Writer's Note: In honor of actress Diane Lane's birthday, here's a look at "Man of Steel," in which she plays Martha Kent, Superman's adoptive mother. It's funny to see how much easier I went on the film than I thought I would have in retrospect- clearly, overtly serious superhero burn-out hadn't gotten the best of me yet. This review was originally published in UAB's Kaleidoscope on June 23rd, 2013.
Ah, the wonderful world of reboots! On the one hand, sometimes the end result is too soon after the initial effort to really have an impact- witness the recent “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which was okay, but unnecessary overall- on the other hand, sometimes a fresh new perspective is just what an ailing franchise needs to get the creative juices flowing again after a lackluster entry in the series, such as what happened with the “X-Men” reboot, “First Class,” which was just the shot in the arm the series needed.
I am happy to report that the latest take on the Superman character is the latter, and after that meh-inducing last movie (Did anyone really want to see Superman as a deadbeat dad? Is that even possible in the first place, given his alien origins? Don’t get me started…), it was looking like people had maybe had enough of old Supes, between all the various television and movie incarnations. So far, though, “Man of Steel” has done quite well at the box office on a worldwide scale, making more than its reported budget in the first weekend alone, making it a much more successful endeavor than “Superman Returns” already.
It’s no wonder, given the vast improvement in quality, which benefits greatly from the involvement of Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, who also successfully rebooted the Batman franchise with the “Dark Knight” trilogy. It also allows talented director Zach Snyder a chance to redeem himself after the misfire that was his first self-penned effort, “Sucker Punch,” a movie that would have been much more successful if it had the courage of its convictions and went for the “R”-rating its core audience expected.
While arguably not as ambitious and challenging as his other efforts, such as his adaptations of the graphic novels “Watchmen” and “300,” “Man of Steel” is undeniably Snyder’s most acceptably mainstream effort yet, and should go a long way towards putting him in a better position for any non-Superman-related fare in the future. Hopefully, he will use this second chance at bat wisely, or simply stick to what he seems to do best: successfully adapting other people’s material. No shame in that, by any means.
Whatever the case, this lean & mean Superman in “Man of Steel” is just what the fan-boy ordered. Essentially playing like a re-imagining of the best bits of the first two Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies, it keeps his birth, childhood, and teen years from the first movie, expanding on both in ways that help inform the later material from the second, which mostly contends with an invasion of Earth by the nefarious General Zod, arguably the best of the Superman villains.
By cleverly fleshing out the early stuff to set up what happens in the latter half of the film, it helps the film succeed where “Superman Returns” fails, by showing us how Superman became what he is in the present day setting of the film and how much of an influence humans have had on him in the meantime, which is crucial to the events of the ending. It is because he is essentially a hybrid of an alien and a human that he is able to rise to the occasion of what he needs to do to defeat Zod and company. Some have declared his actions at the end to be out of character, but I felt that the film completely justifies it by showing how difficult a decision it was in the first place to get there.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Relative newcomer Henry Cavill (“The Tudors”) does a fine job making Superman feel more than ever like a balance of the human and the alien- he really nails the inner struggle of the character to both fit it and not stand out, for his own good. Amy Adams is, for my money, the best Lois Lane ever to tackle the role. She’s driven, smart, confident, daring and a formidable match for Superman for once, thank God.
And come on, does it get any better than Michael Shannon as Zod? The guy is nothing short of intimidating under the best of circumstances, even in his best-known work, “Boardwalk Empire,” where he is supposed to be one of the good guys, the cop- if anything, he’s scarier than the gangsters on that show! (Well, maybe not that guy with the messed up-face, but you get my meaning.)
I also like that he’s not really a bad guy per se, in his own mind, he’s just doing what he feels he has to in order to save his planet. In a way, he’s not doing anything we wouldn’t do ourselves, if we were in the same position. That doesn’t make it right, it just makes it much more understandable, which is way more interesting than some cartoonish villain, a la the ones in the last two Batman movies in the original quadrology (looking at you Joel Schumacher!).
About the only complaint I have, and it’s a relatively minor one, is that the film is largely lacking in the sense of humor department. Yeah, sure, we get the girl commenting on Superman being hot or whatever, but that’s about it, really. Not that the film need descend into camp, mind you, but it never quite becomes truly fun, either. It comes close to almost playing it too straight. In the end, I guess whether this is your cup of tea of not depends if you prefer the early Superman and Batman movies to the more recent darker ones.
Or, if you prefer, more recent DC-based movies in general to Marvel-based ones. IMHO, Marvel is a lot more fun, but there’s room for both approaches. There’s also room for both in one movie. Hopefully, next time around, with the set-up out of the way, the next movie won’t mind having a little more fun with the material. Be that as it may, this new “Man of Steel” gets the job done just fine.
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