It would help if the film was more effective at making me care about Superman and Zod. As I always say: a good Action movie isn't
about explosions, it's about us being worried about the heroes in
those explosions. It's hard to care about Clark Kent/Superman in this way as he's is essentially invulnerable. You can take
his powers away with Kryptonite but it would be better if we cared
about him as a person. It's not impossible to make Superman
interesting, the 1978 Richard Donner film made the Blue Boyscout work
by embracing the immigrant angle and maintaining a light, comedic
touch. But of course modern superhero movies aren't allowed to be
silly, so Snyder tires to give us a dark, gritty “realistic”
character study of this flying alien who shoots lasers out of
his X-ray eyes. But in zapping the silliness, Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer have neglected to
replace it with anything worthwhile. The result is like Batman
Begins if Bruce Wayne was
really shallow and generic (It should be noted that the two projects share Goyer as a screenwriter).
To
cover for the blandness at the heart of the film, Snyder amps up everything
around Clark. The film begins with with an overcomplicated retelling
of Superman's birth on the doomed planet Krypton. All the classic story beats are there, but now there's a sudden coup d'etat by General Zod, leading Clark's father (Russell Crowe) to jump on a
flying monster straight out of Heavy Metal magazine so he can
retrieve a magic skull fragment that tells baby Krytonians what
they're going to be when they grow up. As stupid and convoluted as that sentence was, it's somehow worse in the film which doesn't explain why any of that was important till much, much later. It aims for enticing but it comes off as confusing and badly conceived. By the way, I love that even though Krypton is supposed to explode in "a matter of weeks," the government makes no attempt to evacuate and finds time to try and sentence Zod and his cronies.
We
then jump forward to Clark as an adult, wandering around Canada like David
Banner in the Incredible Hulk
show. This is interspersed with clumsy flashbacks of young Clark
learning to deal with his powers like we've seen in every Superhero
movie, except now it looks like a bad Terrence Malick movie.
Everything is these scenes is sun kissed and beautiful, but the angles are all wrong.
This is a consistent issue I have with Zach Snyder (300, Watchmen), who has a
wonderful visual style he doesn't know how to use.
It
goes on like this for a long time. On the advice of his human father
(Kevin Costner) Clark does his best to keep his powers secret, while
a computerized version of his biological father tells him how he's
really, really destined. Oy vey, how he's destined. He's like Jesus,
but he can fly, a sort of SuperJesus if you will, but the film lacks
the due diligence to make that analogy work and it resorts to cheep tricks like posing Superman in the crucifix pose without him really sacrificing that much. The film is lost in cheep style, unnecessary CGI face masks and senseless violence. I have no idea what Clark
thinks of all this. He doesn't talk much, he just sort of stares
stoically into space like a catalog model. It'd be tempting to call Cavil bland, but to be fair, the film doesn't ask much of him. He looks the part, and the
Superman costume is fantastic, but the film isn't interested in performances. With the exception of Costner, everyone feels underused. The film
casts great actors like Harry Lennix, Amy Adams, Christopher Meloni
and Laurence Fishburne in supporting roles only to do nothing with them.
The
violence in the film is a real issue. We've seen a lot of cities
being destroyed on screen lately but there's a difference between the
self-consciously cartoon carnage we saw in Avengers
and what we get here. Because he's intent on giving us the “realistic”
Superman, Snyder and Co. have decided to go really far out their way
to invoke 9/11 imagery in appallingly specific ways. There are scenes of people trapped under
rubble, covered in ash and crying for help as building after building
topples behind them. The imagery is frankly uncomfortable and not a
frame of it is earned. The Superman character is essentially a power fantasy, but instead of being able to share in the feeling of watching Superman
triumph over evil and save the day, all I could think about was all
the innocent people that are dying terrible, terrible deaths because Superman doesn't think to draw Zod away from populated areas. We are told that the 'S' on Superman's chest represents hope, but this film has none. It's joyless, cynical plodding leading to tasteless destruction, darkness and
despair. You know, for kids!
Grade:
D
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