Movie: Man Of Steel (06-14-13)

[McParadigm]

The actual Kent tragedy moment with the raised hand and shake of the head was good. The entire setup leading to that moment was hilarious. I don't even understand how a person writes a tornado out of nowhere / save the dog / tornado moves other car just enough to trap me then leaves it alone for a good while because we need some drawn out tension scene, sits back, and goes "that is literally the best thing I can come up with for how to play that out. That writing, right there, is my A game."

[stip]

watching this fight scene in Kansas makes me wonder what the hell batman is gonna do in a superman movie.

[stip]

The actual Kent tragedy moment with the raised hand and shake of the head was good. The entire setup leading to that moment was hilarious. I don't even understand how a person writes a tornado out of nowhere / save the dog / tornado moves other car just enough to trap me then leaves it alone for a good while because we need some drawn out tension scene, sits back, and goes "that is literally the best thing I can come up with for how to play that out. That writing, right there, is my A game."

agreed. I was about to type 'man those tornadoes sure do sneak up on people' but then I liked the moment of the death (and the whole impact the scene had in terms of character development) and forgot.

[stip]

you know, if I was the airforce, and I was going to fight some aliens who were threatening our planet, I would have sent more than two warthogs.


This bothered me in pacific rim. If nukes work on the monsters, the planet only has about 50k nukes or so. Why not just part a few nuclear submarines in front of the rift and call it a day>

[stip]

ehh, it's only metropolis that's being threatened. It's not like their pizza is as good as Gotham's.

[stip]

I've always hated the kryptonite weakness, but it seems plausible in this film (for a certain value of plausible)

[stip]

I like the actor who is playing Zod

[Kral]

Im almost afraid to interrupt the conversation your having with yourself here...

[stip]

the 'welcome to the planet' line at the end was clever

[BurtReynolds]

The actual Kent tragedy moment with the raised hand and shake of the head was good. The entire setup leading to that moment was hilarious. I don't even understand how a person writes a tornado out of nowhere / save the dog / tornado moves other car just enough to trap me then leaves it alone for a good while because we need some drawn out tension scene, sits back, and goes "that is literally the best thing I can come up with for how to play that out. That writing, right there, is my A game."

its a common theme throughout. We need X to happen, so we'll ignore all reason to force it to happen instead of writing a plausible scenario because writing is hard and no one cares anyway.


My favorite was the "We need Superman to kill someone" (which isn't a big deal in the comics and never seemed to be a theme of this story until that very moment), so he just sort of walks over to Zod and puts him in a headlock, specifically to set up the most ridiculous forced kill scene in movie history, ignoring the fact that Zod can somehow see the people he's trying to kill but cant melt them with his eye lasers. fuck it.

[stip]

Okay Platy--I liked it about as much as I think you can like a superman movie.

Pros: I think the backstory stuff they did with the character was very well done--being an outsider, having the power to do anything and yet feeling impotent at the same time. It made him human, and interesting. I thought the acting was fine, and the actor who played superman had the right mixture of fresh faced innocence and school marm. The effects were great. Krypton felt alien and exotic, the fight effects were great, and the gravity pulsing thing the big spider machine did was cool.

Cons: Superman is boring. When you drop skyscrapers on people and then they shrug it off it is hard to fear for their safety or really care about what is happening in the fight. And so the big set piece battles were essentially just excuses to punch people through buildings, and we're too far into the golden age of CGI for this stuff to mean anything if there isn't any emotional weight behind it. And while Thor and Hulk are basically in the same boat in the Marvel universe, when they trashed new york at the end of Avengers they were able to A: not make those two characters the centerpiece of the story and B: did a better job at using those characters for the purposes of brief spectacles. So Hulk and Thor could quickly smash one of those giant worms, or leap across a building, have a cool little moment, and then move on to someone else. If you had to track them for more than 30 seconds they would have gotten stale.

So some things were really well done, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't satisfying--especially given the fact that the best parts of the movie were frontloaded. Basically as long as superman was in his cape I didn't really care.

[stip]

The actual Kent tragedy moment with the raised hand and shake of the head was good. The entire setup leading to that moment was hilarious. I don't even understand how a person writes a tornado out of nowhere / save the dog / tornado moves other car just enough to trap me then leaves it alone for a good while because we need some drawn out tension scene, sits back, and goes "that is literally the best thing I can come up with for how to play that out. That writing, right there, is my A game."

its a common theme throughout. We need X to happen, so we'll ignore all reason to force it to happen instead of writing a plausible scenario because writing is hard and no one cares anyway.


My favorite was the "We need Superman to kill someone" (which isn't a big deal in the comics and never seemed to be a theme of this story until that very moment), so he just sort of walks over to Zod and puts him in a headlock, specifically to set up the most ridiculous forced kill scene in movie history, ignoring the fact that Zod can somehow see the people he's trying to kill but cant melt them with his eye lasers. fuck it.

yeah, that felt pretty forced. How many people just died during that fight? You just met this guy, he tried to kill your mom, he murdered thousands of people, and he's a total asshole. I've never even hit someone and I'm pretty sure I could have killed that guy and been pretty okay with it.

[BurtReynolds]

Okay Platy--I liked it about as much as I think you can like a superman movie.

Pros: I think the backstory stuff they did with the character was very well done--being an outsider, having the power to do anything and yet feeling impotent at the same time. It made him human, and interesting. I thought the acting was fine, and the actor who played superman had the right mixture of fresh faced innocence and school marm. The effects were great. Krypton felt alien and exotic, the fight effects were great, and the gravity pulsing thing the big spider machine did was cool.

Cons: Superman is boring. When you drop skyscrapers on people and then they shrug it off it is hard to fear for their safety or really care about what is happening in the fight. And so the big set piece battles were essentially just excuses to punch people through buildings, and we're too far into the golden age of CGI for this stuff to mean anything if there isn't any emotional weight behind it. And while Thor and Hulk are basically in the same boat in the Marvel universe, when they trashed new york at the end of Avengers they were able to A: not make those two characters the centerpiece of the story and B: did a better job at using those characters for the purposes of brief spectacles. So Hulk and Thor could quickly smash one of those giant worms, or leap across a building, have a cool little moment, and then move on to someone else. If you had to track them for more than 30 seconds they would have gotten stale.

So some things were really well done, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't satisfying--especially given the fact that the best parts of the movie were frontloaded. Basically as long as superman was in his cape I didn't really care.

With both The Avengers and Superman, you obviously aren't worried about any of the main characters dying, even the non-invincible ones. I think the tension comes from how they stop an alien invasion from destroying a city and killing millions of innocent people.

The Avengers actually try and (mostly) succeed. Superman doesn't seem to even give a shit, and if he does, he fails almost entirely. But he does punch the shit out of that dude a bunch of times.

[stip]

Okay Platy--I liked it about as much as I think you can like a superman movie.

Pros: I think the backstory stuff they did with the character was very well done--being an outsider, having the power to do anything and yet feeling impotent at the same time. It made him human, and interesting. I thought the acting was fine, and the actor who played superman had the right mixture of fresh faced innocence and school marm. The effects were great. Krypton felt alien and exotic, the fight effects were great, and the gravity pulsing thing the big spider machine did was cool.

Cons: Superman is boring. When you drop skyscrapers on people and then they shrug it off it is hard to fear for their safety or really care about what is happening in the fight. And so the big set piece battles were essentially just excuses to punch people through buildings, and we're too far into the golden age of CGI for this stuff to mean anything if there isn't any emotional weight behind it. And while Thor and Hulk are basically in the same boat in the Marvel universe, when they trashed new york at the end of Avengers they were able to A: not make those two characters the centerpiece of the story and B: did a better job at using those characters for the purposes of brief spectacles. So Hulk and Thor could quickly smash one of those giant worms, or leap across a building, have a cool little moment, and then move on to someone else. If you had to track them for more than 30 seconds they would have gotten stale.

So some things were really well done, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't satisfying--especially given the fact that the best parts of the movie were frontloaded. Basically as long as superman was in his cape I didn't really care.

Yeah, with both The Avengers and Superman, you obviously aren't worried about any of the main characters dying, even the non-invincible ones. I think the tension comes from how they stop an alien invasion from destroying a city and killing millions of innocent people.

The Avengers actually try and (mostly) succeed. Superman doesn't seem to even give a shit, and if he does, he fails almost entirely.

I am trying to remember if I ever really felt any tension at all in Avengers (a movie I really love). The avengers just made the whole thing really fun. The ensemble cast element really helped because it basically gave you a rotating cast of characters to do clever things with. It was just incredibly enjoyable without being in the slightest bit demanding. I think Superman WANTED you to feel something, and it's too hard to do that with an invincible character. The scenes where he was a little kid getting picked on and not being able to fight back were much more effective because there was something there he could be vulnerable about.

[BurtReynolds]

nah not much tension, but yeah its a much lighter toned movie.

[stip]

Basically you can't make christopher nolan's batman films with a character that can't be harmed, and whose biggest problem as an adult is not wanting to punch a drunken asshole in a bar

[McParadigm]

The actual Kent tragedy moment with the raised hand and shake of the head was good. The entire setup leading to that moment was hilarious. I don't even understand how a person writes a tornado out of nowhere / save the dog / tornado moves other car just enough to trap me then leaves it alone for a good while because we need some drawn out tension scene, sits back, and goes "that is literally the best thing I can come up with for how to play that out. That writing, right there, is my A game."

its a common theme throughout. We need X to happen, so we'll ignore all reason to force it to happen instead of writing a plausible scenario because writing is hard and no one cares anyway.


My favorite was the "We need Superman to kill someone" (which isn't a big deal in the comics and never seemed to be a theme of this story until that very moment), so he just sort of walks over to Zod and puts him in a headlock, specifically to set up the most ridiculous forced kill scene in movie history, ignoring the fact that Zod can somehow see the people he's trying to kill but cant melt them with his eye lasers. fuck it.

I agree, although I would argue that this is a problem present in 95% of summer blockbusters. In the world of hyper-charged, seizure-quick CGI action sequences, there is an increased emphasis on getting to the next bit of flash in a way that sets up that scene's backdrop but doesn't add anything that needs to considered later on. Story almost seems to be treated with a sort of contempt, now.I think that's part of why studios love recognizable characters, comic books, and remakes/sequels. It leaves so much less that they have to explain to the audience.

The "who cares if it makes sense" attitude, the shortcuts, the meandering or ill-defined ideas and poor excuses to get to the next set piece…for me, those "is the theater playing this at double speed or something" type action scenes are just impersonal, because they want to be so goddam big that they take me out of the movie entirely and give me no feeling of danger or concern. The plot can protect against this, or give enough backdrop or character that I don't get removed in that way, but when the whole movie is treated as just an excuse to have some pretties and "oh shit dude that bad guy has a big ship" moments, that's not going to happen.

With this movie, it was extra disappointing because it was treated as such an extension of or replacement for the Batman movies, and they had (mostly) treated plot and character with a level of respect that they just don't get in summer blockbusters anymore. MoS wanted to take the same shortcuts that lighter, dumber movies might take, and still posture around like it deserved to be seen as more than that. It wanted to be thin as paper and heavy as lead, and that's just not going to happen.

[stip]

did you like the avengers, McP?

[McParadigm]

Basically you can't make christopher nolan's batman films with a character that can't be harmed, and whose biggest problem as an adult is not wanting to punch a drunken asshole in a bar

Sure you can. It just can't also feature city destroying fistfights, implausible shortcuts, and weird "I broke your satellite" posturing…stuff.

With Batman, they seemed very adept at grabbing the character elements that make him engaging. With Superman, they sort of had a story to tell but not really anything deeper than that. There's a loneliness to Superman's situation that could be explored, and the incompatibility of his god-like status in a world of grays, where good and evil are often layered and intermixed within a situation. Really, superhero movies always face some unquestionable bad, like invading aliens or just a mean guy with a bigger robot suit than you have a robot suit so uh oh. Superman would be the best character for putting a comic figure up against the complexity of real life issues, which is something Dark Knight Returns toyed with and Watchmen partially incorporated into their story.

I think they wanted to establish out this movie was different from the Batman movies, and to try and make it a little less dark so that they could avoid being seen as "well, you can go and see the avenger movies and have fun, or you can watch this mopey stuff."

As the last half of Dark Knight Rises had already illustrated, they are much better at doing their own thing within a summer blockbuster vehicle then they are at trying to create an actual summer blockbuster.

[McParadigm]

did you like the avengers, McP?

I like some of the tie-in movies. I can see why people like them, but in general I think they tend to be guilty of the stuff I mentioned above.

I still haven't seen the end of Avengers. I keep telling myself I should check it out sometime just so I know. It can't be as big a drag as the end of MoS.