So Man of Steel came out and made a gang of money this weekend. Like a hundred and twenty-five million or still, this movie has seemed to become the most divisive movie of the year so far. With its certified rotten critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and with a lot of super vocal fans on social media loving it or hating it and arguing back and forth the division is clear. See, I was asked to write this piece because I hate Man of Steel. Now, to preface I've been vocal to many people that I’m pretty much done with the superhero movie, 2012 burnt me out on the genre. Like, real talk, after Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises what else is there to say now? Well, for me, at a minimum all the 3D spectacle and bombast has become played out. I want a bit more, something else to explore. So the following are my reasons for not liking Man of Steel, from a personal point of view.
I don’t really understand what this movie is trying to say or maybe I do and I just can’t buy the cynical nature of it. I really don’t understand the need to darken up Superman or to make it more “real” which to me is pretty stupid because we have literally nothing in reality to base what it would be like to have a Superman in our world or even any alien for that matter. Is it really necessary for Superman to fight General Zod and smash through the city of Metropolis and not once care or try to protect the people of the city from the fight. Now there was some of that in the earlier Smallville set piece but even then it felt like an afterthought when he saved a single solider. Superman seemed to not go out of his way to protect people once he put the costume on. Which I feel totally goes against what we know about the character of Superman. He’s a protector first and a warrior second.
Another issue is whether Superman ever really makes a decision for himself? His choices seemed to be put upon him. Now, I think that works in the heroic journeys where the hero is a kid but Superman is a 33 year old man. He’s seen the world from what we can tell, yet he never once drives the story. His two fathers make all of the hard choices for him. We never see Superman make a leading decision; he’s responsive to everything that happens to him. My father told me not to save him. My birth father told me I have to be this heroic symbol. My birth father told me I have to stop Zod. With all the comparison to Nolan’s Batman people are forgetting one thing in that Bruce Wayne chose all of his actions, from learning to be a ninja, to dressing as a bat, from using fear, to taking the rap, all the way to spying on the city to catch joker and so on.
This Superman does make one choice and it’s that choice which is getting all of the attention, his decision to murder Zod. Now I could get extra geeky and say why that’s wrong on a character level (and then someone will drop Superman #22 on me which, by the way broke the character also) and that it doesn't fit Superman. To me, that act wasn’t earned. It felt like the filmmakers put him in that place so that he has to kill Zod. Superman then just screams and gets over it. That’s it? So that’s where we go to get people to like Superman again? Why take a character that serves to be something we can aspire to and bring him down to that level. You have a character that can do anything and you can’t find a way for him to stop Zod without murdering him? Really though for me that was just the icing on the cake, I thought that Superman killing all of the Kryptonian babies was a worse act entirely that last push over the edge with killing Zod means that this isn’t a Superman for me. I didn’t grow up liking Superman, actually as small child Superman the Motion Picture made me not like Superman at all. I didn’t like Superman until 1996 with a perfect storm of the miniseries Kingdom Come and the premiere of Superman: The Animated Series on the WB. The two stories, one of a rookie Superman and another of a Superman who left because the heroes didn’t care about city they protected and instead took extreme measures, really got me to enjoy the character from a new point of view. I found his ability to hold back and always find a way and see the good in everyone refreshing.
I really have no want to watch a "BADASS" Superman. I know it’s something that others want but to me, that's just boring. Everything is “badass” now for some reason that is used to equate an evolution or sophistication. It’s doesn't add any sophistication or evolution and is pretty juvenile, not to mention that it doesn’t send the right message to children. I’m not going to lie I want Superman to punch something too, but I just wished what we got was a little lighter and hopeful. It’s interesting to me that as Marvel is crafting movies from their catalogue of characters they are choosing characters who are less dark and less cynical in their comic roots and everyone loves it. They took characters made to fit into our world with stories that get really dark and decided to take some of that away and instead make them more mythic. It seems that Warner Bros. and DC have decided to go in the opposite direction with their transition in order to compete. Well, if they want the "badass" crown they can have it cause I’m out.
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