He’s always doing that. When Lois’ landing pod was falling to Earth and he raced to catch it, I was thinking “we’ve pretty much seen the man break the sound barrier - he’s having trouble catching something in freefall?” Later, he travels from the Indian Ocean to Metropolis in what appears to be around 5 minutes…
Man of Steel had some good qualities, but Superman doesn’t lend itself to the “grim n gritty” treatment.
Add Superman Returns to the mix. It’s the worst of the three, but it had the best Lois and by far the best Luthor (curiously missing from MOS).
Superman the Movie understood the character much much better. It’s main flaw was the silliness of Lex Luthor. It was charming for it’s time and Gene Hackman is a great actor but I much prefer the more modern incarnation of Luthor. You can’t blame the filmmakers though because that version did not even exist yet.
I have a very hard time understanding how Man of Steel was dark. Serious, yes. But dark?
The original started out pretty serious too, but I think goofy real estate Luthor tipped the tone too far towards ‘whimsical’ for me to put the movie on the pedestal that many do.
I think both Superman: the Movie and MOS have the same problem. Really good first halves. And then the villain shows up.
MOS’s second half turned into an ‘epic’ action feast, when I was enjoying the story and character stuff.
Add Superman Returns to the mix. It’s the worst of the three, but it had the best Lois and by far the best Luthor (curiously missing from MOS).
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I thought Superman Returns had the worst Lois, utterly forgettable. My pic for Lois would have been Courtney Cox (10 to 15 years ago).
I prefer Superman the Movie over MoS for several reasons. For one if I’m every running for cover from a tornado and my wife points out that the dog is still in the car, it’s just too damn bad for the dog. I really disliked how Krypton was portrayed in MoS. And overall I felt that there was too much focus on spectacle and not enough on character. Why not have both? I really missed John Williams’s score. I also disliked the Kryptonians getting instant powers on Earth, plus it wasn’t internally consistent. (We saw Clark slowly develop his over time, which last I saw in the comics occured due to the absorbtion of solar radiation.) They got or lost powers based on breathing the atmosphere, but already had invulnerability, super strength and speed without doing so? (Except for Superman on the Kryptonian ship apparently.)
The things I liked: making Lois smart enough to track down and discover Supes idenetity even before he revealed himslef to the world.
In his own right, Hackman’s not all that silly as Luthor; he’s playful but practical, casual and sinister: a killer who plans ahead and takes precautions, exactly like a Bond villain. I’ll grant that he seems to genuinely relish using worn-out turns of phrase, but as quirks go (a) that’s pretty mild, and (b) it doesn’t actually stop him from sounding like he knows what he’s talking about.
It’s only when you throw in Ned Beatty as Otis that he goes right off the rails.
Otisburg?
Both movies are products of their time. In an era of mass surveillance and drone strikes it just seems to fit that Pa Kent would advise caution.
Skammer:
I haven’t seen Man of Steel, but is that necessarily a terrible thing? Having a vehicle that can think for itself to a degree (while still being ultimately controllable) probably has some advantages over the driver completely controlling a “dumb” vehicle.
The Chitauri aliens in the Avengers movie used flying fish-things as troop carriers. Did you have the same reaction to that? Admittedly, I don’t know just how advanced they were (is there any evidence that they had technology of their own, maybe they were a bunch of savages being dispatched to Earth by Thanos/Loki).
(Personally, my reaction was simply being disappointed that the monster we saw in the movie trailers wasn’t the Midgard Serpent. That would have been a way cool thing to have the Avengers fight.)
Exactly. Imagine that scene minus the digression into Abbott-and-Costello territory and he’s just a self-assured guy who chuckles at his own wisecracks before amiably transitioning to earnest seriousness. And a moment later, he’s gloating over the big guy but there’s not a hint of silliness.
But what sticks in the memory? Otisburg.
Likewise for how we first meet him: he’s got cameras in place, the better to (a) monitor the situation and (b) murder that cop with push-button convenience. He then pointedly growls to Otis that you were followed…
…and Otis bumblingly spins around, knocking over a lamp for to take Lex right into sarcastic eye-roll territory. If we see Lex condescendingly explain to Miss Tessmacher how he expects to kill Superman, we can expect Otis to end the scene on a different note by seeing how much fun he can have saying “burnoose” and “Addis Ababa”.
If he’d been played by a black actor, the movie would be unwatchable.
I think they were just flying fish-shaped ships.
Anyhow, I hate the trope of “super advanced” aliens that still use swords and pole-arms and shit.
For that matter, I’m also getting kind of sick of watching cities get obliterated on screen.
More like “dark” as in serious and joyless". Superman the Movie was a fun film. I mean seriously Man of Steel. You can’t have ANY fun with your superpowers?
He had fun for like 35 seconds when he first figured out how to fly.
But I sort of agree. I prefer the serious approach to Marvel’s quippy, ‘fun’ one. But MOS definitely could’ve done with some kind of tension relief. Hopefully there’s a good, light-hearted Jimmy or Jenny Olsen in the sequel.
The little guys were on flying skiffs, not beasts/beings. The big-ass snaky things (Hulk smashed one in the face) were actually alive and at least somewhat intelligent.
I didn’t have any troubles with flying lizards on Krypton: “Hey Silver - go ferry some people around while I’m on shift and make some money, do your business, eat your dinner, and be ready to pick me up at 6 sharp, got it?”
Given the era, Hackman’s Luthor was pretty well updated. No longer the mad scientist of the comics, but a scheming hustler out for a profit. A nice balance between the bronze age and modern age (business man) versions of the character.
Then why do they explode?
Maybe they were a combination of both. Like the living ship from Farscape.
Not to get off topic, but it seems to me that only half the Avengers should be even useful in fighting off an alien invasion:
Iron Man - flying battle armor suit
Thor - Godlike indestructibility, flying, super strength and magic hammer weapon
Hulk - Indestructible rage monster
The other three should be more or less useless:
Captain America - Great athlete with a shield
Hawkeye - bow & arrows
Black Widow - nice jugs
Cap is probably the most intelligent out of the entire team - yes, even beating Stark. He also has more combat skill (excepting Thor) and leadership talent than anyone else, combined with mild super-strength, rapid healing, and an indestructible shield.
…which he can make impossible shots with. The man shoots things he can’t see, has pinpoint accuracy over long distances, and has an array of deadly arrows. And while he’s not superhumanly fast or agile, he comes pretty darn close.
Yeah… I wouldn’t say that to her face. Granted, a battlefield isn’t the best place for her, but she’s an assassin with the ability to casually demolish mooks in a straight fight as well as some very unpleasant weaponry.
Here’s my blog post on why Man of Steel brings something to the Superman character that none of the previous films did, in a way that I really liked.
And a Metropolis cop get pushed onto them. :eek:
Bingo!
Of course, ALL of them were better than the Bryan Singer version! That’s why my favorite part of*** Ted ***was the epilogue delivered by Patrick Stewart:
"Sam Jones moved back to Hollywood with the goal of restarting his film career. He currently resides in Burbank where he shares a studio apartment with his roommate Brandon Routh. Remember Brandon Routh from that godawful Superman movie? Jesus Christ! Thanks for getting our hopes up, and taking a giant shit on us!"
Because people keep shooting them with explosives. In the big fight scene, we see four (maybe five) of the big snake things get killed. One is killed by a missile fired by Stark, after the Hulk punches it in the head so hard it’s armor falls off. One (maybe two) are killed when Thor fires a massive lightning bolt into the rift right as one is exiting - this blocks the entrance, causing the creature to be pelted with the skiffs coming up behind, which explode on impact. Another is killed when Thor and the Hulk team up, and ram a jagged piece of the creature’s own armor into it’s brain. This one crashes into a bank, and doesn’t explode at all. The last one blows up real good, but only after Stark has deliberately flown into it’s mouth, and passed through it’s entire body, firing his missiles and energy weapons at it from the inside.
Oh, and there’s another one that we see drop out of the sky after Stark sends the nuke through the portal, which hits a building and does not explode - but if there were some explosive machinery inside the thing, that machinery might have been deactivated when they lost the signal from the mothership, so that doesn’t necessarily prove anything.
Cap’s leadership skills and tactical know-how are presented as critical to turning the alien invasion in the movie. The other two are little more expendable in the invasion, but having two people skilled at assassination and infiltration on the team would be useful in a whole lot of other situations - which, of course, we see in all the scenes leading up to the invasion.
Dude. It was bad, but Quest for Peace bad? Remember this guy? Of course you don’t. You repressed all memory of him, to make the nightmares stop.
