Man of Steel: New Superman franchise is up, up and away

By Kevin Hyde
June 20, 2013 

Despite its excellent marketing and enticing trailers, Man of Steel’s mixed early reviews and less-than-rapturous word of mouth—not to mention my on-going superhero fatigue—conspired to keep expectations for the huge, new Superman movie at workable levels. I guess that is why I was pretty much blown away. What a giant, pulverizing corker of a flick. I felt mentally and physically drained at its conclusion … but in a good way.

Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) gives us a Superman movie that is a darker shade of blue and red (with no outside underwear, thank you very much). The tone and structure of the film certainly was influenced highly by Christopher Nolan, the writer and director who resurrected the Batman movie franchise with phenomenal critical and box office success. Nolan co-wrote the story for Man of Steel with David S. Goyer, who wrote the screenplay.

Like with Nolan’s breakthrough film Memento (2000), Man of Steel cleverly manipulates chronology, effectively utilizing a series of flashbacks to tell the elaborate story of how the baby Kal-El was evacuated from the dying world of Krypton to Earth where he was raised on a Kansas farm as Clark Kent. When a band of renegade warriors, led by the obsessed and ever-determined General Zod, come to Earth looking for their fellow Kryptonian, Clark—an itinerant worker and drifter with a tendency for dramatic, superhuman rescues—must come to terms with who he is and how he plans to deal with it.

At the center of the movie is Clark’s search for identity—one he eventually will find in the guise of Superman—and while Man of Steel is one of the most relentlessly violent films I have ever seen, it does have a very soulful side. I found much of its emotional content deeper and more moving than your typical comic book fare. Scenes in which his birth mother Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) must part with her newborn, flashbacks depicting Clark’s struggles as a child in Smallville and a jarring implication during the film’s climax were quite affecting.

The casting of British actor Henry Cavill—Charles Brandon from The Tudors—as Kal-El, aka Clark Kent, aka Superman was not only perfect but continues a somewhat bizarre cross-Atlantic trade with our Mother Country involving English actors playing iconic American heroes (see Christian Bale as Batman and Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man) and American actors playing iconic British heroes (see Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes). I guess all we need now is an American James Bond.

(Trivia: Burt Reynolds reportedly was offered the Bond role back in the early 1970s when Sean Connery left the franchise. Of course, this is fodder for all kinds of jokes like: Would Bond drive a tricked-out black Trans-Am? Would Q be played by a country-singing trucker with a dog named Fred? Would Bond order a Blue Ribbon, Pabst Blue Ribbon? And what about that laugh? Would James Bond laugh like Burt Reynolds?)

The muscled-up Cavill is downright super as Superman, and he is supported ably in Man of Steel by a deep cast of veteran film stars including Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Superman’s father on Krypton; Amy Adams as Lois Lane, the intrepid reporter and love interest; Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Clark’s Kansas parents; and Laurence Fishburne as Daily Planet editor Perry White.

But it is the gifted actor Michael Shannon (Take Shelter, Boardwalk Empire) who gets the best role as the deadly General Zod. These sorts of movies are carried on the shoulders of their villains, and any bad guy worth his salt does not think of himself as a bad guy. He is doing horrible things for the greater good, in this case the survival of his world and people. Shannon plays Zod with memorable menace, lethality and righteousness.  

Not only does the film boast a wealth of acting talent, there are several different kinds of summer movies represented in Man of Steel. Of course, it is a superhero origin story, which is its own subgenre of film. But the exciting early scenes on Krypton play like a riveting space adventure, as Crowe’s Jor-El—in front of an apocalyptic backdrop—sends his son away while trying to fight off Zod and his conspirators. Later, when Zod and his crew arrive on Earth, we get the foreboding of a tension-filled alien invasion flick. And when Superman does battle with the invaders during the third act, we get all the disturbing mayhem and mass death of a mega disaster film. While never too explicit—the film is rated PG-13—the level of carnage in Man of Steel is sometimes dizzying. (I wonder if there is a computer program or something that could estimate the body count. My guesstimate would be at least 100,000 dead in Metropolis alone.)

Man of Steel is a pretty long movie, clocking in at 2 hours and 28 minutes. But not for a minute is it slow. The film is jam-packed with narrative, and that might be my biggest complaint. There is enough story in this picture for two movies. In fact the original Superman franchise with Christopher Reeve spread similar content—the origin story and the invasion of Zod—over two movies, Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980). Another problem I had with the film, and this has more to do with the character of Superman, is that while, yes, he often is emotionally vulnerable, he is physically invincible. It seems like the only way to slow him down is to shove some kryptonite down his pants. Unlike his more human counterparts—Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc.—he is just too unstoppable. And when he is fighting others of his kind? Things can get awful disorienting watching invincible characters do battle. There are times when it seems like you could detonate a nuclear warhead under Superman’s cape and he would be no worse for the wear. 

But these grumbles are small in the larger scheme of the film, which leaps over all previous cinematic incarnations of Superman in a single bound. Unlike Superman Returns, the forgettable 2006 attempt to re-establish the franchise, this Man of Steel seems built to last.

Kevin Hyde is a freelance writer who has worked as a reporter for daily and weekly newspapers, edited regional and national magazines, written on pop culture for an international newspaper as well as several local, alternative newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].

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