Man of Steel

It's scary being lost.  I often wake up and know with every fiber of my being that I am not doing what I was meant to do.  It is frustrating and terrifying.  Why did I get a Master's if I'm not using it?  Why aren't I married with kids like the rest of my adult friends?  Why do I feel like a 13-year-old in a 29-year-old body?  Like many people, I find myself in the middle of a big old identity crisis.

I suppose that's why I'm so drawn to comic books and superheroes.  Some may say that superhero films are pure escapism.  Who doesn't want to fly or climb walls?   I don't think that's it.  I believe I connect to superheroes because these are characters who have embraced their destiny.  While Lois Lanes and J. Jonah Jamesons attempt to uncover the masked vigilantes' secret identities, for the heroes there is no such mystery.  After years of training or self searching, these crime fighters have found out exactly who they are.  I'm jealous.

In Man of Steel, Zach Snyder's most recent foray into the world of comic books, Superman fights to discover himself in a strange world and, for the most part, he succeeds.  Man, this is a movie.  So few films actually feel like "movies" anymore.  The line between television and film has been blurred so that TV episodes feel like mini films and films feel like long episodes of television.  What does a movie look like?  Well, it looks like this.  

Man of Steel is big.  Like Henry Cavill's pecs, it's really, really big.  Did he do a thousand push-ups a day?  Maybe he injected saline into his chest.  I don't know what he did, but it sure worked . . . no wonder I feel like a 13-year-old.  I gotta get back to the gym . . . . Anyway, this film is an exercise in cinematic excess.  The natural vistas are as broad as anything shot by John Ford.  The action scenes will probably make Michael Bay go back to the drawing board.  The story is epic and brings to mind Wagnerian operas, Biblical heroes, and Greek myths.  It's loud, bombastic, and visually stimulating.

I have to admit, I am not a Zach Snyder fan.  I enjoyed his remake of Dawn of the Dead, but the rest of his oeuvre made me want to quit watching movies.  I saw Sucker Punch at midnight, and I was pretty sure my friends put some acid in my Diet Coke.  I'm not sure it even qualifies as cinema. Even 300 disgusted me.  While so many of my friends marveled at the oiled up muscles of a mush-mouthed Gerard Butler, I tried doing long division in my head to keep myself occupied.  Yeah, Zach Snyder isn't my favorite director.  When I heard he was directing Man of Steel, I did two things; I cried and made sure there wasn't any acid in my Diet Coke.  It had to be some kind of bad trip.

Well, I'm happy to say, Snyder pulled it out with Man of Steel.  It's a solid blockbuster movie.  The shots are dynamic and the action is mind-blowing.  I have never seen the powers of super human beings so perfectly displayed as in this film.  Superman and the villainous Kryptonian soldiers move at staggering speed and punch with frightening might.  Train cars fly through the air and muscly bodies crash through dry wall, concrete, and rebar.  You can feel the epic strength of Superman in every sequence as he breaks the sound barrier and lifts tons of heavy debris.   Unlike in most films today, the action is smart and memorable.

Snyder is lucky to have Henry Cavill to fill the tights of his lead character.  Though his character does come across as flat in a few scenes, for the most part, Cavill plays the role with great ease and charm.  He convinces the audience of his great power with his confidence and ramrod stance.  He is assisted by the cute and snarky Amy Adams.  Adams plays Lois Lane and, while she doesn't have much to do in the film, she is a fitting romantic sidekick for the man with the red cape.  Laurence Fishburne and Christopher Meloni also turn in solid performances as Perry White and Colonel Hardy, respectively.

The two actors who stand out the most are Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe.  I don't really mean that as a compliment.  I think Shannon is one of the finest actors working in film today.  His performances in Take Shelter and Shotgun Stories are true master classes in film acting.  However, in Man of Steel, he sticks out like a sore thumb.  This is Shannon's first enormous Hollywood film, and he has trouble transitioning between acting styles.  It appears that he watched the villainous roles of John Travolta for inspiration.  He yells a lot and stares with frightening google eyes.  Unlike Shannon, Russell Crowe is not new to big Hollywood films.  However, in this film, he simply chews scenery in his best impersonation of Marlon Brando.  He speaks every line like it is the most important thing ever said on Earth or on Krypton.  Still, he does get to ride a flying dinosaur and shoot a big laser cannon.  And, of course, he looks cool doing it.

Everybody and everything look really, really cool.  The film's greatest strengths are its production design and cinematography.  The opening scenes on Krypton rival the world building of Avatar.  Large-winged animals swoop through alien towers and craggy peaks.  The costumes and ships look like they were designed by H.R Giger.  The metal armor and breathing masks come right out of the design for Alien. It's all a bit phallic and vaginal, but maybe no one will notice. The film is cast in muted sepia tones and cool, foggy hues. It looks at once fantastic and hyper-realistic.  From a visual standpoint, the film is damn near perfect.

The script, however, is not so perfect. In fact, it's downright messy.  Though the superhero should struggle to find his identity, the superhero film should not have the same issue.  Unfortunately, that is the case with Man of Steel. Throughout the film, it is clear that screenwriter David Goyer and director Snyder aren't really sure who their protagonist is.  Superman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but the script should not leap large plot holes with a single line. The plot and character arcs are muddy throughout the film and the hero's journey skips around with great abandon.  At the end of the film, I didn't feel like I knew who Superman was or how he had gotten there.

Still, Superman is a hard character to grasp, and I can't fault the filmmakers for stumbling where so many have before.  I may be a little disappointed that Superman hasn't quite solved his identity crisis, but it's nice to know that even a man who can fly feels a little lost sometimes.