around or something?
I think in every telling of Superman Jor-El is faced with everyone disputing his findings until it’s too late, and arguing against his evacuation plan (put everyone in the Phantom Zone) as too drastic. Given how Earth’s people similarly poo-poo dire predictions until there’s lava flowing or buildings toppling, we can’t throw stones. Our typical response to “This will kill us unless we do <blank>” is “Aah, no it won’t. Hey, do you hear sirens?” As Raj pointed out recently “Someone has to tell you not to start fires?”
The difference is, we don’t have piles of space tech literally just lying around. The council were able to summon up those phallic ships for Zod out of nowhere, and Jorel made the pod for Superman in the Kryptonian equivalent of his garage. I’m pretty sure in similar circumstances, humans would abandon the earth like a shot. They even took the time, even when destruction was imminent, to exile Zod from the world of death, and put him nice and safe in the phantom zone.
Didn’t this advance spacefaring civilisation have a single shiop, station or colony anywhere? They had literally put all their eggs into one basket (the codex), and then put that in an even bigger basket (Krypton)
I thought it was boring. Lots of exposition, then a lot of crash-bang. Costner is tedious even in small parts, and the villains were cardboard cutouts. Maybe I’m getting too old for comic book movies.
That’s our perspective. They didn’t believe destruction was imminent so it was business as usual. As Zod said, the only people that believed the planet was going under were him and Jor-El (not counting Lara).
The Codex was the repository of the entire race, but it can’t have been the only way to create/birth Kryptonians. The 18,000-year old colony ship on Earth had a Genesis chamber - why include one on a ship if you can’t use it away from Krypton’s codex? It’s seems logical that the colony ship didn’t have a complete codex - maybe just what DNA you needed to replace colony members. Zod wanted to re-do the entire race, so he needed the full codex in Kal-El.
This makes sense on another level. Why pump the codex into Kal-El and send him to a planet with no way to use it? Jor-El knew there was a colony ship on Earth, and apparently a Genesis chamber was standard equipment, which means creating Kryptonians was commonplace.
Somewhat of a zombie thread revived, but Man Of Steel was just shown on HBO.
This film sucked - big time.
Nothing but boom, bang, kaboom, kabang and who gives a shit about any of the characters? Perhaps the worst Superman film ever.
I am so glad I didn’t spend money to see this piece of crap in a movie theater!
I just finished watching it on HBO as well, and I disagree completely. I thought it was fantastic (and I originally avoided it in the theaters because of the mediocre reviews). Even the soundtrack was great.
In particular, it’s the first Superman film that ever even remotely portrayed with any realism what a battle between superpowered people would actually look like. Have you seen the first two Superman movies lately (the ones from the early '80s)? While I loved them as a kid, they don’t hold up well.
Took me awhile to get around to watching it after it left the theaters. I liked it just fine! Lots of creative and original sci-fi goodness and plenty of meaty super power action.
I could barely stomach the cheesy campy feel of the earlier movies.
I finally saw this on HBO the other day as well. Like some of the other posters, I also felt this was pretty much the best Superman to date. The fight scenes were pretty cool, and seemed like the sort of fight that such superpowered guys might have. My only complaint there is that Superman didn’t seem to think twice about knocking his enemies through buildings full of people.
I also liked the way the movie played up Kal’s struggle as an alien without a home - Superman is undeniably boring if he’s just an omnipotent, invincible American. But as an alien, there’s at least some pathos and some struggle for the character to experience.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It didn’t excite me the way the Marvel movies have been, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would.
A shortcoming of the film is that it seems like we’re only supposed to care about Clark Kent - all the emotion is around his isolation, his fears, his search for a place in our world. We don’t get much about anyone else. And while I didn’t want another S:TM, man, could the movie have used a laugh or two (the scene with the logging truck wasn’t funny - that was dumb).
I also just saw this on HBO.
Things I liked:
Henry Cavill in the shirtless scenes.
Ma Kent.
Lois knowing who he was when he came to work at the Daily Planet. “Welcome to the planet.”
Kal El being a real alien, and having a little bit of difficulty with that.
Zod being something other than just pure evil, and the explanation that he was specifically bred and designed to be a defender of Krypton, nothing else.
Things I didn’t like:
Pa Kent was kind of a jerk.
Superman not leading Zod and company away from the populated areas to reduce casualties and collateral damage.
Well, Pa Kent wasn’t wrong. The first time someone saw Clark doing something miraculous they immediately got religious about it. Clark would have been treated like a freak, which is exactly what Pa Kent wanted to avoid. Later when Clark discovered his true origin it also alerted Zod to his location. Ironically (?) that was a good thing because if Zod hadn’t shown up and demonstrated there was a real extraterrestrial threat to Earth, humanity would have reacted with fear and distrust, and Zod gave Clark the perfect opportunity to prove that he was on our side, and uniquely qualified to deal with threats we hadn’t known about previously. Without Zod, the military would have hounded him relentlessly.
After the mess they made of Metropolis, there was no way that Clark was ever going to win over the public. Public perception would be two Aliens showed up, killed a million people, then one turned on the other and killed him.
He would find himself in a Kryptonite Guantanamo faster than, well, a speeding bullet.
Thank goodness there’s no Kryptonite. That part made me happy.