![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rethinking Man Of Steel
Feb. 11th, 2014 07:47 amBE WARNED: This post is all about how I changed my mind about how terrible a movie "Man Of Steel" was, and it just might change your mind as well.
First of all, my credentials: Life-long comics fan, owned a comic book store, Superman has consistently been in my Top 3 Favorite Superheroes all my life. When I saw Man Of Steel in the theater, I swore off not just Superman, but new DC Comics in their entirety - I've switched my collecting focus entirely to 80's and 90's comics. I had never had a comic book movie fill me with so much anger, and for all the standard reasons you've heard a million times from angry fanboys such as myself. The biggest among these complaints would be the fact that Superman does not kill, followed by the all the destruction and disregard for humanity, the paranoid upbringing, and letting his Earth-Dad die rather than expose his secret.
I hated that film *so much*! More than I hated Phantom Menace!
But what we have here is not a Superman movie that is made for fanboys and continuity police; what we have here is a new origin for Superman that addresses nearly every single complaint, gripe and snarky comment that Fans have had over the years about "The Big Blue Boyscout". They answered all those questions that non-fans would jokingly ask us super-fans in an attempt to point out how silly the whole Superman-thing is...
...Starting with the age-old question, "Why does he wear his underwear on the outside?" - ANSWER: New Superman doesn't. It's just a streamlined body suit now. A Military Outfit, to be exact, with a cape that's about as important as the shiny white hat on a Marine's dress uniform.
"If Superman's so God-Like, why does he spend all his time disguised as Clark Kent? And don't give me that line about how it's to protect his friends - Clark Kent and Superman have all the same friends!" - ANSWER: This version of Superman was raised by his Human parents to hide his powers out of paranoia and fear - fear of what would happen to him if anyone found out, and fear of what he could become if he WERE to use those powers (more on that later).
"Why is he always running away from fights and/or trying to talk people out of fights? He's Superman, why not just POW! and be done with it like we all know it's going to boil down to?" - ANSWER: Because when he goes after a super-baddie, innocent people die and property gets destroyed. In the comics, one of Superman's most used lines is "I have to try and this battle out over the sea/up in to outer-space" in order to protect the innocents, but why? This movie gives us a HARD WHY - in his very first fight, he leveled a major city. That's a lesson that he will hopefully remember in any future movies, and we the audience will understand because we saw it happen in the first one.
"Why can't Lois Lane figure out that Superman is Clark Kent? Isn't she supposed to be a prize-winning investigative journalist?" - ANSWER: This version of Lois did a bit of investigating and knew who Superman was within just a few days of finding out that he actually existed. Because THAT'S how a good investigator works!
"So unrealistic! If *I* had Superman's powers, I'd just BAM! Kill Lex Luthor! BAM! Kill Metallo. BAM! Round up ALL the criminals and stick 'em in an impenetrable prison! He's got all this power to make a difference, why doesn't he DO it?" - ANSWER: This Superman HAS killed. Back in the day when Superman was created, having your Dad die while you're not there may have been enough motivation to make you take a solemn vow to never kill anyone ever, but modern audiences are more jaded. This isn't to BLAME video games, but our favorite passtime these days is to go on the internet and virtually murder all of our friends - entertainment in general has lessened the impact of fake-people murdering fake-people.
When I was a kid, I had a BB Gun. I shot cans, bottles, windows... even shot the dog in the butt once! I felt pretty invincible... then I shot a bird out of it's nest. It wasn't sleeping, it didn't sit up and have stars floating around it's head, it was *dead*. All these little adolescent fantasies about killing someone or something with my BB Gun and now here was the result, a dead little bird. I'm not sure of what I thought my feeling would be after I had killed it, but what DID happen was that I cried a lot and never touched the BB Gun again.
THAT'S the point of this new Superman having killed Zod. He had been told to repress his desire to use those powers all his life, so once he started using them he had to be getting that feeling of "I AM SO AWESOME!!!" that can easily turn in to Hannibal Lecter levels of crazy. It's also a bit like Drunk Driving, where every time you do it you start thinking "Hey I can totally get away with driving while drunk!" and then you swerve and kill a van full of kids. "Drunk With Power", and the sobering moment is when he actually *kills*. Superman has his Rock Bottom moment, it's all up-hill from here.
In short, this is the version of Superman that we've been demanding for YEARS, but now that we have him we realize that we actually liked the old version better.
Did I miss anything?
First of all, my credentials: Life-long comics fan, owned a comic book store, Superman has consistently been in my Top 3 Favorite Superheroes all my life. When I saw Man Of Steel in the theater, I swore off not just Superman, but new DC Comics in their entirety - I've switched my collecting focus entirely to 80's and 90's comics. I had never had a comic book movie fill me with so much anger, and for all the standard reasons you've heard a million times from angry fanboys such as myself. The biggest among these complaints would be the fact that Superman does not kill, followed by the all the destruction and disregard for humanity, the paranoid upbringing, and letting his Earth-Dad die rather than expose his secret.
I hated that film *so much*! More than I hated Phantom Menace!
But what we have here is not a Superman movie that is made for fanboys and continuity police; what we have here is a new origin for Superman that addresses nearly every single complaint, gripe and snarky comment that Fans have had over the years about "The Big Blue Boyscout". They answered all those questions that non-fans would jokingly ask us super-fans in an attempt to point out how silly the whole Superman-thing is...
...Starting with the age-old question, "Why does he wear his underwear on the outside?" - ANSWER: New Superman doesn't. It's just a streamlined body suit now. A Military Outfit, to be exact, with a cape that's about as important as the shiny white hat on a Marine's dress uniform.
"If Superman's so God-Like, why does he spend all his time disguised as Clark Kent? And don't give me that line about how it's to protect his friends - Clark Kent and Superman have all the same friends!" - ANSWER: This version of Superman was raised by his Human parents to hide his powers out of paranoia and fear - fear of what would happen to him if anyone found out, and fear of what he could become if he WERE to use those powers (more on that later).
"Why is he always running away from fights and/or trying to talk people out of fights? He's Superman, why not just POW! and be done with it like we all know it's going to boil down to?" - ANSWER: Because when he goes after a super-baddie, innocent people die and property gets destroyed. In the comics, one of Superman's most used lines is "I have to try and this battle out over the sea/up in to outer-space" in order to protect the innocents, but why? This movie gives us a HARD WHY - in his very first fight, he leveled a major city. That's a lesson that he will hopefully remember in any future movies, and we the audience will understand because we saw it happen in the first one.
"Why can't Lois Lane figure out that Superman is Clark Kent? Isn't she supposed to be a prize-winning investigative journalist?" - ANSWER: This version of Lois did a bit of investigating and knew who Superman was within just a few days of finding out that he actually existed. Because THAT'S how a good investigator works!
"So unrealistic! If *I* had Superman's powers, I'd just BAM! Kill Lex Luthor! BAM! Kill Metallo. BAM! Round up ALL the criminals and stick 'em in an impenetrable prison! He's got all this power to make a difference, why doesn't he DO it?" - ANSWER: This Superman HAS killed. Back in the day when Superman was created, having your Dad die while you're not there may have been enough motivation to make you take a solemn vow to never kill anyone ever, but modern audiences are more jaded. This isn't to BLAME video games, but our favorite passtime these days is to go on the internet and virtually murder all of our friends - entertainment in general has lessened the impact of fake-people murdering fake-people.
When I was a kid, I had a BB Gun. I shot cans, bottles, windows... even shot the dog in the butt once! I felt pretty invincible... then I shot a bird out of it's nest. It wasn't sleeping, it didn't sit up and have stars floating around it's head, it was *dead*. All these little adolescent fantasies about killing someone or something with my BB Gun and now here was the result, a dead little bird. I'm not sure of what I thought my feeling would be after I had killed it, but what DID happen was that I cried a lot and never touched the BB Gun again.
THAT'S the point of this new Superman having killed Zod. He had been told to repress his desire to use those powers all his life, so once he started using them he had to be getting that feeling of "I AM SO AWESOME!!!" that can easily turn in to Hannibal Lecter levels of crazy. It's also a bit like Drunk Driving, where every time you do it you start thinking "Hey I can totally get away with driving while drunk!" and then you swerve and kill a van full of kids. "Drunk With Power", and the sobering moment is when he actually *kills*. Superman has his Rock Bottom moment, it's all up-hill from here.
In short, this is the version of Superman that we've been demanding for YEARS, but now that we have him we realize that we actually liked the old version better.
Did I miss anything?
