Man of Steel
So I’m not a massive fan of the DCEU but with the Snyder cut coming, not that I have that high expectations, I’m watching the DC movies since I’ve not seen them in a while. I was looking forward to Man of Steel, a movie which I thought was ok and by no means the worst in the universe but my god this aged poorly.
It’s incredibly poorly directed, any action scene in the film, which unfortunately is most of it, is so badly shot, the spacial awareness for the scenes are completely all over the place. I would say any high energy scene in this film feels rushed and obstructed by the poor shots that it’s not only difficult to understand what’s going on but it’s not enjoyable to watch.
I enjoy Cavill and Adams and they do they’re best with a bad script, I actually think watching this again Lois is better written (marginally) than Sups until she turns into the damsel in distress. Despite the word Hope being mentioned every 10 minutes, Clark seems to go on a journey through anger which could’ve been interesting and an unexpected twist on a character that’s beloved but Sups is so devoid of character development, I mean he barely says anything in the film, that most of the time he comes off as angry for no reason. The moments that do shine are when Cavill and Adams have scenes together, while not stellar they still have a chemistry together and Superman has that charm that we are used to seeing on screen, this can also be seen whenever he shares the screen with MARTHA.
As mentioned, the script is bad... like real bad. I don’t enjoy the plot of this movie, there isn’t really a logical one. Zod could’ve picked any other planet to terraform so why didn’t he, he had to wait 33 years why? We first see Cavill in 3 random jobs until each time he gets discovered, why? Simply to give Lois a plot for discovering him? The plot as a whole is super thin and given much thought seems to break. The film is also thematically a mess, there’s some really interesting threads of themes: the battling ideologies of Jor-El and Zod, the choice to save lives over protecting your own and... hope, I guess.
The point that gets me the most is his Dad’s death, his dad tells him sometimes you can’t save people’s lives. Ok weird but sure you wanna protect your son. Then dad proceeds to save dog instead of son who can survive the tornado cause why? He’s got to be a man I guess. And then tells his son don’t save me cause of that one thing he said to him that he should protect himself. I’m sorry but Kal-El would’ve saved him.
A part of a film that can make or break it for me is the score, it can make a bad film ok and a good film great. Hans Zimmer’s score made this worse. I like the score, it’s dark and mysterious and got a sinisterness to it, all those words shouldn’t describe a Superman film. They could if they’d earned it and build a story where he is a tragic hero that’s dark but they’re so confused as to who Clark’s character is. The scene that annoyed me the most with this is when Clark first flies, it’s an ok shot scene but Cavill makes it an enjoyable watch, the pure joy on his face with the suit on flying is great and what’s behind it? This sinister score that clashes with the tone of the scene so bad I didn’t know what to feel. It should’ve felt joyous and hopeful, while it did feel grand and big it completely missed the tone on what could’ve been an exciting part of the film.
Man of Steel isn’t awful but it’s not great. There’s some good shots that don’t revolve around action, the acting’s good and some of the action was ok. It makes me appreciate Marvel movies more and makes me sad that executives were desperate for this not to be like Marvel that it made it a tonal mess