Day: June 5, 2017

After my (mostly) positive experience with “Man Of Steel” I thought surely “Dawn of Justice” had to be better than I had heard.

I was wrong. I was very wrong. That was mistake one.

I chose to watch the extended version (or the “Ultimate” version). That was mistake two.

This version was three hours. That’s easily an hour and maybe an hour and a half longer than this movie should have been. That’s not actually fair. This movie should never have happened.

That’s harsh but there were just so many times during the movie when a supposedly intelligent character did something very stupid.

 

Spoilers Ahead

Here are a few off the top of my head:

Lois sees someone we know is a very bad person. We know that because we recognize him. She apparently does too because she walks up to him and says “Don’t I know you?” He turns to her and she’s terrified.  Why? Did she think he was someone else? This makes no freaking sense at all.

Superman must get Batman’s help to save his mother. Now let’s think about this; If you or I (or any sane person) needed someone’s help we’d go to them and lead with that. Not Superman.  He goes to Batman and says some stupid crap that’s beside the point.  Batman starts to fight.  He does this because he’s been 100% geared towards killing Superman from frame one of the movie. At no point does he seem to question his own conclusion that Superman, being powerful, must be destroyed. So they flail around for 20 minutes or so and Batman gets the upper hand. Just before he skewers Superman with a Kryptonite lance, Superman says “Save Martha”. And of course Batman gets all confused. We know this because we are now shown Bruce Wayne’s tragic childhood trauma again.  All of it, because we just might have forgotten just what drove Mr. Wayne to be The Dark Knight in the preceding two hours.

Superman’s earthly dad keeps telling him he was sent here for a reason. But then he also tells him don’t do anything that will reveal what you can do. Make up your mind Mr. Kent.

Luthor engineers a brilliant plan to destroy Superman. Of course, if the giant Kryptonian “Doomday” monster had killed Superman, (and we all know that Superman isn’t really down for the count.) what then? There’s no indication that Luthor had any plan for dealing with this god killer. This movie goes to great pains to be as realistic as a superhero movie can be about people’s motivations. Superman is wracked with conflict. Batman is obsessed with killing Superman. Why does Lex do what he does? He’s murdered countless people just to set Superman up as the bad guy. But there’s no contingency plan if that plan fails. So you’re telling me that someone who can successfully set up Superman, kidnap Lois, kidnap Martha, manipulate Batman into stealing and weaponizing Kryptonite, and create a Kryptonian god-killer can’t come up with some kind of plan b? This is just too dumb for words.

And there’s just so many more annoyances. I got really tired of the choir coming in over the already overblown score to remind me that something important was happening. I got really tired of apparently important scenes being dramatized by slow motion. Once, sure. Twice, no problem. But not ten times. Please.

The best thing about this movie is Wonder Woman. And yet even her involvement isn’t without it’s annoyances. We see scene after scene of her seeing information about what’s happening between Superman and Batman. And she does nothing other than look concerned. It basically take the crap hitting the fan and every news channel basically saying “There’s a god monster about to destroy the world.  Superman and Batman may not be able to stop it. Oh if there were only some other superhero around!” to get her involved.

The operative word for this movie is dumb. My wife can tell you that I have a bad habit of screaming at the television when the characters or story make no sense. I spent a lot of time screaming at this movie.

 

 

I finally took the time to watch “Man Of Steel”.  It’s amazing to me that it took me this long to see it considering my overall love of the Superman character.

But reviews were not overly positive and a part of me was afraid that seeing this beloved character portrayed badly would somehow damage my feelings.

Luckily, there nothing to fear.

Overall “Man Of Steel” was completely true to my understanding of Superman. The characters were magically brought to life and the majesty and awe of this super being. The story ambled but in a good and deep way.  Nothing seemed forced or dissonant. Overall I liked the movie very much.

Spoilers Below

Yes, I know this movie has been out for years.  And it’s amazing that I managed to somehow not know the particulars of the story. But I did and I’m glad of that.

The story of how Kal-El came to Earth is no mystery.  But the Krypton here is very different from the one with which I grew up. I suppose I get the concept that Krypton’s flaws are what drove Jor-El to send Kal-El to Earth; not to simply save him but to potentially save Earth from Krypton’s mistakes. It’s an interesting idea but I think it actually muddles the story a bit.

And then there’s General Zod and his grand plans. This is where the film begins to stumble. It’s just too much. There’s just too much story here. Superman’s introduction to the earth would have been better served and cleaner if he were to defeat a home-grown or non-Kryptonian threat.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the spectacle.  I did.  And that’s just what it was; a big, loud show of force, danger, and might. Watching Superman defeat the last vestiges of Kryptonian hubris was thrilling. Watching Superman and Lois embrace after was perfect.

And then I realized that there was a lot more time left in the movie. So we now have a showdown between Superman and General Zod. It’s big and pretty and loud.  And it was fun to watch. But I was really ready for the movie to be over before it started.

This is another reason this particular conflict would have been better saved for another movie. “Man Of Steel” would have been a better, cleaner movie if the threat had been something not quite so epic.

But that’s where we are now. It’s always the end of the world.  And I can’t say I care for it.

This idea can be most clearly seen as the primary difference between the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” movies versus the television shows.

The Enterprise and it’s crew weren’t saving the universe in every episode.  They were going about their mission and that was almost always enough.

But the movies were all about defeating something monstrous that was an imminent threat to all life as we know it.  And they were less about the entire crew and more about Captain Picard and Data.  And that made them so much weaker.

It’s interesting that movies have become more and more about spectacle and less about story. Thank goodness for the many varieties of television.  Be it cable, internet, or even the networks, they’ve taken up the mantle of being the perfect medium for the long narrative. That’s where you’ll find the stories being told.