Actually, the “dot technology” reminded me of a similar bit of sci-fi tech seen in the X-Men movie - namely the desktop 3D display device the guys used to plan their approach to Liberty Island.
But while the X-Men version looked like a computerized pinscreen, the Kryptonian tech looks even awesomer. Fully three dimensional and heavily weaponized, even.
It’s an extrapolation from current cutting edge tech. I don’t remember any keywords so no link, sorry. But the idea is that you can do some pretty damn awesome things using countless tiny-to-microscopic bits each of which is capable only of “understanding” which part of its surface area is supposed to be sticky and which not. By letting them affect each other cellular automaton style, you can get some pretty cool results.
I had exactly the opposite reaction. I thought the tornado scene, and Pa Kent’s death by whirlwind, utterly ridiculous. I found Pa Kent’s death in the 1978 movie far more affecting, precisely because it was so ordinary. “All these powers, and I couldn’t even save him.” Young Clark may be nigh unto a god, but some things are beyond him. He can withstand a nuclear blast, but can do nothing in the face of a heart attack.
Overall I found the movie OK, but only OK. I really liked the emphasis on Superman’s fundamental alieness, and how it distances him from others. And the film did a really great job of showing just how Godlike he actually is in comparison to us ordinary Earthlings. He truly is the Last Son of Krypton here. But I think the movie could have benefitted from a touch of levity. There’s a fine line between sober and ponderous, and I felt it was crossed once or twice.
The fight scenes, as is typical for Hollywood special effects blockbusters today, went on much too long. Less is more, Hollywood! And they felt strangely unrealistic, largely because we don’t see much human destruction. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) dead, a major American city all but leveled, the entire planet nearly destroyed by an alien terraforming machine, but everyone’s right back to normal almost immediately.
I enjoyed watching the Last Son of Kyrpton, but I missed the Bbig Blue Boy Scout of 1978. Too bad the film couldn’t find a way to give us both. Still, it was one of the better comics-based movies I’ve seen in the past couple of years.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I think the ‘too much action’ was in response to the ‘too little action’ complaints about Superman Returns. He saves a plane and lifts a thing and that was about it. Seems they overcompensated with Man of Steel in their attempts to get a Superman movie ‘right’.
More likely, Snyder’s only saving grace as a director is that he can strongly visualize physical action. 300 wasn’t a good film, aside from the visuals.
I thought it still could have used more action. That, or less of all the other stuff.
Angsty Superman seems wrong. And it ended up a lot like a less interesting version of Spiderman’s origin story. Probably because instead of a smart-mouth, nerdy high schooler, you had a wooden Clark Kent dealing with his issues mostly by running away from them. That’s opposed to the '78 movie, where Pa Kent’s death acted as a real catalyst for his personal hero journey.
Snyder isn’t much of a director. But he does good action scenes. They could have dialed that way up without losing anything.
Oh, and when somebody says “hard nosed investigative journalist”, Amy Adams isn’t exactly the first actress that comes to mind.
I would’ve probably forgiven it if they’d had him wrestling an infant out of a car seat or something. But he died for – a dog?
This - its much more ‘heart wrenching’ when Superman ‘literally can’t’ save someone he loves (natural death that can never be avoided) vs. a loved one ‘sacrificing himself’ in this manner - but the point of that scene wasn’t to allow Clark to grow - it was to re-inforce that he should remain hidden -
As for us - we enjoyed the film over all - the wanton destruction is why the Incredibles were banned from doing superhero work - there’s what, 5 people left in metrocity?
I did find the constant JC reminders to be too in your face - even moreso after the CNN article talked about how they were promoting the film to religous groups - but after thinking it thru ‘Alien visitor as JC’ makes much more sense then the biblical version -
Other than the whole (and oft-repeated) “you’re here to provide hope to humanity” or “you can make a difference” themes, what were the “overt” Jesus Christ references people are talking about? Maybe I missed them but I didn’t interpret the messages Ka-El got from Jor-El or Clark got from his Dad as being anything Christian related.
Other than maybe that “leap of faith” scene with the priest?
He put himself in crucifixion-pose at one point in the movie. And in another scene while talking to a priest he (Clark’s) face was juxtaposed next to a representation of Jesus as shepherd in the stained glass behind him. Stuff like that.
Eh. Must have flown right over my head. I found myself focusing on the few *Matrix *similarities.
Imagine how the movie would’ve played out if he’d kept the full beard while next to the stained-glass window – and even when decked out in cape and tights.
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.
Anyway, I had a lot of other problems as well but I’d rather not go on.
Things I liked:
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 was waiting for a line that didn’t happen. When the evil woman told Clark Superman that “evolution always wins” I was thought for sure he’d say “This is Kansas, we don’t believe in evolution” and then smite her/
Plus the whole being sent to earth by a powerful father to save mankind bit.
I took my kids to see it this weekend. My son loved it while my daughter had her ears covered the whole time. It was loud! And I agree that the 3-D was unnecessary. I don’t know much about comic book heroes, but I did see the Christopher Reeves series of movies so I have a couple of questions.
Is it ever explained how the people of Krypton evolved to look exactly like humans? I suspect that is the reason that Jor El sent Kal El to earth?
I thought that no one knew that Clark Kent was Superman. In this version, Lois clearly knows and others probably also know. Isn’t that a huge divergence from the “real” story? I suppose there is no requirement that a director stick to the original script. Also, why the heck does Clark Kent want to work for the same newspaper as Lois? How did he even get a job there?
Also, is Zod really a bad guy? I think that if Earth had a similar crisis to Krypton, that most people would be on the side of someone like Zod, and not Jor El who selfishly has a kid and unilaterally decides that his kid is going to be one that survives and becomes a hero on another planet. Zod, it seemed to me, wanted to bring back Krypton and essentially re-assemble it somewhere else.
I absolutely loved the film. Yes, it had some flaws, but I think the things they did well, especially subtlely, more than make up for them. I went in expect it to be dark, especially with the reviews, but I just didn’t see it. What I saw was a kid dealing with his alienation and put into dark circumstances but still holding onto who he was. Even in killing Zod, whom he clearly saw as a nigh unstoppable evil, he was pained in having to do so.
That’s really what I loved most about this film, that he’s usually presented as an unwavering paragon of goodness, but what makes him interesting is that he struggles with those decisions, it’s a personal sacrifice of his own happiness but he’s compelled to do it anyway, and he suffers when he cannot save them.
As others mentioned, I really liked how the kid on the bus was subtlely used to show how he ultimately would be accepted. I liked how they put LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises in there, putting a couple Easter eggs to some future continuity in this universe. And I really liked the Krypton scenes, it felt like a much more complete world. All in all, it seemed like virtually every scene had a very precise purpose, and that they were able to skip over a lot of the origin story stuff and only show scenes that were necessary for establishing part of his struggle and character arch or for the plot. Very cool approach.
Zod, too, loved his character. I liked that he wasn’t just a power hungry general, but that he was compelled to do so. He was completely justified in his attempted coup of the council because they’d failed to listen to him and Jor-El. I liked that he was motivated to save his people, even if he was willing to go to extremes to make it happen. His going psychotic at the end, no longer having a purpose to exist, it made sense.
I fully expect Lex to be the villain of the sequel. It follows the same sort of formula that Dark Knight did, using an iconic villain as part of the origin, but saving the arch nemesis for the sequel. Lex, too, has half of his motivation already built for him in this film. Superman may be a friend, but it’s essentially his fault the Kryptonians came and he created a lot of destruction stopping them. He could get his hands on Zod’s body and some of the Kryptonian technology, their suits, weapons, the World Engine or the Genesis Chamber and use that to fight Superman. Or, I could see them going in a somewhat different direction and using the technology to build Doomsday to stop Superman, or having brought up the Kryptonian exploration, bring Brainiac into it. Or perhaps some combination where Lex is the main villain but uses his resources and the Kryptonian cloning technology to create Doomsday to fight Superman. Either way, I’m psyched about the sequel, and apparently Warner Bros. is fast-tracking it, so maybe 2015?
Here’s how I interpretted it, and perhaps it was a little too subtle, but it seemed the idea was the whenever the Kryptonians had encountered that sort of atmosphere, they were so overwhelmed by all the extra information they were getting from their senses, they couldn’t handle it. Zod was able to focus, but he was specifically bred to be able to do so, and I imagine it still impacted his ability to fight. Kal-El was able to adjust, but he’d spent his whole lifetime doing so. So, really, to make it work for Kryptonians, they needed to terraform, at least for the first generations, perhaps any new ones born there would have been fine like Kal-El.
I disagree. Pa Kent died because he wanted to protect his son’s secret. Immediately before the tornado showed, they were discussing him becoming a farmer, he wanted Clark to have a normal life and not be an outcast and he would rather die. It follows closely from the earlier scene where he saves the kids on the bus and when asked if he should have let them die he said “…maybe” He may have been wrong, but at least he wasn’t a hypocrite. It also gives us more depth to the limitations of Superman.
There were quite a few that I noticed, aside from the traditional Christ-figure aspects of his story. There was the blatant crucifixion pose after “You can save her. You can save them all.” There was the fact that he was 33 in the film. There was the whole bit about how his birth was special, the first natural birth in centuries. The codex was in his blood, so his blood was literally the salvation for the Kryptonian people. There was also the whole evolution vs. religion aspect to the film (Codex looked like a fossil, Faora specifically saying they were more evolved than Superman, Kryptonians being predestined by their DNA but Superman having free will, etc.), and that’s really the part that I think felt kind of forced, the rest seemed to fit well with the traditional religious overtones.
[QUOTE=Jackknifed
Is it ever explained how the people of Krypton evolved to look exactly like humans? I suspect that is the reason that Jor El sent Kal El to earth?
I thought that no one knew that Clark Kent was Superman. In this version, Lois clearly knows and others probably also know. Isn’t that a huge divergence from the “real” story? I suppose there is no requirement that a director stick to the original script. Also, why the heck does Clark Kent want to work for the same newspaper as Lois? How did he even get a job there?
Also, is Zod really a bad guy? I think that if Earth had a similar crisis to Krypton, that most people would be on the side of someone like Zod, and not Jor El who selfishly has a kid and unilaterally decides that his kid is going to be one that survives and becomes a hero on another planet. Zod, it seemed to me, wanted to bring back Krypton and essentially re-assemble it somewhere else.[/QUOTE]
I had the same questions pretty much. Clark/SM does explain the newspaper thing though when he says he wan’t to work someplace where he can keep his ear to the ground and it not be suspicious when he goes someplace dangerous. They set up the latter with Lois Lane’s “not recognizing her without a flak jacket” comment earlier.
I think the insurance company would deny all claims under a war exclusion.
I didn’t catch the Wayne Enterprises bit - where was that?