Cult-Movie Review: Man of Steel (2013)

There is one -- and only one -- moment of humanity in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013).

It arrives near the very end of the over-long, over-stuffed film, and provides the blockbuster enterprise a final, long-missing, and much-needed quality of soul. 

Specifically, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) relates to his Mom (Diane Lane) that he wishes his deceased dad could have seen him become the man he grew into.  

Ma Kent replies with earnestness that Kent does see, and then the film cuts to this incredibly tactile, incredibly human moment (from years earlier…) in which Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) is fixing his pick-up truck on the family farm while young Clark is nearby. 

Jonathan gazes up over the vehicle's hood to see his boy -- his young son -- playing at being a superhero in the nearby yard. Unobserved, the innocent boy plays his game with abandon, and here -- at long last -- we see, and sense, and truly feel some rush of genuine emotion: the love a father feels for his child; and a bit of the anxiety associated with that paternal love too. 

Encoded in this beautifully-shot grace note in Man of Steel is the idea that all fathers both love their sons and mourn their own mortality in relation to that powerful love.  

For -- because of the particular nature of our life-spans -- we can only catch glimpses of the future and shall not always know, in the end, what kind of men our sons will become.  We can have confidence.  We can have optimism.  But we aren’t necessarily going to be physically present to see that boy’s final chapter of maturity.

The final miles our sons must walk without us....  

He will have our words and our lessons, and his memory of us to guide him in times of difficulty, but not our presence, not our reassurances.  As much as we want to be there, we can’t stand with him in those last years. There's a deep pain associated with these facts, and this short sequence beautifully expresses that feeling of melancholy. Of simultaneous joy in the boy, and mourning for the time when we cannot be with him.

This brief, lyrical scene in Man of Steel features no dialogue yet is visually powerful and more importantly, intimate on a breathtaking scale.  The moment feels almost like a lost or forgotten memory, and is truly, uncompromisingly, superb.  It embodies the reason I generally admire Zack Snyder's work as a director.  He can craft images of real emotional power when given the opportunity, and the right script.

I very much wish there were more moments like this one in Man of Steel.

But there are not. 

Instead, the film is dominated by action on such a ridiculously grand scale that you can't relate to it.  And there is not one moment of this destruction, death, fire, rage, or combat that touches the human heart in the way that this single, elegiac sequence manages to do.

Indeed, this small, human sequence pops up -- like some unwanted ghost or glitch in the machine -- in what is otherwise an incredibly generic, incredibly excessive demolition derby of cinematic destruction that lacks soul, humanity, humor, and most of all, hope. 

Make no mistake: this 2013 franchise film is actually embarrassed by the very name of its hero -- “Superman” -- and goes out of its way to eliminate or subvert long-enduring aspects of the franchise so as to somehow render its familiar origin story “new and fresh.”  Much material, a lot of history -- and almost all humanity --are entirely sacrificed in this rush to make the Man of Steel seem “relevant” or "timely."  

Yet seeing the uninspiring results, this was a fool's errand.  The audience never connects on a human scale with the titular character, or even the constantly-screaming, bulge-eyed villain.

In short, The Man of Steel is a colossal, robotic, lumbering disappointment, a non-stop industrial machine that relentlessly extrudes destruction and despair as a substitute for entertainment and humanity.  

“You're not just anyone. One day, you're going to have to make a choice. You have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be…”

On distant Krypton, the great scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe) warns the planet’s ruling council that the mining (or fracking?) of the planet's core has caused irreversible geological instability.  In short, the planet will soon destroy itself, and the technologically-advanced culture it has long-nourished. 

Jor-El boasts a plan to save the planet’s genetic “codex” and restore the Kryptonian race on another world, but the Council rejects his idea.

At the same time, General Zod (Michael Shannon) attempts a bloody coup.  While pandemonium reigns on the planet, Jor-El and his wife Lara launch their new-born son Kal-El -- the first child born naturally on Krypton in generations -- towards Earth, where he shall live out his life.  

Although General Zod and the ruling council don’t know it, Jor-El also downloads the Kryptonian genetic codex into Kal-El’s very bloodstream....

Following Zod’s banishment in the Phantom Zone, Krypton explodes, and Kal-El begins his new life on distant Earth.

In Kansas, Kal-El (Henry Cavill) is raised by corn-fed farmers Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane).  They raise him to hide his alien powers, fearing that the human race is not ready to accept an alien in its midst.  After graduating from high school, Kal-El holds down lonely, odd jobs, and seeks some clues as to his alien nature.  He gets one in the Arctic, where a Kryptonian spaceship -- buried in the ice for 18,000 years -- is discovered.

Using a command key from his own spaceship (which remains stored in the Kent homestead’s barn...) Kal-El activates the systems on the scout ship, and meets a hologram image of his father, Jor-El.  Jor-El provides him a special Kryptonian suit to wear, and informs him that he is now a child of two worlds.  

Unfortunately, the command-key has also sent out a homing signal, one which General Zod and his fanatical, militaristic followers are able to trace back to defenseless Earth.

Even as a reporter, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) begins to track down the mystery of Clark Kent, Zod and his forces approach Earth with the agenda of finding the genetic codex, establishing a new Krypton, and wiping out (or at least enslaving…) the human race.

“Make a better world than ours, Kal.”

Sometimes, I wonder if the ubiquitous “geek” or “fan” culture has been done a grave disservice by the Internet, where its loudest (and sometimes most radical...) members declare what they want, desire and demand out of Hollywood adaptations of favorite properties.  

Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2006), for instance, was met with widespread fan scorn because it was, overall, a human-scaled story, featuring a human villain, and a sensitive hero.  It resolutely did not feature the world-shattering, city-destroying action that some fans of Superman, apparently, desired.  

The fans want super villains and super-battles!

Well, the overall message of Man of Steel must certainly be a  cautionary one: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

With this proverb in mind, Man of Steel is an endless, tiring -- nay numbing -- paean to falling skyscrapers, vehicles tossed into the sky, and super-powered people throwing each other into the air at near warp-velocities.  

The rampant destruction continues for such a long time in the film -- and is so colossal in scope -- that, in the end, not a single action scene actually packs much of a psychic punch, or has the tiniest emotional impact.  The makers of this film never heard that less can be more, apparently.  And their choice to make the third act of Man of Steel all-action-all-the-time consumes precious moments (or hours?) that would have been better spent establishing the characters and their lives.

In fact, Man of Steel’s climax eventually becomes unintentionally funny.  The whole of Metropolis -- literally entire city blocks -- are destroyed and aflame, but Superman rescues Lois Lane in the nick of time from a singularity that has been intentionally opened-up over the city (good grief…).  Superman lands her on the street...er rubble, safely and a Daily Planet intern soon shouts triumphantly: “He saved us!”

This is an optimistic opinion, for there are precisely four people left standing and visible in the frame: Perry White, the intern, another Daily Planet reporter, and Lois.  

Meanwhile, the city smolders, and the landscape appears positively post-apocalyptic.  The "he saved us!" line actually elicited laughs in the theater from other patrons because the staging -- and the overt, monumental destruction --suggests that Superman hasn't really “saved” much at all.  

Of course, we must assume there are other survivors beyond these four, but Metropolis now looks like the victim of 1,000 9/11 attacks, and a hundred super-storm Sandi-type incidents.  I half-expected to see in the background some graffiti that read: "Roland Emmerich was here."  

Despite the fact of rampant destruction, the screenplay does not provide a single line -- not one word -- about the herculean task of re-building the city, which now looms.  Indeed, the film ends with Clark Kent merrily taking his place at the Daily Planet, which looks clean and orderly...as if nothing ever happened.  

Just think for a moment about how long it took to clean up Ground Zero.  Now multiply that destruction times a thousand and start to reflect on the size of the job at hand...

Perhaps Superman could help with the efforts, but again, the film might make note of that fact.  Given what our lying eyes show in Man of Steel, it would be years -- perhaps decades -- before anybody was even going to work in Metropolis again, or frequenting the Daily Planet building.

The entirety of Man of Steel’s last act is filled with oversights of this dramatic and clumsy nature.  As I noted above, the plan to get rid of Zod involves creating a singularity -- a black hole, essentially -- just a couple of hundred feet over downtown Metropolis.

Yes, you read that right.

Fair is fair: I complained in my review of Star Trek (2009) when a singularity was opened in the Earth's solar system, but the proximity of the singularity here to a major city is much more egregious, and much more dangerous.  And again, the film never includes even a single line of dialogue to suggest how the singularity is to be closed.  

All that is discussed, if memory serves, is the connecting of two phantom drives to create the black hole in the first place.  Still, you’d think that “opening a singularity” would require, as well, an exit strategy.  

Also, in one of the film’s more far-fetched moments, Lois Lane falls away from the opened singularity, even as material is being sucked up from the ground, towards it.   So...she weighs more than a car? Or a huge chunk of asphalt?

This isn’t just bad writing...it’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) bad writing.  But because the special effects are so good, no one comments much on the gaps in situation logic.

I’ve written about blockbusters of this type before, and it saddens me to see the Superman franchise to succumb to this sad trend.  In short, this movie all about pummeling the audience with destruction, with special effects depicting massive carnage.  Incident piles upon incident and the writers clearly hope that the viewer will be so throttled, so overwhelmed, that he won’t notice that there’s no plan to close the singularity opened over Metropolis proper.  Or that the very idea of opening up a black hole over a city is really, really reckless..

Or that Superman “saving” Metropolis actually ends up being the greatest loss of human life and treasure since the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  

My point is not that the movie can’t feature rampant "super" destruction; but that it shouldn’t feature such destruction, and then turn around to end the movie, moments later, with Clark happily joining the Daily Planet staff.  The latter scene boasts no credibility if this much destruction actually occurred.   Cities can be easily destroyed and re-built with CGI effects, but real life is much more problematic in this regard. 

Man of Steel possesses no sense of verisimilitude at all.  It's just explosive eye-candy, with frayed connective tissue occupying the small spaces between action scenes.

The same problem of clumsiness recurs with the depiction of the Kryptonians.  One of Zod’s underlings informs Superman that he is crippled by morality, but that she is not.  This is a throwaway line, but it causes all kinds of problems.  Are all Kryptonians sociopaths by nature?  Has Clark escaped that fate because of his human upbringing?  Or does the line about possessing no morality apply only to genetically engineered soldiers? Again, the problem here is follow-through: the line has no explanation, and therefore nothing beyond a momentary resonance.  It means nothing in the scheme of things, and raises questions that needn't be raised.

The desire and willingness to bury Man of Steel in special effects sequences also leads to other bad creative decisions in terms of storytelling.  In many depictions of the Superman origin story, Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack (think Superman: The Movie [1978] or even Smallville [2001 – 2011]).  

Here, he literally gets sucked up into a Category Five Tornado that is spitting out cars and other debris with typical CGI efficiency.  

In the desire to “throttle” the audience, the movie-makers thus skip one of the most critical life lessons for Clark Kent: that there are some things, and some deaths, that he can’t avert. 

Even as Superman, he can’t control everything.   Clark can’t save his father because he is not master over all life and all death.  Being "super" doesn't mean being God.  This simple human truth is Clark's most important connection to humanity on Earth. Ultimately, no matter our planet of origin, we are all the same when it comes to dealing with the mortality of our loved ones.

By replacing a heart attack with a scene-stealing tornado -- that Clark can stop, but doesn’t -- the film misses this key moment in Kent’s maturation process,  A human scene has been replaced with spectacle, and the spectacle, ultimately, has no point.  

What precisely was the lesson learned here?  As the state-of-the-art special effects so adroitly dramatize at other junctures in the drama, Clark can move so rapidly that he could have picked his father up in a blur, rescued him, and not revealed himself to anyone.  The Kent death scene in Man of Steel carries no psychic weight as drama, because Jonathan's death is arbitrary.  It's just another opportunity for good effects work, not for character growth.

I wrote about this a little in my introduction, but it seems to me that the whole “re-imagining” of the Superman legend as seen in Man of Steel originates from a point of vast insecurity and embarrassment about the character.  

First, the film tries to (over)compensate for the perceived failings of Superman Returns by featuring city-shattering action by the boatload, instead of actual human interaction.  

Secondly, it won’t even let characters say the word “superman” without making it a joke, as if the Man of Steel’s superhero name is any cornier or cheesier, intrinsically, than Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, or Hulk.  

Thirdly, the film skips the whole concept that Lois Lane does not know that Clark and Superman are one in the same.  Why?  Well, it’s a defensive and insecure posture too: how could anyone believe that mere eye- glasses could hide a person’s identity...especially from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author?  

Well, how could any author write the words “to see what is under one’s nose needs a constant struggle?” 

Indeed, that's another dramatic point and theme of the Superman myth.  Supermen hide among us all the time: everyday heroes whom we might dismiss as a nerd or klutz, but who -- in a moment of crisis -- rise to the occasion.   We dismiss them, on a regular basis, as ordinary Joes.

This huge change in tradition will have serious ripple effects in the movie franchise.  Now Lois boasts no defining struggle as a character, no hurdle to overcome. She can’t even be jealous of or competitive about Clark’s journalistic skills, because she knows she would be competing, essentially, with Superman.  And that would be foolish, wouldn't it?

Of course, iterations of the myth, across the long years, have reached the point where Lois knows the truth about Clark Kent.  But that knowledge is almost universally hard-won.  

Not so here.  

Here it is the starting point, and thus there is no sense of character conflict between Clark and Lois.  This Lois is even -- gasp -- warm-hearted and soft.  She decides not to pursue Clark’s story after meeting him, when he convinces her (in one brief conversation...) that he should be left alone.  Again, she doesn't know him at this juncture...at all. So why go all wobbly?  Because he's "kinda hot," in the film's vernacular? 

In 2013 -- especially with all the battles about the role of the press in security and privacy --  to feature a Lois Lane who is so weak virtually qualifies as writing malpractice. The Man of Steel does feature a character called "Woodburn" (an amalgamation of "Woodward" and "Bernstein"), but it the truth is that the movie has approximately zero curiosity in the ideals of journalism (free speech, etc) which have been a key component of the Superman mythos for decades.   

Instead, there are just more buildings to blow-up, and more trains to throw in the air...

Finally, I find it spectacularly lacking in creativity and imagination that Man of Steel ends with Superman breaking Zod’s neck, rather than finding a way to neuter him, banish him, or otherwise defeat him.  I can’t fathom how Superman can be said -- in this film -- to be a figure of “hope” when he pulverizes half of Metropolis (and Smallville too) with his own hands, and then, for his last act, commits murder.

People wouldn't be inspired by this Superman.  They'd be terrified of him.  

The merits of Zod's murder can be debated, of course, given the specifics. There was a human family to rescue, and Zod clearly wasn’t going to stop fighting, no matter what.  

Essentially, he picked suicide by Superman as his manner of death. 

Yet virtually by definition, being “Superman” means finding good, creative, meaningful alternatives to murder in times of crisis, pain, and suffering.  On top of all the excessive carnage highlighted in the film, the murder of Zod simply confirms the film’s ugly, dark, misunderstanding of a great American icon. 

What Man of Steel profoundly misses is that Superman is designed to be symbol of all that is good in America, and all that is right.  He represents a romantic but worthwhile ideal (truth, justice and the American way...), and is supposed to be a role model for children and adults alike.  To have him in his first re-booted adventure pulp a city, a small town, and mete out death to his enemy with his bare hands, suggests the kind of “reboot” of a beloved character I simply can’t get behind.  Star Trek Into Darkness handled this idea far better.  You aren't a hero at all when you descend to your enemy's level of barbarism. 

Instead a man -- especially a superman -- must take the hard route and be better than his enemies.  He must be smarter, more creative, and more merciful.  But the shadow of the Dark Knight is a considerable one, and these days, all superheroes most be tortured, dark ones apparently, even beacons of hope like Superman.

Man of Steel might more accurately titled Heart of Steel, because no light, no love, no humor, no soul is allowed -- except for one brief interlude -- to shine its light in the film.  The result is a movie that is both computerized (in terms of effects) and robotic (in terms of story and character).

So, if you want to believe a man can fly -- and that a movie can soar -- check out Superman: The Movie.  

If you want to see skyscrapers collapse, jets hit the ground and explode, trains fly through the air and then land on people, and super-strong people punching each other at high-speed velocities, this is the Superman interpretation  you've been waiting for.