Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel Deserves a Re-Evaluation
( Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment, Syncopy)
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel has perhaps one of the most confusing legacies of a modern superhero film. Initial responses were fairly positive from audiences and critics alike. But sometime after release, things soured; a certain segment among both turned on the film. Fans attacked it as somehow violating the spirit of Superman; critics seemed to regard it as little more than a brainless blockbuster.
But nearly eight years later, this reaction hardly seems appropriate. Far from a blasphemous take on Superman or a derivative, soulless cash grab, Man of Steel is a bold, ambitious blockbuster film that’s not afraid to go big and take risks. It deserves a second look – and I think it will receive it.
Narrative and Direction
Man of Steel is narratively deep. The Kryptonians, as presented in a stunning opening sequence, are a fatally doomed race because they decided to strip choice from the people. They defy nature through birth in incubator tubes, with each Kryptonian assigned their role at birth. Facing the extinction of their people, Jor-El and Zod emerge as rival alternatives trying to reverse the decaying culture. Jor-El, a scientist, understands the planet, and almost all of its people, are doomed; faced with no good choices, he steals the codex used to continue the species and melds it with his son, Kal-El. Zod, a general, chooses a different path: violence and civil war. He wants to unseat the people who caused the doom of Krypton, but has no real plan to truly correct the errors they made. This opening sequence frames the entire film. Man of Steel is a story about choice. This conflict leads to Kal-El – Clark Kent – having to choose between being the savior of Krypton or the savior of mankind.
On a fundamental level, the film is well-constructed. It’s visually stunning – the vision of Krypton as a decaying, nearly dead planet is striking. Nobody can deny that Zack Snyder is a great visual director, and the shots and frames he uses work perfectly. This strong visual direction is accompanied by a Hans Zimmer score that is criminally underrated. Those expecting the bombastic Williams scores are looking in the wrong place, but the nuance and depth that Zimmer’s score adds is phenomenal. This blend of visual storytelling and exception music is perhaps nowhere shown more than in the striking sequence where Superman learns to fly. Far from a joyless, bland film, the sequence is exhilarating and fun – you can see the joy on his face. Like the Dark Knight films before it, Man of Steel takes itself seriously without losing entertainment value.
The actors themselves all serve their roles well. Both pairs of Superman’s parents are excellent, along with the actor himself, Henry Cavill. Amy Adams also does great in her role as Lois Lane, and both she and Cavill have solid chemistry. The standout though might just be Michael Shannon’s Zod – a tortured product of a failed society who is an excellent foil the Russell Crowe’s Jor-El.
Defying Expectations
In a way, criticisms I see of Man of Steel remind me of the utterly nonsensical critiques leveled at films like Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Rather than judging a film for what it is, they judge it for what they wanted it to be. The same people who applauded as the Donner Superman straight-up murders a depowered Zod were aghast when the Snyder Superman – reluctantly kills Zod as he prepares to murder a family in cold blood. The same critics who lavish praise upon the thrilling finale of The Avengers seems appalled at the property damage of two super-powered, near-demigods laying waste to a concentrated city block in Metropolis. The same fans who lauded the realistic depiction of Batman in the Dark Knight Trilogy seemed bewildered that Man of Steel accurately depicts the massive impact Superman would bring upon society. The same comic book readers who loved Infinity War and Endgame despite their wild differences from the classic Infinity Gauntlet comic seemed distraught that Jonathan Kent’s death in Man of Steel different than his death in Donner’s Superman.
A Misleading Legacy
There are valid criticisms of Man of Steel. But the characteristic of the film that dominates online discussion and that resulted in purely average reviews are entirely divorced from the core of the film. By and large, the discourse around the film has become thoroughly devoid of any rational, reasonable critique of the film itself rather than the film people wanted it to be. And for what it’s worth – the public didn’t seem to buy the criticism. Man of Steel made less than The Avengers, sure – but it made more than $100m more than Iron Man. Home video sales were also strong; as of right now, it’s the 24th-best selling Blu-Ray of all time, behind only Wonder Woman where DC films are concerned.
Time will be kind to Man of Steel. It’s a smart, bold, and thoughtful film that got thrown through the wringer for sins it didn’t commit. We’re already seeing a reconsideration of Snyder’s work through the positive reviews of the Ultimate Edition of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (a coherent film that was butchered by the studio for a theatrical release) and the newly released Zack Snyder’s Justice League (widely regarded as a drastic improvement over the theatrical Justice League).
My problem with Man of Steel is that it misunderstands two things:
1. Superman would have worked his butt off to get the fight out of the city. Forget the punching people through buildings thing. He’d have fought to get that fight to the pine barrens.
2. Superman would have figured out a way to not kill Zod.
The fact that neither happened indicates that the writers were lazy.
There was some good stuff that happened in the flick, of course. Lois Lane was much better in this one than in the Brandon Rauch one, for example.
But in failing to do both 1 and 2, they failed to understand Superman.
And if it wasn’t a failure but a deliberate reimagining, they didn’t do a good job of setting it up.
I mean, sure. It *WOULD* be a lot easier to solve the bad guy problem if you could just kill them. Huh. You’d think that we’d do a better job of embracing that as a society!
But Superman? He knows that there’s a better way. Even if everybody else wants to take a shortcut, he’s not going to. He was given that power for a reason. Part of the reason he was given that power was so that he could take the long way.Report
I like this comment, and I agree. Maybe he flies in front of Zod’s eye-lasers, reflecting them back and blinding him, and of course he’s okay (because Superman).
And the dialogue that should have been was:
Superman: “No! Don’t do this!”
Zod: “IT’S…WHO…I…AM!”
Superman: “Nyaaaagh!” (zap) (thrown sideways into a tree.)
Zod: “YARRRRGH!”
(Tree explodes upward, a dark smoldering figure rises, it’s Superman, his outfit scorched black and the “S” blasted off his chest. He glowers and stomps towards a trashing Zod.)
Superman: “There is no who we are. There is only what we choose.”
(grabs Zod’s collar and flies away, next scene we see is the Fortress of Solitude with a sleeping ice-entombed Zod.)
I feel like that would have sold the message a lot better.
Also, “are you saying I shouldn’t save people?” should have been followed by “no! But maybe it shouldn’t be Clark Kent who saves people. Because once you choose that life, you won’t ever have a different one.”Report
HERE’S HOW I WOULD HAVE DONE IT.
Get the first part of the movie out of the way. But let’s not kill Kevin Costner just yet. We’ll need him later.
Let’s not do the wandering to Alaska thing either. We’ll go straight to The Daily Planet.
First off, Henry Cavill needs a big ‘ol goofy smile. *ALL* of his teeth. Perry White is not smiling. He’s yelling at Clark. Well, not *AT* him. To him. “YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN TO METROPOLIS HIGH AND DO A STORY FOR SECTION C ABOUT THE HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS TEACHER OF THE YEAR. TAKE JIMMY WITH YOU.”
Lois sticks her head in the office “I can’t believe you’re having me write a puff piece on Senator Wallstone!”
“IT’S A 3 DAY FRONT PAGE SERIES ON THE GUY WHO IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SO GET OVER THERE AND INTERVIEW HIM”
he turns to Clark
“WHY ARE YOU STILL IN MY OFFICE”
Clark gives a big ol’ goofy grin and says “Thanks for the opportunity, Chief”
“DON’T… ugh. Don’t call me chief.”
Lois rolls her eyes and leaves, Clark leaves to get Jimmy, Perry White turns away and his scowling face breaks into a big ol’ dumb smile.
Clark hurries up to Lois and congratulates her on her story on Wallstone. She complains to him about it. They walk past Jimmy’s desk and Clark tells Jimmy “we’re going to Metropolis High!” and Jimmy’s face breaks into a big ol’ dumb grin and he gets up excitedly and Lois rolls her eyes and we switch to…
Randall Munroe. The XKCD guy. He’s giving a physics lecture to his physics students in an auditorium and he explains the page from Relativistic Baseball.
Granted, if Randall Munroe has a complete inability to talk about that cartoon, just get an actor who radiates enthusiasm for talking about physics and has the kids hanging on his every word and you can see why he’s the high school teacher of the year. Or she, if it’s not Randall. Or whomever. The point is that we are *EXCITED* to sit through the explanation of “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?” and the speech is really good but we also want to get the special effects guys involved and they really break down the whole “fusion zone” and “plasmized air” and all that stuff.
Like, you will leave this scene inspired to learn more about physics. We need an actor who radiates a joy of learning, a joy of teaching, and you can totally see how they’re doing a story on him, even if it is going to end up in Section C on page 5.
After the lecture, a short interview that has the teacher’s charisma radiate through, it makes Clark give his big ol’ grin, it has Jimmy giving his big ol’ grin, and the teacher has a big ol’ grin and everybody is grinning.
Cut to Lois, who is scowling. She meets with Carrie Pernach, chief of staff to Senator Wallstone. “Yes, I am his Chief of Staff, I’ve been his Chief of Staff from the beginning. You have 15 minutes.” Have her rattle off a list of rules. Don’t talk about X. Don’t talk about Y. AND DON’T ASK ABOUT HIS PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS.
Senator Wallstone is straight out of Central Casting. He has a big ol’ smile but it has to be empty. It never reaches his eyes. Like a shark with capped teeth.
Lois asks puff piece question one. Puff piece question two. Then “What are your presidential aspirations?” and the Chief of Staff immediately starts making noise, the smile, frozen as it is, comes out and he talks about America being the greatest country in the world or some crap like that and we’ll see what the future holds, I have all faith in our government NOT THAT I DON’T HAVE SOME SUGGESTIONS (big fake laugh) Lois asks puff piece question three. Lois asks about X. Lois is cheerfully escorted out.
Clark writes his story with a big ol’ dumb smile on his face.
Lois writes her story with a scowl.
Next day. Lois has her paper thrown on her desk, part one of a three part series, a big ol’ picture of Senator Wallstone and a big ol’ byline with Lois Lane on it.
Evening. Kansas. Clark Kent is sitting at the kitchen table with his parents and he’s showing them his story on page five of section C and he’s got a big ol’ smile. Ma and Pa have big ol’ smiles. They’re all sitting around and smiling. They’re drinking cocoa. Ma reaches across the table and puts her hand on Clark’s. Pa puts his hand on both of theirs. Everybody’s proud of everybody.
“Ma, you still make the best cocoa.”
“Oh, I just use milk is all.”
“Pa, your cows still make the best milk.”
“Oh, it was better when you were here helping, the new fellers just don’t know how to feed ’em right.”
Hugs all around.
Next Day, Clarks typing away with a big ol’ smile on his face, Jimmy runs up “my picture of Senator Wallstone from last year got used on the front page!”
“That’s great, Jimmy!”
Everybody has big ol’ dumb smiles.
Lois walks up scowling.
“Why are you guys in such a good mood?”
“My picture got used!”
“Yeah yeah”
“I talked to my parents last night and told them about my story in Section C.”
“I’ve stopped counting my stories.”
“Well, you must have had a hundred front page above the fold stories, Lois.”
“Ninety three. Well, Ninety four, now. You told your parents about your story?”
“He was a pretty cool teacher! You know, he talked about…”
“I’ve gotta go, Clark.”
Okay.
Cut to night. Lois calls her dad. The phone conversation is painful. Pleasantries exchanged but some long silences. You can tell that both of them are saying to themselves “I will *NOT* be the first to say ‘well, I’ll let you go’.” Lois finally throws out “I got a front page story today on Senator Wellstone.”
“Senator Wellstone!”, her dad shouts.
Okay. Sam Lane is a general. So we cut to his home office and we can see General crap all over the walls of his den. “Did you talk to Alan Whitaker?”
“Who?”
“His old Chief-of-Staff!”
“Wait, what?”
And have Sam Lane yell about Alan Whitaker and how Wallstone is a POS and he’s finally having a conversation with Lois and Lois is finally having a conversation with him and she has a lead now.
NOW BRING IN GENERAL ZOD.
Have him do General Zod things. He is not yet used to his powers. He beats up a bulldozer. “I don’t know my own strength! I’m not used to these new powers!” Have him come out and say that.
Have Lois interview Alan Whitaker. Maybe in a Home Depot. He’s in the plumbing department. “Alan Whitaker?” “Yeah?” “I’m Lois Lane.” Eye contact. His lips tighten.
Back to General Zod. He’s doing more General Zoddy things. There’s a fight between him and Superman. It ends in a tie. Have part of the fight be Zod learning from Superman. Like, Zod doesn’t know that he has heat vision until Superman uses heat vision. Have him say it again. “I’m not used to these new powers!” but have him be a *FAST* learner. Like, he pretty much defeats Superman and says “Yes, run away. Learn to kneel! You’ll need to know how to do that, next time we fight!”
Superman goes and gets some Phantom Zone gun thing.
Lois and Alan are talking in a coffee shop and Alan is animated and waving his arms around and Lois is scribbling scribbling scribbling into her notepad. “And you’ll go on the record with this?” “Heck yeah, I will.”
About what? I dunno. Something like toxic waste or a coverup or something like that. Not *TOO* trendy (“He put straws into the noses of turtles! We have to eliminate plastic straws!”) but something that will get you to say “oooooh, Wallstone is *EEEEEVIL*.”
Fight three with Zod. “Did you come back to kneel.” “No.”
A fight. In a city! Superman works to use the Phantom Zone thing. Zod steals it! “I’m learning how to use my powers!”, he says. He aims the Phantom Zone gun at Superman but Superman skedaddles. Zod chases. Superman goes faster. Zod chases faster. He’s a quick study, that Zod.
Superman flies out of the city and Zod chases and they end up in the pine barrens. He pockets the Phantom Zone gun. “Thanks for teaching me how to speed up. The Phantom Zone? No. I’m going to want you here. Kneeling. As all people will kneel!” big punches, Zod is using his newly found offensive powers quite skillfully but! Superman is using defensive powers! I don’t know what they are but they include taking a punch, I guess. Have Superman say something like “You learned all about the offense we, as Kryptonians, are capable of… have you learned defense?”
“I haven’t had to!”
And we go back to Relativistic Baseball. Superman starts whaling on Zod. I mean, really whaling on him. Like, figure out what kind of special effects you’re going to want to use in the Flash movie in a couple of years and start using those special effects on Superman’s arms. Faster and faster and faster punches including ones that, yes, start to have fusion zones and plasmized air.
Go down to the atomic level and show little mushroom clouds on each of Superman’s knuckles as he punches Zod with the last one. There’s a crater. Zod is punch drunk. He sits down on his butt. Superman takes the Phantom Zone gun off of Zod and shoots Zod with it. Zod’s in the Phantom Zone now.
Pity about the crater.
Superman sits down himself, in a perfect mirror of Zod a minute earlier. Heavy exhale. Heavy exhale. A smile begins to creep onto his face…
Cut to Perry White’s office “WHAT DO YOU WANT”
“The story needs a fourth day.”
Perry reads the printout that Lois hands him. He scans irritatedly. Then his eyes widen. Then he picks up the phone and starts shouting into it.
Clark’s typing at his computer. Lois drops a paper on his desk. Headline reads WALLSTONE TOPPLES or some crap like that. “Ninety-Seven.”
Clark breaks out into a huge grin. “This is a great story, Lois!” She doesn’t smile, but she almost cracks a grin. “I liked your piece on the teacher.” “Thanks!”
Cut to evening, she calls her dad. “Did you see today’s story?” “I did. Quite a bombshell.”
awkward silence
He clears his throat and says “I didn’t know half the stuff you got out of him. I only knew the part about the turtles and the straws. I didn’t know about the toxic waste.”
awkward silence
“Good job, Lois.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll let you go.”
“Take care”
“Take care”
She hangs up and her face breaks into a big ol’ goofy grin.
(Post-credits scene can show Superman filling the crater in with dirt and planting trees and watering them. With a big ol’ goofy grin.)
*THAT* is how *I* would have done Man of Steel.Report
Thing is, you are insisting upon a Superman who is further along the arc of experience than this one is. He’s got enough experience to not squish humans, even when they really deserve it, but Zod and his troop are on a different level. Supes has never had to handle someone who is on par before this, and he’s up against a military leader who has probably decades more experience putting the Kryptonian version of The Art of War into practice.
Old age and treachery may not always overcome youth and skill, but it wins often enough that the young and skillful should be cautious.Report
Then I would have relied on some good old-fashioned “good understands evil, evil cannot possibly understand good” trope-working.
Trick Zod by being good.
It’s not *THAT* hard to come up with a reason for Superman to kill Zod. It’s pretty easy to come up with reasons to kill Zod.
Put the effort into making Superman good. Like, for real good. Not into finding reasons that he doesn’t have to be.Report
Superman was good, he really did not want to kill Zod. He was a lot more agonized over that decision, before & after, than the Donner Superman was about kicking Zod into an icy abyss.
Understanding how to not kill someone who really wants to force your hand is something that no amount of good can provide, only experience and intelligence can.Report
It’s easy to have a hero agonize after a death. There was a great Grant Morrison story involving The Son Of Batman who, in a fight, kills his opponent. Back in the Batcave, he debriefs the AI Alfred and says something to the effect of “Once again, I disappoint my father.”
That’s good writing!
But Superman should agonize over different things than how some people just need killing, can’t be helped.Report
I come back to the World of Cardboard speech. That is the older, more experienced Superman I think you want to be in that movie.Report
It doesn’t have to be World of Cardboard (granted, that’s an amazing speech!). I would go the route of “if he’s still learning how to use his new powers, and if he’s a quick study, then I need to apply overwhelming power in a short enough period of time to stun him long enough to Phantom Zone him”.
Play up how Zod believes that the best defense is a good offense… which means that he isn’t used to taking a punch. Maybe he hasn’t taken one since his adolescence! And now he’s in a place where he has overwhelming offensive ability… but Superman knows how to take a punch. He takes big hits because he’s Superman.
Zod might learn to take a big hit, but he hasn’t yet. And Superman usually doesn’t have to apply Flash-Level Speed Punches. But, and here’s the point, he can take one. Zod, when hit by one, needs a few seconds. He’ll get back up! He just needs a few seconds first.
But he doesn’t have a few seconds.
Use Zod’s arrogance and relative inexperience with his new powers against him. Maybe have Zod give Superman a speech about how sure, Kryptonians have all of these Yellow Sun tricks but Zod is a better fighter without them.
And have Superman just point out that Zod only learned to hit hard and never learned to take a punch for the sake of a more important goal. He always made other people sacrifice, he never was willing to take a hit himself.
And use that as the window.
Instead of, you know, hey. We kinda need the Death Penalty, if you really think about it. The cops need to be able to shoot criminals if they won’t follow orders!Report
I’m not saying you can’t do all of that, and it would be a perfectly good story. Hell, it’d be a better story.
I’m saying it’s not inconsistent to tell the story Snyder told.Report
Inconsistent? It’s certainly inconsistent with the Superman of Action Comics #775 that they’ve been riding hard in the various continuities.
Is it inconsistent with what the WB movie franchise is trying to do?
Heck no. It’s 100% consistent with what WB is trying to do.
They made a Suicide Squad movie without making a Flash movie where Captain Boomerang got arrested, where Harley got arrested, where Deadshot got arrested, and on and on and on. They made a Justice League movie without introducing The Flash in an earlier flick, without introducing Cyborg in an earlier flick, and without a Batfleck movie. WITHOUT A BATFLECK MOVIE.
They saw that Marvel was doing the Infinity Gauntlet and said “we need to do that!” without asking “and how many movies did they make first?”
They just stampeded to Infinity Gauntlet without so much as making an Avengers movie first.
So having Superman kill Zod instead of actually thinking about it first is 100% consistent with how WB is approaching its Superhero Universe.Report
The Elites. Good stuff.
Very character defining for Superman.
Of course, while the Elites were a threat to Superman personally, to the best of my knowledge none of them targeted civilians much less had 7+ digit body counts.
And agreed that WB doesn’t really seem to know what they’re doing. Killing Zod (after he racks up 7+ corpses) is fine as long as you have the next movie dealing with a PTSD Superman who has decided Zod’s murder was a “never again” moment.
In the next movie he should have a well deserved rep for NEVER doing that sort of thing.
Instead what we got was Luthor unleashing Doomsday to… save the world? What is the thinking of the smartest normal human on the planet?Report
The comic book didn’t put quite as much of its thumb on the scale as the movie did but let’s use the movie anyway.
They didn’t target civilians (though they were cavalier about fighting bad guys around civilians). They were more than willing to kill the Atomic Skull and, since that would inspire pretty much anybody to have a discussion about “well, what do you do with nuclear powered Nazis who kill people just by standing too closely to them?”, they also killed some warring political leaders (it’s okay! they were foreign countries!).
So now they’ve killed people without a proper trial and made themselves the authorities rather than subservient to the authorities.
And Superman, without killing the Elite, shows the world that vigilantism is *BAD*.
It’s a great story! Uplifting, even! “Wholesome”, as the kidz say.
I’m not even arguing that it’s not possible to do this stuff well. Of course it’s possible to do this stuff well! It’s just also possible to say “well, we could do a Batman vs. Superman movie… or we could do a Doomsday movie… AW SHIT LET’S PUT BOTH STORIES IN THE SAME MOVIE” and not do it well.
At all.Report
I’m real good with killing the atomic skull (the cartoon version) as an option if he “resists arrest” too much. He’s deliberate walking death.
If memory serves they went several steps past that and executed him after he was unconscious which is a problem.
“Wearing the Cape” does a great job with these ethical/legal nuances and the problems supers can pose.
The upshot is a supers duty is to keep the body count down, if possible this includes the “villain”… however there are some powersets that are impossible to handle and there is no Joker immunity to ethics.
Someone who is walking deliberate death with a nasty power set can find themselves on the other end of a legal “kill” order signed by a judge.Report
Yeah, having the Elite kill the Atomic Skull was probably a gimmie. I mean, the Skull killed people after he escaped. You’ve got someone that prisons can’t hold (demonstrably) and who will kill again the moment he gets out.
If I wanted to argue for the importance of the death penalty, I’d use someone who:
A: Escaped from a maximum security prison
B: Killed somebody after he got out
I mean, it doesn’t get much more clear-cut than that.
Which is why they had to have the Elite kill foreign leaders.Report
Oh hell no. Not as presented.
If Atomic had been killed “resisting arrest” then I’d be fine with it. If you’re an Elite and ok killing people, this is the way to do it.
If Atomic had been killed after some judge signed an “kill on sight” warrant I’d still be ok with it. Here the elite could be a super-cop, Anita Blake style.
If Atomic had been beaten unconscious and then executed by someone after some legal fig leaf I’d still be ok with it. Here the Elite could be an executioner who doesn’t even need to be the guy arresting Atomic. I’m not sure if there’s any reason to do this in public so he probably wouldn’t.
Instead what we had was an Elite playing judge jury and executioner on a helpless guy. The Elite was totally out of control.
Any working system of law would have “kill warrants” out for the Atomic Skull. There’s no way we would be pretending that he’s anything other than mass death waiting to happen.
Here we only had two options, Superman’s “arrest him and be shocked that the super powered mass murderer commits mass murder” and the Elites “there is no law”.
Those are both stupid. The law and society are FAR more flexible than this.Report
Keeping in mind I’ve never read the comics, only saw the animation…
But the Elites were also facing a Superman who’d been knocking around a bit, had more than a few bouts with Kryptonians and New Gods, etc., and was well onto the path of, “It’s not enough to be the strongest/etc., one has to be smart/clever/devious as well.
Like Batman, Superman really shines not when he’s pummeling, but when he’s being crafty. When he refuses to let the bad guy choose the battlefield, or, even smarter, when he lets the bad guy think they’ve chosen the battlefield.
Superman in MOS was, IMHO, still getting used to not just being Clark Kent. Zod was refusing to let Superman pick a different battlefield, and Supes wasn’t (yet) experienced enough to recognize the strategy Zod was employing, or how to turn those tables.
In military training, wargames exist specifically so leadership can learn such things. Who is Kal-El wargamming against?Report
PS If you haven’t seen the Justice League Snyder cut, Martian Manhunter makes an appearance in the end. now there is someone who can wargame with Superman.
As long as fire is off the table…Report
I intend to watch it (eventually).
If only to be disappointed by it.
I had no desire to watch the Whedon cut and, for a long stretch there, I had no idea who the bad guy was.
Someone would tell me and it was gone, as surely as the Men In Black mind-wiped me. Hey, remember Men In Black: International? That’s how difficult it was for me to remember Steppenwolf.
Darkseid? Heck, yeah! I want to watch a Darkseid movie! Wait, you mean they they leapt out of the gate and started stampeding toward Darkseid *BEFORE* making a goddamn BATFLECK MOVIE?!?!?!?!?Report
Superman in MOS was, IMHO, still getting used to not just being Clark Kent. Zod was refusing to let Superman pick a different battlefield, and Supes wasn’t (yet) experienced enough to recognize the strategy Zod was employing, or how to turn those tables.
While I agree with this, this demonstrates how hard the writers were working to justify Superman killing Zod rather than working to justify his *NOT* killing Zod.Report
That’s a fair point.Report
I dislike this plot device. If Superman has the Phantom Zone on tap, why isn’t he Zoning the rest of his Rogues gallery?
In this movie, he doesn’t do that because to use the Zone he needed to destroy the spaceship that brought him, so it was a one off. Now we could end it right there, Zod goes down with the ship.
If Supes has Zone on tap, then while he’s fighting Zod, he could offer to Zone Zod and let him rejoin his crew (which would be an interesting narrative arc for both of them), but then we need to have something to explain why he doesn’t do that to Doomsday, Darkseid, and even the Joker.
The Zone makes it too easy. Superman never needs to make choices.
(That’s over and above the issue that the Zone sounds a lot like Hell. I don’t understand why it’s viewed as more humane than death. You’re stuck as a time ghost, unable to interact with the world, forever. You’ll be suffering in space long after the Earth is destroyed).Report
The Phantom Zone is a Kryptonian Jail. He feels that he should only use it on Kryptonians.
There.
Have him give a speech about how he doesn’t feel he should give Human Punishments to Humans but to *PROTECT* Humans! Sadly, sometimes against other Humans… but after the bad actors are caught and stopped, they’re given to the Human authorities to hand down Human punishments.
That’s why he doesn’t do it to the Joker.
Why doesn’t he do it to Doomsday? Dunno. Maybe you need to be sentient. Maybe he tried and it didn’t work. Why doesn’t he do it to Darkseid? He did! DeSaad used the Motherbox and got him back within *SECONDS*.Report
JB, I have to admit you have good answers.
On a side note, you should give the book series, “Wearing the Cape” a try.Report
I feel like a “Superman who didn’t know how to Superman” would have brashly rescued Pa Kent from the tornado, not stood in a tunnel yelling “NOOOOOOO”.Report
It was interesting how, for the next few years, movies always made a point of saying “all the people have evacuated!” or “superpower fights in urban areas are really bad!” (I mean, even the sequel “Batman Versus Superman” pretty much based its whole plot on the idea).Report
The critics are partially right when they say it doesn’t feel like a Superman movie. But it’s not just because Superman behaves out of character from his usual depiction. it’s that structurally, this isn’t a Superman movie. The first part is a space movie, the second part is about a reporter trying to uncover a mystery. The third part is a Godzilla movie. Seriously, it is. Two space monsters meet in the middle of the city. One is evil; the other is the designated hero who can at best be called neutral toward humanity. They yell and fight and destroy the city, and the designated hero wins.Report
I’d like to start off by thanking you for reminding me about Man of Steel. I had genuinely forgotten, in the waves of DCU trash, how amazing this movie was. The soundtrack and the Krypton scenes were top notch, as you said. It’s utterly astonishing how precipitously the quality of writing declined for the subsequent DCEU movies after MoS.Report
I take the point about the Donner Superman killing Zod when he had a lot of alternatives. Snyder’s Superman had fewer and yeah, probably did have to kill Zod because otherwise the fighting was just going to destroy more of New York/Metropolis. Zod was clearly not going to to stop. With that said, I basically agree with Jaybird above that Superman also works hard to find a way to get that fight out of New York. He can throw Zod a long way with his super strength and super speed, so he gets that stuff out to the Catskills or the Pine Barrens using himself or some MacGuffin as bait.
I also take the point that yeah, society would react to Superman with at least as much fear and trepidation as they would hero-worship. And Superman would have no particular reason to love America or anything else; he chooses for his own reasons (personified by Mom and Lois Lane) to protect humanity even though a lot of humans have treated him like crap over the years before he became a quasi-god.
And I really did like the “Growing Up With The Kents” part of the movie best; Kevin Costner inspired marvelous empathy.
The real issue is, Henry Cavill does not. His performance is leaden and the script doesn’t help him all that much. It tried in a few spots. I don’t feel a ton of chemistry between Cavill and Amy Adams as Lois Lane; I accepted that they loved each other since a Superman story requires that he and Lois love one another, but it was often hard to perceive here.
It’s tough to make Superman vulnerable enough to inspire empathy. I give Snyder credit for trying.
Also, I think I would have told the on-Krypton story in flashbacks in the spaceship narrated by Jor-El’s AI simulacrum, rather than as a long act/prologue; but okay.Report
Superman killed Zod, sure… AFTER GETTING HIM TO THE FORTRESS OF SOLIDUDE.
He didn’t do *BOTH*.
My criticism wasn’t that Superman killed Zod.
It’s that he not only didn’t get Zod out of the city, he killed him! He not only took a shortcut in killing Zod, he didn’t take a shortcut out of the city!Report
Admittedly a lot of this is plot driven, but the plot drives it REALLY well.
Superman wasn’t in control of the fight, Zod was his equal. Zod was also smart and understood Superman’s moral “weaknesses” and deliberately used that against him.
Superman did try to drag the fight out of the city, Zod won’t let him. If Superman doesn’t fight him Zod just kills people, if Superman leaves Zod just kills people, if Superman drags him off then Zod drags him back. This was shown.
In theory, Superman can fly to the North Pole and get some uber-device and come back (and why didn’t he use this earlier?), but if Zod has the same speed then by the time Superman gets back there won’t be a city.
If Superman is going to avoid this fight, then he needed to get a LOT more aggressive a lot earlier… like by dropping the Phantom Zone thing on them while they were still in space. In theory he could have talked to his Dad when Zod first showed up and asked him who he was and what he should do.
Something else Superman might have done was carry a piece of Kryptonite with him in case he needed it… although granted in this Universe Kryptonite hasn’t been discovered yet.
This movie shows Superman making mistakes and having limited resources. It also has the plot not covering for him.Report
Now in the next movie with Doomsday, the plot did cover for him. Doomsday magically picked uninhabited parts of New York to fight in.
He even did things like blow up buildings in downtown NY… which were noted to be mostly empty by some news guy a moment earlier.
So this was a movie with normal civilians having plot armor against Doomsday of all things.
I dislike plot armor of this nature. They could and should have had a drop line in there (say when talking to POTUS) that they think at least a thousand people have died so far. That would work real well with them deciding to go nuclear.Report
If the writers worked hard to explain that Superman not only couldn’t have left the city, he had no choice but to kill Zod, then the writers were working hard in service to the wrong ends.Report
Don’t think about this as a deconstruction of Superman; think about it as a reconstruction of Dr. Manhattan.
This Supes is completely detached. His well-meaning father taught him nothing but fear and otherness. He’s never been in a real physical conflict, and he’s never engaged enough to be in a moral conflict. He finally gets the call to fulfill the destiny everyone’s been going on about, and the first thing it costs him is his principles. The movie closes with him destroying a satellite because he’s only inching his way toward humanity and connection.Report
If we’re rethinking Superman and making him into someone who takes shortcuts when it’s really, really important, then Warner Brothers deserves to lose money, if not go out of business.Report
I may break with your average conservative on this kind of thing, the one who would defend the honor of Luke Skywalker or whatever. Legends get changed. That doesn’t mean that every retelling is done well, and I know that some of it is done for cheap attention. But it’s the virtue that matters, not one generation’s exemplar of it.Report
He can be updated and have his legend deconstructed and reevaluated and whatnot. That’s all fine.
Batman didn’t mind using guns or killing people in his early days.
But if you’re doing a re-imagining, it should, at the very least, be obvious enough that someone watching is saying “oh, they’re re-imagining Superman!” instead of “they got a lot of crap wrong”.
I mean, to go back to Superman II, I could see someone complaining about Superman murdering Zod. How could someone defend against it? “Well, we didn’t see the body and we don’t know that they’re *DEAD* dead. Maybe they’re only comic book dead!”
The new one? Dude broke Zod’s neck. On camera.Report
Clark: But father, the busload of children would have died!
Pa (slaps Clark): What did Ayn Rand say about the weak?!
Me: Oh, that’s right, *Zack Snyder*.Report
“Maybe” is not “Yes”.
Pa Kent’s point was that Clark needs to consider when and how he reveals himself, because it would change everything. He’s playing God, and that’s not a bad thing but it CAN have consequences.
It turns out, he was dead right – the moment the universe found out who Superman was, Smallville and then a major city both got decimated. Follow that to BvS, you had people greatly concerned by his unlimited power – and in Justice League, his LACK of a presence alerted the galaxy that it was ready to be conquered.
This isn’t new logic. Thor says as much about it in The Avengers:
“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war.”
When power rises up, other powerful forces do too.Report
Bank-robber, holding out brick of green kryptonite: Stand back, Superman! You’re in my power now!
Superman, pulling out AK47: You know, these babies have a much longer range than that lump of space junk does.Report
Heh, I’ve heard that before:
LEX LUTHOR: Superman? Ha! No problem! See, I’ve got this Kryptonite ring, so if he comes within twenty feet he’s completely powerless!
(cut to a shot of Superman two miles away, getting ready to throw an oil tanker)Report
OK, how about Doomsday? Was the k-spear a shortcut?Report
Compared to what? How Superman fought Doomsday in the comic?Report
Superman deliberately killed Doomsday. Does that violate his ethics or not?
As for comics, Superman has killed Zod here: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0659b4512788f4b733221d606ca262f2.webp
And then two more times in the movies.
That comics example was on an alternative Earth (although our Superman) where Zod murdered every human on the planet. That action traumatised Superman so badly he went with his no-killing-ever approach… presumably excluding Doomsday.Report
Is not being Vegan murder? You’re killing something, after all.
Please: Buy my Avocado Mayonnaise. It’s pain-free!
There are plenty of Elseworlds stories where Superman has no qualms against killing. I don’t mind “what would it take to get Superman to kill somebody” stories.
I mind half-assing such a story and then making it canon.Report
This wasn’t an elseworld’s story. This was cannon. Superman Vol. 2 #22
https://screenrant.com/times-superman-killed-his-enemies-villains/
Granted, just about all of “deaths” in that link are elsewords (including movies and so on), non-living/sentient (Doomsday, Parademons), or accidents (Dr Light).
Zod was cannon Superman in a pocket universe right after Crisis.
Hmm… out of the 15 times in that link, for Cannon we have superman-in-a-pocket-universe and Doomsday. I guess that supports your argument.
And then we have Zod’s other death, where I agree entirely that Zod’s death in Superman 2 (Christopher Reeve) was totally an abuse of character. Zod and his crew were stripped of their powers, and there was no moral weight for killing them. Supes and Lois kill them and go on their happy way.Report
Superman literally tried to take the fight TO SPACE and Zod’s response was to wreck a satellite and a few more skyscrapers.Report
Yes. Zod was doing the “evil-not-dumb” thing.
Christopher Reeve’s Zod was “rule all humans”, not “kill all humans”.
Man of Steel’s Zod was basically a smarter, weaker Doomsday.
He started out wanting to kill everyone because they were in the way and he shifted to revenge at the end of the movie.
Now Jaybird is correct in that it wouldn’t take much to lower the body count enough to where Superman has the time to do something and/or give Superman more resources.
However I don’t view that as an abuse of character. Zod is a nightmare villain who is going to kill millions of people an hour until he’s stopped. Superman kills him or lives with a much higher body count.
Being in this situation wasn’t Superman’s plan. Zod was supposed to be trapped in the negative zone with the others.Report
Guard: General! It’s good to see you, sir.
Zod: I must enter this area immediately!
Guard: Of course, sir. Everyone out of the way! Except you; you go on ahead. OK, general, your turn now.
Zod: What is this insolence?
Guard: That was Neil.Report
Zod has a plan, he’s going to recreate Krypton somewhere else, but with less stupidity in the ruling council. Now, honestly, this is not much of a plan, the changes he wants to make aren’t very detailed, and there are hints that Zod has specific ideas of the right sort of people to inhabit this new Krypton that might be vaguely racist or classist or _something_ bad that Jor-El doesn’t agree with.
But it is, literally, ‘a plan’.
Unlike Jor-El, who has no plan whatsoever. Or the entire leadership of Krypton, who has even _less_ of a plan. (They somehow have a negative plan of ‘arresting people and detaining them in a spaceship, causing them to be the only survivors of this’.)
The problem with the start of Man of Steel is that Zod is right. Like, literally, he’s right. He’s maybe not doing the _best_ thing, but what he is doing is better than every other action that every other person is taking.
And this is sort of a fundamental problem with the Superman mythos with characters introduced as ‘fighting the ruling council of Krypton’, because, unless they are very very evil…they’re right. Supergirl had almost the same problem, with the villains of the first season being Kara’s aunt Astra, who _also_ fought back against the ruling council’s lack of action, with actual terrorism, that got someone killed, and got locked up for it. But that show was willing to admit she was right.
The Superman mythos, at least some versions of it, has everyone on Krypton sitting in the burning building waiting to die. Except for Jor-El, who decided his solution was to throw his kid (and just his kid) out the window and hope someone catch them which…is not really much of a useful solution. Although good job attaching the entire future of the Kryptonian race to said kid in _this_ version of the mythos, Jor-El. Really smart.
If you are in a burning building, and a bunch of complete morons who are legally in charge of that building have decided to just sit there and let everyone die, and they are imprisoning anyone who try to change that…at some point you really do have the right to just start shooting them so you can escape the building. Civilization is not a suicide pact, and if a government is bad enough,(And it’s hard to think of one worse than ‘literally letting everyone die’), you do have the right to stop recognizing them.
And I want to make it clear: I’m not actually trying to make any point about the real world. I know it sorta sounds like that, but…there’s government dysfunction, and there’s whatever the hell is going on Krypton, which is well past any threshold of ‘This is a government that should exist’. Zod has the right…and not just that, but a _duty_, to take Krypton and continue it somewhere else.
Some Kryptonians may like how he does that, but I have to suggest that if anyone objects to his plans, they should get off their damn ass and do it themselves.
What, no takers? No other actual competing plan beside Jor-El yeeting Kal-El randomly into the universe without any actual ability for him to do anything?
Well then, I GUESS ZOD IS IN CHARGE. No matter if he’s racist or whatever.Report