• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Man of Steel (with spoilers)

It's interesting you brought up Smallville, because I think this movie becomes the perfect example of the advantage television has right now over film. These are characters that have gone through so much development over the course of decades, it seems almost impossible to squeeze everything you need to make the character work in to a two and a half hour film. As you said, one of the problems that I think led to that weak middle act was they tried to do too much. Television gets 20+ weeks to tell one cohesive story, where film gets 2 hours.
 
Just got out. I thought it was "solid". From a visual and pacing standpoint, it was a comic book on screen. Each transition opened with a full panel image to situate the next 3-5 pages of panels. I will give Snyder credit for having the foresight to take that decades old method of telling these stories and putting it on screen like many haven't before. I think the fractured origin had the same vibe for me.

The score was excellent, no complaints.

Most of the acting was pretty good. I found Zod to be perhaps the most poorly acted villain of recent comic book films. It was terribad. I trust that all the guys who fell in love with Hardy's eyes in TDKR hated Zod's "look how wide I can hold my eyes because I'm intense" look. He might as well have been a cardboard cutout.

The final fight scene was way too long and unnecessary. Fishbourne and co running from the falling building made me literally laugh out loud. I feel like the sustained intensity of that scene that would have left thousands of people dead made Superman's reaction to snapping Zod's neck seem silly too. He was surely intending to take life throwing Kryptonians into exploding trains, destroying 85% of Metropolis, etc.

The Jesus symbolism was way too heavy handed, and I typically love a good Christ narrative.

On the whole, it was good. I liked this Superman, and it's known that I'm a Superman hater. I'm not sure it was good enough to start a snowball towards a Justice League movie.

I'm sure there will be plenty of money to be made, because the studio was obviously balls deep in the script with the product placement and cross-promotions.
 
The Superman we met throughout the film wouldn't have put all those lives in danger in Metropolis and definitely Smallville.

I could chalk it up to him being a noob hero but it should have been mentioned and there should have been more regret about the collateral lives lost.

I'm just falling out if love with these big set pieces in big cities with extras who can barely act that had to cost many human lives.
 
PhDeac said:
The Superman we met throughout the film wouldn't have put all those lives in danger in Metropolis and definitely Smallville.

I could chalk it up to him being a noob hero but it should have been mentioned and there should have been more regret about the collateral lives lost.

I'm just falling out if love with these big set pieces in big cities with extras who can barely act that had to cost many human lives.
Click to expand...

There was so much about Metropolis in the final fight that was LOL bad. There is a complete desert, but the power is still on throughout the city? They crash into the train station, and folks are just milling around having a nice little Saturday. The city gets leveled, and then Fishbourne evacuates the building. Just really shoddy writing.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Just got out. I thought it was "solid". From a visual and pacing standpoint, it was a comic book on screen. Each transition opened with a full panel image to situate the next 3-5 pages of panels. I will give Snyder credit for having the foresight to take that decades old method of telling these stories and putting it on screen like many haven't before. I think the fractured origin had the same vibe for me.

The score was excellent, no complaints.

Most of the acting was pretty good. I found Zod to be perhaps the most poorly acted villain of recent comic book films. It was terribad. I trust that all the guys who fell in love with Hardy's eyes in TDKR hated Zod's "look how wide I can hold my eyes because I'm intense" look. He might as well have been a cardboard cutout.

The final fight scene was way too long and unnecessary. Fishbourne and co running from the falling building made me literally laugh out loud. I feel like the sustained intensity of that scene that would have left thousands of people dead made Superman's reaction to snapping Zod's neck seem silly too. He was surely intending to take life throwing Kryptonians into exploding trains, destroying 85% of Metropolis, etc.

The Jesus symbolism was way too heavy handed, and I typically love a good Christ narrative.

On the whole, it was good. I liked this Superman, and it's known that I'm a Superman hater. I'm not sure it was good enough to start a snowball towards a Justice League movie.

I'm sure there will be plenty of money to be made, because the studio was obviously balls deep in the script with the product placement and cross-promotions.
Click to expand...

Haven't seen it yet (don't mind reading spoilers about Superman, I assume he prevails) but if Michael Shannon was the worst part then Synder did it wrong.
 
I enjoyed it. I got my $9 worth. Was it great? No. Was it horrible? No.

I've never really followed much of the Superman franchise so maybe that's why I'm not hung up on some things. I thought it was well done and entertaining. Some things were kind of head scratchers but hell, it's a super hero movie.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
There was so much about Metropolis in the final fight that was LOL bad. There is a complete desert, but the power is still on throughout the city? They crash into the train station, and folks are just milling around having a nice little Saturday. The city gets leveled, and then Fishbourne evacuates the building. Just really shoddy writing.
Click to expand...

Why did he wait so long to evacuate? Then why were we supposed to care so much about the woman in the purple.

How many people did Superman directly save in the movie after putting on the cape? Not save by punching a bad guy, directly save. I can't think of any except Lois.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
There was so much about Metropolis in the final fight that was LOL bad. There is a complete desert, but the power is still on throughout the city? They crash into the train station, and folks are just milling around having a nice little Saturday. The city gets leveled, and then Fishbourne evacuates the building. Just really shoddy writing.
Click to expand...

This part is perplexing to me. This was written by Chris Nolan and David S. Goyer...these are the guys who wrote The Dark Knight. How did they manage such a weak script after hitting it out of the park with TDK franchise?
 
Clark ends up at the Daily Planet at the end, but wasn't that building destroyed in the fight? That's how I interpreted it when Fishburne was evacuating everyone.
 
I was entertained. The GF loved the shirtless Clark Kent in the first 20 minutes. Laura El's cleavage was awesome. The religious symbolism bothered me a bit. At one point Superman flys out a window backwards with his arms out as if on the cross. This was right after a comment about saving humankind. The brief scene with the priest/minister about faith before trust just didn't work for me and seemed out of place. It also bothered me to see planes crashing into and toppling buildings. To much like 9/11.

Crowe was great.
 
RollWave35 said:
Clark ends up at the Daily Planet at the end, but wasn't that building destroyed in the fight? That's how I interpreted it when Fishburne was evacuating everyone.
Click to expand...

The whole GD city was leveled like Nagasaki.
 
Deadbolt said:
This part is perplexing to me. This was written by Chris Nolan and David S. Goyer...these are the guys who wrote The Dark Knight. How did they manage such a weak script after hitting it out of the park with TDK franchise?
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that Nolan's involvement with writing was more big picture than details. The devil was in the details here.

I also thought that Nolan was opposed to a lot of the new digital technology in film like 3D. What was this shot on? I don't think the SFX will age very well whereas TDK trilogy is seemingly timeless.
 
Ultimately, the script problems were largely problems with Superman in general. In order to create a compelling vulnerability, your villain has to be so powerful that the story snowballs out of control. This is an Avengers problem too, but the group dynamic is inherently more interesting.

Hulk and Thor are similarly hamstrung, but Thor isn't nearly as tied to Earth as Superman and Hulk is his own enemy.
 
No one knows how much Nolan was actually involved. He only gets a "story by" credit, this was Goyer's script all the way.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Ultimately, the script problems were largely problems with Superman in general. In order to create a compelling vulnerability, your villain has to be so powerful that the story snowballs out of control. This is an Avengers problem too, but the group dynamic is inherently more interesting.

Hulk and Thor are similarly hamstrung, but Thor isn't nearly as tied to Earth as Superman and Hulk is his own enemy.
Click to expand...

Superman has been portrayed successfully in radio, comic books, comic strips, live action TV, TV animation, animated movies, and several years ago live action movies.

The character isn't the problem.
 
I wish the movie had spent more time on the Clark/Jonathan Kent relationship. Costner was great in the role and I thought their relationship was infinitely more interesting than the one with Jor-El. The tornado scene was the only scene in the whole movie that had an emotional impact with me.
 
Saw it last night - I agree with many of the thoughts posted so far, so I'm not sure what else hasn't been covered.

- I thought this played out more like a sci-fi alien film than a comic book movie. It had elements of Independence Day, the Matrix, and Star Trek that made it feel much closer to those films than, say, Batman Begins or Spiderman.

- I personally didn't care for the casting of Adams. She's a fine actress, but she just didn't seem like Lois Lane to me. And I'm not talking about her hair color

- OTOH, I enjoyed most of the rest of the casting choices. Cavill was an excellent find, even though he didin't have much to work with. Crowe was great, as was his wife, while Lane and Costner did well with what they had (also, the makeup people did an excellent job of making Diane Lane look old). Shannon reminded me of Willem Dafoe in the first Spiderman - decent, but a little too much

- Lois being a dead shot with alien weapons and then riding around on the C-17 was laughable. Someone posted this earlier, but if she had some sort of military connection, it would've made those scenes at least somewhat plausible

- The score was incredible. Hans Zimmer is absolutely perfect for this kind of film, with his ability to toggle between subtle and over-the-top

- I felt Snyder did a fine job directing, although his "start with a wide shot and then use a lightning-quick zoom" habit started to get old, much in the vein of JJ Abrams' overuse of lens flare.

- The overall problem with these superhero movies is that they have to get bigger to outdo each other. The final battles in The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, etc, were all just too big in every sense of the word, even if they were all visually stunning

As far as origin films go, there's Batman Begins and then there's everything else. I would say this was no better or worse than the first Iron Man, X-Men, or Spiderman. Whether the second MOS makes the leap from good to great will be an interesting question. My fear is that they will rush everything just to cash in on a Justice League film.
 
PhDeac said:
trailer lies ph cries

Out yourself for some rep.
Click to expand...

waving.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top