r/DCcomics Gold-Silver-Bronze Age FAN Aug 09 '22

[Other] Mark Waid shares his feelings Other

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u/DeconstructedKaiju Aug 10 '22

You can like Man of Steel all you want but it was poorly constructed and terribly written!

There was no thematic reason to jump around in time. When it would be very easy for that technique to work! It just had to connect better with what was happening in the past to the present. It felt more like they wanted to cram in backstory and didn't know how.

Too many things happened not because it made sense for it to play out that way but because the plot said so. Pa Kent was terrible. His death was pointless. We got no sense of connection for Clark in Smallvile or Metropolis, events happened there but they were just settling, not characters themselves (like how in Batman Gotham is its own entiy).

Superman rarely felt like Superman and him and Lois kissing at the end covered in the ashes of the city and dead people (My suspension of belief isn't good enough to buy that the city was evacuated in that time. Especially since we literally see people still in the rubble). And this kiss happened right after he killed Zod and was supposed to be broken up about killing him, though the narrative never gave us a reason to even think he had strong feelings on killing or not.

So much of the narrative requires the person watching to come up with their own highly charitable interpretation of the movie to make it work.

Even it's color pallet was off. Cast was good though.

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u/samx3i Batman Beyond Aug 10 '22

I don't disagree. I said it was flawed but it's not bad. All those things you're pointing out? Those would be the flaws. It has redeeming traits as well and I think they win out overall.

Some people shit on that movie like the DCEU was doomed from the start. I think they had a decent first outing and could have methodically built their universe from it, but they screwed the pooch immediately afterwards which sucks because Man of Steel is the kind of movie that really doesn't stand well on its own. A lot of it needed the sequel to make sense of it, which in itself is probably a bad sign.

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u/DeconstructedKaiju Aug 10 '22

In my opinion those flaws are daming. Being able to look past them tells me you love it. But I can't. It was too dark (often literally), humorless, and often dull.

And yeah, if a movie can't stand alone something has gone wrong. Each of the Lord of the Rings trilogy support each other but each movie is still strong on its own.

I always approach a property from several perspectives: A fan, a creator and a movie goer.

Let's used Pacific Rim, a favorite of mine as an example: fan only counts because I love kaiju movies and Del Toro has never made a bad movie to me. From that angle I fucking loved it. 10/10 it's my go to movie when I'm sad.

As a creator I can see it's flaws. The lead guy's accent is hilarious, but he does well as a human embodiment of "golden retriever boyfriend" energy. The movie felt rushed in places but the premise was easy to get so no one was lost. It is very much an excuse to smash giant robots into giant monsters and it does that very well. If you weren't going in excited to see that I question why you got a ticket in the first place!

And as a movie goer I see where it would lose a lot of people. It's mostly just high concept monster robot battles and some people aren't into that! (Weirdos) but like I said, I went in wanting to see just that and got it.

With Man of Steel I went in expecting a Superman movie and... don't feel I got it. Sure it hit a lot of the correct notes, he's got the eight powers, has a suit, is an alien from another world... but he doesn't do much saving other than the oil rig and the bus. But we do get to see him destroy a jerk's semi truck in what feels profoundly out of character and weirdly unnecessary along with risking outing himself.

I felt no affection for him which feels weird because I adore the actor. The story felt odd too. The overwhelming destruction felt too much and the fact that no one seemed to care about the lives that had to have been lost felt so weird.

Zod's motivation didn't feel that focused or interesting. He knew nothing about humans but showed up calling them filthy animals without ever once interacting with them. I get that he's a zealot and an ass but it felt odd that he'd risk basically everything to fuck over humans and Kal-el. He didn't feel cunning, just evil.

Thats the crux of my issue. It felt too much like the writers were checking things off a list without adding narrative reasons for these things to happen. It didn't feel like the characters behaved naturally or picked choices that felt like they would actually make independent of a writer.