Saturday, June 15, 2013

Movie Review: "Man of Steel" (Zack Snyder, 2013)

STRIPPED OF STEEL by Bennett Campbell Ferguson





Right:
Even Amy Adams
can't save "Man of Steel"






Who is Superman?  That is a question that has perplexed comic book readers and moviegoers for years.  To some, he is Clark Kent, the alien boy who grew up in Kansas, little dreaming that he would one day become a scarlet-caped superhero.  Yet for others, Clark doesn’t truly come into his own until he adopts the moniker of Superman, setting out to save the world.  At the end of the day, both interpretations have been immortalized in comics and movies which begs the question: to which camp does “Man of Steel,” a cinematic retelling of Superman’s origin belong? 

In my opinion, neither.  This may be a Superman movie, but it feels more like “cipher man.”  Supes (played by Henry Cavill) may dominate the screen visually, but he has no soul—the film offers no sense of his beliefs, personality or eccentricities, a flaw which is merely one of many nails in the coffin of this atrociously bad film.  There are moments early in the film when it seems to coalesce into a dramatic and poetic adventure, but they pass in a chaotic haze of bland explosions, dull dialogue, and jittery cinematography that threatens to give you a headache. 

It is a testament to the film’s failings that even a terrific cast proves incapable of saving it, although Russell Crowe comes close to doing so.  As Superman’s alien father, he commands the film’s opening sequence with grand dignity, leaping into and ocean and standing firm against robots to save his son.  The ploy works and young Supes successfully escapes the devastation of his home planet, destined Earth in a tiny, baby-sized space capsule.  This is all quite familiar (especially to anyone who has seen the original 1978 “Superman” film) but once the hero arrives on Earth, “Man of Steel” engages in a series of flashbacks.  Like a grimy-eyed juggler, director Zack Snyder mixes and matches scenes of his protagonist’s time as a boy, a teen, and ultimately, a stoically bearded adult, wandering aimlessly an immersed in menial labor.

Ultimately, these flashbacks may remind you of another superhero film—“Batman Begins,” which adopted a jumbled chronology to illustrate the mental growth of its tortured vigilante.  Yet while glimpses of the past enriched that film, they do nothing for “Man of Steel.”  They all seem designed to illustrate the same idea, chiefly that Superman can’t behave like a normal person—because of his immense power, he has to let himself be bullied and in order to keep his secret, he has to detach himself from society.  Clearly, these revelations are supposed to increase our sympathy for the man, but they have quite the opposite effect.  Superman is so resigned to his miserable life (he stumbles upon his iconic red and blue costume completely by coincidence, rather than seeking it out) that he comes off as dopily sheep-like.  It doesn’t help that Mr. Cavill is a remarkably weak presence—aside from a few screams of pain, he speaks in a dispassionate monotone.  As the spirited reporter Lois Lane, Amy Adams fights to compensate for her costar’s lack of charisma, by David S. Goyer’s screenplay blocks her attempts by turning Lois into a simplistic damsel in distress who’s main purpose is to stare at Superman adoringly.  God forbid that one of the world’s most talented and likable actresses should be allowed to actually do something.

In many ways, Lois serves as our guide to the film.  It is she, after all, who pursues reports of a mysterious man involved in miraculous rescues and her quest to discover Superman’s true identity allows us to get to know him better as well.  Yet “Man of Steel” is hardly a getting to know you movie—it’s a shadowy splurge of action that’s ignited when the alien tyrant General Zod (Michael Shannon) arrives to annihilate both Earth and Superman.  This setup begs for a depiction of apocalyptic evil, but Zod is hardly menacing—he’s mostly a nasal-nosed lunatic, imbued with Mr. Shannon’s satisfyingly salty viciousness but none of the emotional depth that could have made his battle with Superman compelling.  Even worse, that battle is staged with stunning incompetence.  In his quest to create a sweeping entertainment, Mr. Snyder goes overboard, saturating the entire film with crashing buildings and booming explosions, which are as boring as they are numbing.  The director also displays a striking inability to stage action coherently.  At one point, organic metal tentacles seize Superman but I couldn’t even begin to guess where they sprang from or how they were powered.  All they did was remind of Doc Ock’s mechanical appendages in “Spider-Man 2,” a massively superior film.

Despite this madness, “Man of Steel” works hard to please.  Thanks to Amir Mokri’s cinematography, the film acquires a rich dimensionality and in terms of story, it doesn’t fail to hit the superhero film beats we expect—the hero’s first flight, the hero’s tragic losses, the hero’s first kiss with his love interest.  Alas, that last one arrives with a bit of weariness attached.  “I hear it’s all downhill after the first kiss,” Lois deadpans after being smooched by Supes.  But truly, “Man of Steel” goes nowhere but down.  I don’t think that’s because Superman is irrelevant in a post-9/11—as Bryan Singer’s film “Superman Returns” and the television series “Smallville” have proved, his isolation and painful burdens make him more relatable than ever.   But that relatability is nowhere to be found in “Man of Steel” because for all his elaborate showmanship and command of special effects, Mr. Snyder forgot that there’s only one thing that really matters in a summer movie—characters.  How odd that it is they who the film seems to care the least about.  The cast of “Man of Steel” may walk and talk, but they are limited to mundane philosophical observations, rather than the human qualities that could have given the story of Superman true meaning once more.   

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