Catch-up post no. 2 (Man of Steel)

[shallowness]

There were, obviously, other trailers, but I just want to talk about The Wolverine one well ones, – I was amused by ‘stronger than iron, stronger than steel’ but I doubt it’ll make the same box office. I saw MoS at a 2D early work night showing and it was packed. As for the trailer itself - are they still trying to sell Logan/Jean? SERIOUSLY!? Also, making him mortal – i.e. taking away his mutation with the adamantium grafted on seems stupid. So I’m revising expectations from ‘better than Wolverine’ to ‘better than X-Men 3, please’. At least there seems to be shirtless Hugh Jackman.

It seemed fitting to mention that one because there was a little bit in Man of Steel that reminded me of X-Men*.

Man of Steel - my reaction to this film is a little more mixed than I’d have liked.

I did like that it didn’t get too tied up in knots trying to be respectful to the original Superman movies, which, as I talk about here weren't my intro to Superman, and told its own story of Clark Kent discovering who Kal-El is and becoming 'Superman' all at the same time. He found Lois, his birth father (in a sense), his identity and his limits at the same time as other Kryptonians/his father’s killer. Also, while trying to be its own thing, I appreciated most of the ways that they tried to get across how iconic Superman is.

I enjoyed how modern and kinetic the flight scenes were, although I sighed at the same time, because when is Hollywood going to give us a montage scene of a girl and her superpowers?

I loved how alien Krypton looked, with the biologically-inspired tech.

So, there was Jor-El, renaissance man (at least Crowe didn't sing!) and Michael ‘Crazy Face’ Shannon’z Zod was a bit late and brutal in rising up against the top Kryptonians who’d let things come to this pass. Some of this made a little more sense as we found out more about Krypton’s societal structure (although a part of me thinks that however loftily Jor-El sold it, perhaps their decision to give their son a choice to choose who he wanted to be out there in the universe was driven by his and Lara’s more primal instincts.)

As the prologue went on for a bit, I was pleasantly surprised that we zoomed forward to adult Clark (and that lady soldier’s line about how hot he was towards the end was totally redundant.) We still got the Terrence Malick inspired flashbacks sporadically.

Anyway, LOIS LANE. Yay! Amy Adams and yay for how Lois was handled, driven and curius, but not callous. You culd see why she represented the best of humanity for Clark. I liked how their relationship was based on growing respect and was sweet (hands!) and she and Cavill had chemistry. But hey, they had me from the moment when he helped to lift her down and we the audience knew more than they did. And on and on to the almost inevitable Lois falling out of an aeroplane and me thinking ‘get to know that scream’. The fact that she knows his human identity from the off is a refreshing change to the adaptations that I’ve come across.

But the film failed to pass the Bechdel test (or if it passed, it was a scrape) although we got quite a few named female characters. I wouldn't have minded if Perry White became Perri, because every time I heard Fishburne's voice, I thought of Morpheus. And I hate saying this, because Schiff brought lovely moments to his tiny role, but that part could have been played by a woman. Jor-El and Jonathan turned out to be slightly more complex characters than I thought they would (and Martha was fierce in her own way) but the story was basically ‘be a man, my son’.

The final fight went on far too long, although I found the conclusion powerful. But before then I was thinking about how much construction business Luthorcorp was presumably going to get from the destruction of Metropolis (and Smallville for that matter). Actually, it lost me when Superman flew down to the other point of attack to do whatever it was he was doing - yeah, I didn't care. This isn’t a problem that's exclusive to this film. But just cause you can, doesn’t mean you should plonk in a big CGI fight scene (especially as I didn’t feel it was saying much about American/macho responses to perceived threats. Or if it was, all my brain was registering was another Brit playing an American superhero while the flags were waving.)

There were quite a lot of times when I wondered ‘and how does this character know this now?’

I’m still trying to rank it among my preferences.

*Was I the only one who expected him to bump into Rogue as he hitch-hiked?