Despite being a Superman fanboy, I didn’t see MAN OF STEEL when I came out last summer on account of having other stuff going on. Yesterday, between having just installed a new home theatre setup and Comcast offering HBO free for the weekend, I decided to correct that. Admittedly I didn’t give the movie my full attention (20 minutes or so into it, my two-year-old decided she wanted to play, and I’d rather peek-a-boo with her than watch the best movie ever made), but I was underwhelmed by it; the best thing I can say about it was made me think better of SUPERMAN RETURNS.
Anyway … in the movie’s denouement, Superman smashes a government drone that had evidently been spying on him and tells the general he won’t be able to find out where Supes hangs his cape. Maybe this was just a plot hole – but doesn’t the government already have more than enough information to figure out that he’s Clark? There’s some scene 2/3rds of the way through, after the big battle in Smallville, in which Lois fetches him at his parents’ house, and she’s taken there by military escort. Now admittedly I had a two-year-old jumping up and down on my stomach during most of that section of the movie, but it gave me the distinct impression that the military knew who he was.
Did I miss something, or just misinterpret something?
I don’t think you missed anything. It was just that as you said, it makes no sense for them to use drones to find his house in Kansas, so there’s only one other possibility.
Given the amount of destruction Zod caused, in particular to the military, it could be that army’s genuinely lost that information - all of the soldiers who were there were killed, and the records of the mission were destroyed when Zod flattened Metropolis.
(Possibly, some of the records were destroyed after Zod flattened Metropolis.)
Coincidentally, I just watched this over the past two nights. I just checked the scene. After the battle in Smallville, Lois is dropped off a Ma Kent’s place (while Superman is there) by a police car, not a military escort.
These being local cops, you would think they might realize the alien looks just like the the long-missing Clark (who didn’t even wear glasses at the time he disappeared and so should be recognizable). Well, OK maybe they were rookies who wouldn’t have known Clark, but Smallville was full of people who would have remembered him, including the bully whose life he saved.
Correct. In this movie Superman doesn’t have a Fortress of Solitude (at least not yet). The Kryptonian ship that was in the ice was taken by Zod and crashed into Metropolis.
I have to disagree. I’m pretty sure I ranted about the multiple things wrong with SR, but there was one thing it had that MoS lacked: joy. SR’s Supes was uncharacteristically jerkish, but he also knew he was the luckiest guy in the world. The Metropolitans–hell, the world–had reason to love him, not to decry his existence. And the movie itself had more than a few moments that were visually just beautiful.
The problem with MoS was its uber-violence. At heart, Superman – the character – isn’t a warrior. He’s a guardian angel. He’ll fight crimes that happen right in front of them, but he doesn’t seek them out because he sees his mission as as saving lives and being an example of compassion, and dealing with plane crashes and natural disasters is the better use of his time.