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As opposed to The Avengers,where New York city is leveled and our heroes make jokes and go have a bite to eat at the Shawarma cafe once the battle is over.
Ah okay, I'd not heard that. That kind of doesn't quite ring true because he's still giving us various Superman moments. It feels the wrong way around: you establish him as being perfect first before you start to explore that and give him moments of drama.
You're right, it is similar: but I would say in that they are trying to save people pretty much constantly and they're also powerless to get the aliens away.
Except Avengers showed police active in the city, and Cap stops to coordinate their rescue efforts. There's all of zero of that in Man of Steel. Closest we get is Perry White getting his employees to safety.
Of course the damage in MOS was more MASSIVE than in Avengers. According to MCU 76 people died in the Battle of New York while according to Snyder 5000 died in Metropolis.
The thought of only 76 people dying is as ludicrous as Hawkeye and Black Widow actually surviving the first three minutes of the battle.
Fun fact: On top of saving the entire human race by stopping Zod and his world engine,Cavills Supes saves Lois Lane from certain death at least three times,saves multiple army men from dying during the Smallville battle, and coordinates his efforts against the entire threat with the U.S army.
Also he wasnt present in Metropolis during most of the World Engine attack,he was busy stopping the other one on the other side of the world.
Ah now, come on! :) They're both superhero fantasies, with both requiring an obviously large suspension of disbelief to buy what they're selling.
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance at play when it comes to talking about Cavill's Superman, I feel. It strikes me as very similar to hearing people bang on about Batfleck being a murderer and how that's "not Batman" (which is fair enough as a criticism in itself), but then hearing many of those same people proclaiming Keaton's Batman as the best.
Now we're talking! :)
Ha! Yes, doesn't she do something like jump about ten storeys? :D
The only time those films ever came close to doing something more realistic was THE WINTER SOLDIER, and even that was still over the top.
Most of the damage on Metropolis was caused by the terraforming machine BTW... and Clark almost died destroying the one on the other side of the planet stopping the terraforming. Throughout the rest of the film he constantly helps and saves people from certain death. I’m sorry Zack didn’t show him saving a cat out of a tree...
In the meantime in the sequel he instantly clears Metropolis bringing Doomsday in space, but hey there’s no character development... lol... he even saves Lex Luthor from Doomsday after he kidnapped and tried to burn his mother alive! He sacrificed himself saving a world that was busy turning him guilty and betraying him.
But hey, he’s an evil Superman that kills people. Don’t make me laugh...
I dunno as anyone's called him "evil". More along the lines of the movie treats him as nothing but a powerhouse that's fighting with little regard of how many casualties he causes right up until Zod's threatening one family with his heat vision. I will generally defend the neck snap, but it's a little tone deaf how Superman suddenly cares about collateral damage.
It's a fascinating to compare Shannon's Zod with Stamp's version. The people of Snyder's Krypton are all presented in a strong, militaristic way. Shannon's Zod is very explicit as a soldier, with his fellow Kryptonian conspirators/outcasts being evocative of special forces types; truly hardened by war. You don't really get that with Stamp's version of the character, with his calm persona and god-like, ethereal presence fuelled by his own sense of deity.
I wonder if that line of thinking not only extended to Superman, but also to the film's attitude towards collateral damage. It's a very conscious, weighty thing to do (especially when you combine it with 9/11 echoing imagery).
When Superman flies, he has to leave small craters and break the sound barrier just to sell how INTENSE his power is. When he rescues Lois from that terrorist in BvS, he doesn’t just stop the terrorist by grabbing the gun with superspeed, he slams him through many levels of walls. When he sends a satellite down to earth, he smashes it to smithereens in front of a general as if to say “don’t eff with me bro”. A more traditional Superman would have likely just presented it in pristine condition saying “General, I believe this is yours.” He’s dumb enough to tell the general in the same scene “I grew up in Kansas”, great, now the government can narrow down his supposed origin.
Then there’s the aggressive speech and tone to how he’s written and directed.
“The Bat is dead. Bury it. Consider this mercy.”
“I’ll take you in without breaking you, which is more than you deserve!”
“Stay down! If I wanted it, you’d be dead already!”
Okay, he succeeded in presenting Supes as a guy you don’t want to piss off. However, through all these choices, Snyder ends up making Superman seem more like meathead. Probably an attempt to make this version more relatable. I certainly can’t imagine him being at all super intelligent. This is a guy who dodges a LexCorp tanker to allow it to explode into a parking structure. THAT is just an example of why people take issue with this version of Superman. He saves the world, but he doesn’t seem to care to prevent as much damage as possible until an arbitrary moment where Zod decides to threaten a family.
To be fair, it’s probably an overreaction to the awful Superman Returns film that many felt lacked a punch, no pun intended. It’s overly sappy and reliant of a version of Superman that should have been left behind in the 80s, when we should have had a more modern post-Crisis take like what DCAU presented successfully.
And lastly, this is how Superman seems to be primarily marketed for Snyder’s films:
Pissed off, aggressive, desaturated. Far from the bright, bold and colorful Superman that has been traditionally depicted, such as this very popular comic by Grant Morrison:
I think all this makes more sense when you consider that Snyder’s views of DC heroes are far more influenced by Frank Miller than anyone else because he shares more of Miller’s cynicism than Morrison’s optimism.
I was a bit puzzled at that desert scene in BvS. Lois keeps saying that Supes was framed and didn’t kill everyone there, but we see him slam a guy through several walls at super speed... which definitely would have killed him. Is she lying for him or are we supposed to believe her? And then because of the way the film is put together I almost end up doubting whether that actually happened or it’s yet another dream sequence.
So are we supposed to feel that Supes is being unfairly treated by the Senate hearing or are we supposed to be as suspicious of him as the people there? By not showing us the desert events I’m actually left feeling not sure.
One other I also didn’t quite get: everyone seems to know that Lois has a relationship with Superman- that’s actual public knowledge. And yet she’s living with Clark Kent. Is that not a massive clue? :D
EDIT: From a NYT interview with Zack:
Since “Justice League,” there have been other DC movies, like “Aquaman” and “Shazam!”, that have gotten more enthusiastic reviews and made more money. Does that sting for you, that your films didn’t achieve that?
I couldn’t be happier. It doesn’t sting for me at all. Those movies are cool, and they’re really well-made and excellent. But “BvS,” love it or hate it, it’s probably the most mentioned movie in hashtags and references. It’s the closest thing to a cult film that could exist at this level of pop culture. Am I a provocateur? A little bit. Is my job to make some pop-culture piece of candy that you eat and forget about the next day? Nah. I would rather [expletive] you up in a movie than make it nice and pretty for everybody. Let’s be frank, there’s no cult of “Aquaman.” Jason is a force of nature, and by all means, I want there to be 100 “Aquaman” movies because he’s an awesome guy. But it’s not controversial. And I have purposely, because I love it, made the movies difficult.
Is it possible that the zeitgeist just didn’t embrace your interpretation of these characters?
It could be. And that’s fine, too. I don’t have a dog in the hunt. When I made “Watchmen,” it’s deconstructionist. It’s a movie that pokes holes in your heroes. And “BvS” is the same thing. It’s meant to say, Oh, Batman’s drunk and taking painkillers and he’s sleeping with some anonymous girl. He’s a broken person. He dresses up as a bat and he goes out at night and he beats people up. He has issues. I do think the movie came along at a point where everyone was like, oh, we don’t want that Batman. We want Batman to be the warrior-monk who’s cool. And I personally am fine with that.
When you see what Marvel is doing in its movies, do you ever think, I should be doing more of that?
No, not at all. I don’t know how to hit a ball any different than I hit it. A director has one skill — your point of view. That’s all you have. If you’re trying to imitate another way of making a movie, then you’re on a slippery slope.
As I say, I don't know if we're supposed to believe him or not.
That's a fair response. I would also add that it's likely to do with the popularity of Nolan-ism. There are a lot of moments in MoS where it feels like Snyder is trying very hard to be Nolan. The structure of the film, even, is strikingly similar to Batman Begins.
I read a fascinating piece a while ago, obviously inspired by similar discussions, about attempting to fit superheroes with old-fashioned values into a modern day context and how sometimes they just often just don't mesh in a believable way. The Kansas point you made reminded me of it; Clark grows up in Kansas, and has his morals taught to him by his parents. Most, if not all versions follow that same origin put in place in the first Superman story - which came out during what would be seen as a more progressive time where those values would ring true. Truth, justice, honor, the American way - all those sound bites. Not so much anymore. A modern day Kansas farmer is more likely to have voted for the recently ousted Commander-In-Chief. MoS, to its credit, tackles a lot of these things head on and it results in some of the more divisive aspects of the film (the attitude of Pa Kent towards Clark revealing his abilities to the world being a big example of that), as well as the more welcome ones, like Lois instantly figuring out who Clark is and sparing us silly subplots which undermine her intelligence (though obviously undermine everyone else's).
Things change; I'm not trying to slag anyone's beliefs (nor am I having a go at Kansas farmers, here!), but it shows that it can prove difficult to marry a sense of realism with a superhero fantasy - especially when the hero at the centre of that fantasy is defined by his principles and beliefs moreso than anything to do with his personality. I think that's a big issue in adapting Superman in this day and age. You seemingly need to change a lot to make it seem like any of it can feel tangible, which is a neccessity. I haven't seen the new Lois & Clark series yet, but it seems they skipped over quite a bit to tell a different kind of Superman story, with influences of family-drama present. I'm curious as to how that will work out.
Captain America in Civil War is another example of that notion, though less divisive and changed for a variety of reasons. The film strips away most of the opposing ideologies in favour of telling a simpler story of him simply trying to save his friend, and it's likely for the same (or at least similar reasons), considering it, along with The Winter Soldier, is arguably one of the more grounded Marvel films.
Not if it is Superman that smashes the walls and you’re just inbetween not even knowing what’s happening because everything is too fast. He just wants to scare the shit out of his enemy.
I think the problem is more the inertia of being instantly taken to that speed: your brain would slosh around in your skull and you'd be dead. Still, that's a problem with a lot of superhero movies: Iron Man couldn't survive most of the stuff he does.
Batman's grapnel gun cannot function with the current state of technology.
Superman turns back time (okay...) by spinning the world around in the opposite direction (yeah, time's not going to change but we will all be dead).
Lois falling and being caught by Superman? She's so dead due to G forces.
...
It's cool to talk about physics in superhero movies; I do so with my students all the time. We also discuss physics and chemistry in Bond movies.
But when watching a superhero movie, I don't really care all that much. In movies, cars always explode, people can keep running around in a building on fire, and almost no-one ever dies from extreme deceleration. In Superman's presence, you're fine; the laws of physics no longer apply. ;)
I am liking what I have heard of the score so far
Yeah. I have been waiting to hear that too. But hopefully, it should be there in a gargantuan score that has 54 tracks.
For sure - a massive album. I can't imagine I'll be listening to it in its entirety in one sitting too often but I'm sure I'll make a nice playlist from the highlights.