Wednesday
Jul242013
Man of Steel Post-Script
Wednesday, July 24, 2013 at 3:00PM Release dates are no Kryptonite for me. I can't be bound or weakened by them! I rejoined Panel Culture, a weekly comic book podcast, as their special guest for a discussion of Zach Snyder's Man of Steel five weeks into its successful run. Why did they wait this long to discuss it? They'll tell you.
Listen in and join the conversation about...
- Whether this Superman is successful as icon, hero and performance
- If this Lois Lane dynamic (or lack thereof) works
- How Michael Shannon's General Zod measures up to Terence Stamp's
- That surprising first half hour on Planet Krypton with Russell Crowe
- Tornados, mass destruction, and whether or not to save a life or keep on fighting
- What the sequel should fix or keep or jettison
Reader Comments (10)
As I hated Man Of Steel :it's like a pretentious humorless Mickael Bay movie for me( i hates Snyderstyle) as i loved the Malick trailer
By the way, Michael Shannon in Groundhog Day? He was the young kid who got the wrestling tickets for his wedding present.
I enjoyed MOS with reservation. I think there is - or I should say was, given the whole Batman/Superman announcement - a solid foundation for future films but it definitely had some flaws. While I thought Amy Adams did fine as Lois, her involvement in the plot did feel forced at times (her being brought onto the ship made no sense). Cavill did a pretty good job in the role but I think with more character development, he could've done even better. In terms of the plot, the whole codec thing felt tacked on. I get that they wanted to give the plot an even greater sense of depth but it just cluttered things.
I found it interesting that you guys (somewhat) liked the opening Krypton stuff and Shannon as Zod. Both of those elements felt like the weakest parts of MOS to me. From the camera work to the costumes, the Krypton section felt needlessly grandiose and overly designed in areas. As for Shannon, I do think the writing was mostly to blame for his performance. However, he just didn't seem to put that much effort into the role and he got overshadowed by Faora.
Lastly, I just wasn't a huge fan of the camera work. The hand-held stuff would've been acceptable if they used it exclusive for Smallville and the Daily Planet but it seemed inappropriate for Krypton and took a tiny bit away from the action (the film's strongest asset). Perhaps I'm clinging to the first two - or one and a half - Donner films too much but I felt like Krypton would've been much more visually dynamic if they shot it with longer steady shots. As for the action sequences, I just generally hate the whole zooming in/news footage thing, so that's more of a bias on my part than an actual flaw with the film.
It would've been cool to hear what you guys all thought about the Superman vs. Batman announcement, but I guess it was recorded before that.
Ah, yes. Because when you've built a film that tries to make Superman as similar to Batman as possible, a team-up of them is EXACTLY what you need. No. That's kind of like The Heat with two of Melissa McCarthy's character.
volvagia -- LOL.
paco -- we did record before that yes. but you can probably sense we wouldn't have been enthusiastic given that they're two very different characters who need different tones for their films.
So...you've just made the, at least kind of, stupid "dark, angsty Superman" movie. If you're going to keep him around, you need him to lighten up more than anything else at this point. Here's ten people from the DCU I'd suggest, instead of Batman, to pair him up with to fix that problem:
Power Girl
Blue Beetle 3 (Jaime Reyes)
Plastic Man
The Flash
Green Lantern (Avoid Hal Jordan and just cast Idris Elba as John Stewart. Trying to remind people of Paul Dini's Justice League cartoon can only help you at this point.)
Captain Marvel
Aquaman (Do something close to how he is on that light team-up anthlogy show Batman: The Brave and the Bold and it'd be great)
Booster Gold (Superman might not agree with Booster's occasionally greedy sense of ethics, but he'd probably get him to lighten up more than BATMAN typically would)
Martian Manhunter (bonding over Oreos (Martian Manhunter LOVES Oreos in the comics, even if the brand name isn't used) in-between the bursts of plot)
Delirium (from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, allowing the studio to gauge possible audience acceptance of the rest of the Endless as characters)
Thanks for listening, all. I really appreciate you giving our show a shot. Nathaniel was a lot of fun to have on.
Erin in Flagstaff - Thank you! That's been driving me nuts!
Daniel Armour - Great point about the shakey-cam in the opening. I forgot about that, but it annoyed me, too.
Paco - As Nathaniel pointed out, yeah, we just missed it. But as you could probably guess, since Snyder is in charge I'm... not excited.
Volvagia - Those are great character suggestions. I think if DC marketed it right they could really do a good job with Blue Beetle (3). I'm also a HUGE Booster Gold fan and would love to see him in there sometime.
Owen from Panel Culture.
Owen: Thank you.
I haven't seen all the summer blockbusters, Superman just wore me out on things blowing up. I love the Superman cast. I felt kind of ambivalent after the movie, but as time wore on, I really began to hate the movie.
I rarely feel that a movie is a waste of time and money, because it's just a movie, and that's the nature of the film going experience. But in retrospect, I feel as if I was manipulated into seeing Superman AND into being polite about it. As a private citizen, I won't be seeing the next one, or any more of this director's work for a long while.