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Man of Steel |OT| It's about action.

MisterHero

Super Member
If Superman slams through ten buildings, someone died somewhere. Now Goyer might try to write in more bullshit mini-rescue sequences such as when Kal rescued that falling military guy on the helicopter but Snyder could easily undo any good will those sequences generate.
The problem is that they can't maintain a high-paced fight and rescue people at the same time. It was always the same problem for the comics and JL/U.

Superman acknowledging people suffering and dying only makes viewers want to see Superman get revenge. What could he have done?

Maybe the Flash can get on civilian protection duty when Justice League rolls around. :p
 

Ithil

Member
Probably should have left
a first kiss off til a second movie and just let the beginning of the relationship simmer.
 

Talon

Member
Holy shit. The action in this movie delivered in spades. I say this as someone that thinks Snyder is an incredibly derivative visual director.

Pacing was super quick. The interweaving storyline felt very TV but worked for me here. The characters land pretty flat for me, but it's an origin story setting the stage so I'll let it slide.

The opening was awesome. Huge grin for the first 20-ish minutes. I'd watch a whole film of that.
 

Blader

Member
Also, an aside RE: Faora.

Sorry duders, you guys are being blinded by her hotness. The performance is wooden and monotone and not particularly memorable. I think you guys are giving her too much leeway for being hot + having some nice moments of ass kicking.

But yes, she's really hot.

I think the hotness + ass kicking is what people liked about her though? I can't imagine anyone is praising the performance :lol
 

I Wanna Be The Guy

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Probably should have left
a first kiss off til a second movie and just let the beginning of the relationship simmer.

100% agree.

Also the line lois says after made me cringe. "They say it's only downhill after the first kiss". Fuck off. That's Donner levels of corny.
 
If Superman slams through ten buildings, someone died somewhere. Now Goyer might try to write in more bullshit mini-rescue sequences such as when Kal rescued that falling military guy on the helicopter but Snyder could easily undo any good will those sequences generate.

That would be the case for all destruction sequences of all movies to stop a person or entity from destroying the entire world. Its basically an equation of Spocks the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few at play here in movie moments like this.
 
kFX98AK.png



As of right now on metacritic
 
Interesting to see if WB uses the $12 million from Thursday in their OW numbers. Right now they're separating it but they may use it to claim the June record if it cannot be achieved over the 3 days. Regardless, $56.1 million is impressive.

Impressive numbers so far. I hope it does good internationally. At least twice more than domestic.

Man, SOOO thought they were gonna get all the way through without actually calling him Superman, really hoped they were just gonna leave it at Lois getting cut off but not a huge gripe.

Liked the little touches; the Smallville water tower and the Lexcorp gas tanker.

A bit dissapointed there was no "Kneel before Zod" scene but that can also be forgiven.

Is there a name for that camera mode where it's zoomed out and then they zoom in, kinda looks pseudo hand-cam? Like there'd be something happening in the sky and the shaky camera would zoom in on it? Was cool at first but the effect got a bit overused.

All in all though, really enjoyed this movie, definitely the Superman movie for me. There are no plans for a sequel right? This definitely works best as its own standalone for me.

Sequel was green lit, at least Goyer and Snyder were asked to work on it. No word on Nolan being back for it.
 

wenis

Registered for GAF on September 11, 2001.
This was a good movie. Definitely some iffy plot points and I feel like they didn't deserve the climax and fight, but it was overall a fine movie.
 

Ithil

Member
I'm confident a sequel would iron out the few kinks in this one (many of which came from it being an origin story) and have a more focused and top notch film. I already really enjoyed this one, myself.
 

Ithil

Member
Filmmakers have so many special effects at their disposal and they still can't beat the original from 1978. Such a joke.

Special effects wise it crushed near every superhero film I've ever seen. First time I can recall a superhero film fully recreating what kind of fights happen on the comic pages (compare to the pedestrian action of the X-Men films, or the weak scope of even recent films like Green Lantern).

That product placement was Tron: Legacy levels of bad.

Nikon, Nikon, IHOP, Sears, some soda.

I didn't notice a single one.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I think the biggest difference between Avengers and Man of Steel is the level of confidence in executing the type of material each wanted. This has a larger impact on audience acceptance than some people realize.

Avengers is unashamed to be a pure popcorn flick. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and there's a charm in every moment. It's shallow, and there isn't really much meat to it in the end, but it's a fun ride and it knows it.

Man of Steel on the other hand is trying to hard to be taken seriously, and to be a serious work. You can see it in every moment that everyone including the camera is straining so hard to feel meaningful and to try and make the people watching it take a serious view of the material. But it lacks the actual confidence in pulling it off. So when it wavers in the action sequences, it feels odd and out of place. Like suddenly, it's trying to be a little less serious and a little bit more wild, but it hasn't earned it, and it never really enjoys being that. There's this serious tone holding it back and everything feels like it's stuck in no man's land.

It's certainly a very strange movie in tone. The only stranger blockbuster I've seen tonally in the last few years would be Transformers 3.

Yeah, this is exactly how I feel and what I've been trying to get at with a few posts in this and other threads. By and large I enjoy the Marvel movies more then the recent DC fare just because the Marvel movies are very confident and comfortable being pure cartoony fun, whereas the DC movies keep trying to be "about more" without really, well, being about more.
 

Cindres

Vied for a tag related to cocks, so here it is.
Also (I don't know exactly what Nolan's input was),was the "Where is the codex?" Line a reference to TDKR? It sounded so alike.
 

jett

D-Member
Thinking about Avengers made me think how MoS actually had bigger balls than that movie.
Metropolis gets fucking decimated, it's almost like a mini-nuke had exploded. New York comes off relatively unscathed in comparison.
Not sure which was the better approach, but MoS definitely took things way further. Then again,
seems like all is A-OK at the end of MoS. I guess Superman helped with rebuilding. :p It really was missing a scene that shows the effect of what had transpired, and Avengers did have that.
 
Thinking about Avengers made me think how MoS actually had bigger balls than that movie.
Metropolis gets fucking decimated, it's almost like a mini-nuke had exploded. New York comes off relatively unscathed in comparison.
Not sure which was the better approach, but MoS definitely took things way further. Then again,
seems like all is A-OK at the end of MoS. I guess Superman helped with rebuilding. :p It really was missing a scene that shows the effect of what had transpired, and Avengers did have that.

lex will use his clout to rebuild metropolis setting up him as a villian against Supes in MOS 3
 

Ithil

Member
Thinking about Avengers made me think how MoS actually had bigger balls than that movie.
Metropolis gets fucking decimated, it's almost like a mini-nuke had exploded. New York comes off relatively unscathed in comparison.
Not sure which was the better approach, but MoS definitely took things way further. Then again,
seems like all is A-OK at the end of MoS. I guess Superman helped with rebuilding. :p It really was missing a scene that shows the effect of what had transpired, and Avengers did have that.

It did end a little abruptly. I think it was that the destruction in MOS was played as more serious and dangerous than in TA, where it was more just facilitating the cool action
 

forrest

formerly nacire
Saw MoS at the drive in last night before Star Trek and absolutely loved it! Love the intro, loved the casting and holy shit at the action. I've gotta see this in Imax 3d asap!
 

JDHarbs

Member
Just got back from the theater. I haven't read up on a lot of reviews or opinions about it, but I did see the rather low MC and RT scores its been getting so with that said this is basically what I thought of it as spoiler-free as I can:

I think this movie was being pushed as something different from what it really was and that is what disappointed a lot of people who are hating on this film. I believe this film was always about having Supes make an action-packed return to the big screen. After the action-lacking disappointment that was Returns, I think the crew behind this film were thinking we really just wanted to see Supes beat the living shit out of bad guys again. I'm kinda glad they did though b/c the action was very satisfying to me in this.

The only real problem that I had was how fast-paced it felt despite being over 2.5 hours long. It seems like they wanted to cram a lot of material into it, but I'm guessing they had to pull back on a lot which resulted with them only touching on things that could've been more properly developed.

On a side note, the character's Kansas roots are pushed a lot more in this film than I've ever seen before so as someone who is from Kansas I couldn't help but love seeing Superman wearing a Royals t-shirt or watching a KU game.

I'm not hard to please so, overall, I loved it! Its easily one of my favorite superhero flicks, and I think they have a good foundation to do great things with the sequels. I'm just glad we finally got Supes back on the big screen.
 
Interesting quote from WB

”Our CinemaScore of ‘A-’ with the youngest (under 18) and the oldest (over 50) age categories both rating the film an ‘A’ should certainly generate strong word of mouth as we continue our run in the heart of the lucrative summer play time.”
 

Ithil

Member
I could sense just from the footage that Snyder seemed to have shot about a truckload of film reels for this. It wouldn't hurt to have a 3 hour or so director's cut to even out the pacing.
 

MisterHero

Super Member
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel and what I've been trying to get at with a few posts in this and other threads. By and large I enjoy the Marvel movies more then the recent DC fare just because the Marvel movies are very confident and comfortable being pure cartoony fun, whereas the DC movies keep trying to be "about more" without really, well, being about more.
The difference in Man of Steel is that we SEE what these characters are fighting for. We see exactly how
Krypton lives and dies
. The characters are living products of those themes. There's no mundane name-dropping.

What Avengers does is fine because they're all about fitting their characters in the real world. DC Earth (and Marvel's soon) are trying to include alien beings from other planets and it should be treated as a big event rather than tongue-in-cheek.

Any movie can be cartoony. But if the studios don't try to suspend belief in these films, they won't learn and improve from the mistakes.
 

Rokam

Member
lex will use his clout to rebuild metropolis setting up him as a villian against Supes in MOS 3

This is just mindless speculation, no real spoilers, but just in case will tag anyways.
Government comes to his company to help analyze wreckage, and prepare for any future invasions, builds Metallo. Metallo is uncontrollable, military has Lex destroy the project after Superman deals with it. Lex builds army instead and is able to control them. Doomsday lands at end of 2nd movie because why the fuck not.
 

Talon

Member
I'm blown away by how well Zod was presented. Didn't think Goyer and Snyder had it in them.

You truly feel his despair when his entire purpose for existence is lost.
 
Im debating with my friends about something.

At the end when superman snaps Zoe's neck and then screams, are we to assume that superman is screaming after because he killed the last kryptonian, or are we to assume that he's screaming because his apprehension to kill zod cost that family their lives as zod killed them? Basically, is that family dead or alive? Either way I think it's bad direction because its kind of ambiguous.
 
I think the biggest difference between Avengers and Man of Steel is the level of confidence in executing the type of material each wanted. This has a larger impact on audience acceptance than some people realize.

Avengers is unashamed to be a pure popcorn flick. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and there's a charm in every moment. It's shallow, and there isn't really much meat to it in the end, but it's a fun ride and it knows it.

Man of Steel on the other hand is trying to hard to be taken seriously, and to be a serious work. You can see it in every moment that everyone including the camera is straining so hard to feel meaningful and to try and make the people watching it take a serious view of the material. But it lacks the actual confidence in pulling it off. So when it wavers in the action sequences, it feels odd and out of place. Like suddenly, it's trying to be a little less serious and a little bit more wild, but it hasn't earned it, and it never really enjoys being that. There's this serious tone holding it back and everything feels like it's stuck in no man's land.

It's certainly a very strange movie in tone. The only stranger blockbuster I've seen tonally in the last few years would be Transformers 3.

Stole my post. Just got back and this is exactly how I'm feeling. I was really excited for an action orientd Superman flick. I love that the film has big science fiction set pieces. The problem is that it's completely joyless and unsure in its execution. There are a lot of elements of MoS that I like in concept but the execution lacks energy.

I also thought the action as poorly shot. Reminds me a lot of the city battle from the first Transformers flick.
 

Ithil

Member
Im debating with my friends about something. At the end when superman snaps Zoe's neck and then screams, are we to assume that superman is screaming after because he killed the last kryptonian, or are we to assume that he's screaming because his apprehension to kill zod cost that family their lives as zod killed them? Basically, is that family dead or alive? Either way I think it's bad direction because its kind of ambiguous.

The family is fine. He's screaming because he just snapped a person's neck and killed them.
 
Im debating with my friends about something. At the end when superman snaps Zoe's neck and then screams, are we to assume that superman is screaming after because he killed the last kryptonian, or are we to assume that he's screaming because his apprehension to kill zod cost that family their lives as zod killed them? Basically, is that family dead or alive? Either way I think it's bad direction because its kind of ambiguous.

he is screaming because he is not supposed to kill, because he is the hope and a standard for humans to live by according to both his fathers. he succumbs to the the panic and sets a bad example for humanity which he does not want. he wants to be their hope, not their avenger
 

btrboyev

Member
I don't know what the hell I just saw, but it wasn't a superman movie.

I don't hate it, but I'm really dissapointed. The only high point for me was the soundtrack.
 

Ithil

Member
Were they? We didn't see a return shot.

I'm sure they were. The point was if he hasn't killed Zod that second, the family would have died. The deal was that as necessary as it was, it wasn't any bit easier to do and he's distraught at having killed someone.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
The scene in Penn Station was ridiculous.
They weren't pinned against a wall! They could have, like, run around when Superman was holding Zod's head. The whole thing was absurd and unnecessary.

I agree with whomever said the film suffered from tonal problems. Was it an artsy, serious examination of Superman's origin? A pulpy action flick? It wavered between those two poles without the confidence to pull off either.
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
True, but Batman didn't bring crime to Gotham. Gotham was corrupt, so he tried to fight it. Then 'escalation' happens, as the films refer to it.

But in MoS Kal-El's presence brings a whole heap of pain and destruction down on Earth. Earth protected him more than he protected Earth.


The very same thing can be said about Batman. The 'escalation' that he basically create brings a whole heap of death and destruction that would not have existed otherwise. It's not like Earth was a lovey dovey peaceful place before Superman. It is true though, that Earth protected him way more than he protected Earth... but shouldn't that also give more substance to his love and willingness to protect Earth moving forward?
 

HoodWinked

Member
the
family at the
end is
schrodinger's cat its the nolan way. there is no definitive answer and looks like it worked cause people cant stop talking about it as if the answer even matters
 
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