{"id":11628,"date":"2013-08-17T23:38:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T13:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11628"},"modified":"2014-09-07T10:54:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T00:54:30","slug":"man-of-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11628","title":{"rendered":"Man Of Steel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"manofsteelposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Zack Snyder
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>David S Goyer
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon<\/p>\n

M<\/span>an Of Steel<\/em>, DC’s latest attempt to revive the strangely under-performing Superman license, starts out with plenty of promise.\u00a0 The film mirrors the start of the Christopher Reeve Superman<\/em> film as we begin on planet Krypton where Jor-El, played this time by Russell Crowe, is fighting to convince a council of evil bureaucrats that their homeland faces imminent annihilation.\u00a0 The negotiations go badly and before you know it, Russell is riding a space dragon through a futuristic city shooting pew-pew lasers at some robot baddies.<\/p>\n

This introduction is much more exciting than Marlon Brando’s disinterested mumbling in Superman<\/em> and I’d have quite happily taken a 2 hour sci-fi tale where Russell Crowe and his intergalactic space lizard went on an adventure together.\u00a0 Alas, the dragon is slain within minutes and with his last act, Jor-El sends away his only son Kal-El to the safety of Earth.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a couple of decades later and we meet Clark Kent who is now a rugged, muscular and bearded workman on an oil rig.\u00a0 He has fully developed his super powers and when the oil rig has a mechanical failure and begins collapsing (I presume Clark works for BP), he saves his endangered co-workers before moving on to find his next job.\u00a0 Clark keeps his identity and ability secret, moving from town to town whenever his cover is blown.<\/p>\n

Clark is drawn to the Arctic where he uncovers a Kryptonian spaceship that contains a hologram of his father who begins to plant the seed in his head that will transform him into Superman.\u00a0 Coincidentally, this occurs at the exact same time that the ship is being investigated by the U.S military who have with them the Daily Planet<\/em> reporter Lois Lane in tow.\u00a0 Lois briefly crosses paths with Clark and becomes fascinated with uncovering his identity.\u00a0 Meanwhile, General Zod, a power-crazed villainous military leader who survived the destruction of Krypton, arrives on Earth and decides to colonize it for himself.<\/p>\n

Man of Steel<\/em> is a film directed by Zack Snyder (300<\/em>) and produced by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy<\/em>).\u00a0 This is somewhat surprising considering that the film isn’t 90% slow motion (Snyder) and its actually not very good (Nolan).<\/p>\n

I can appreciate that there isn’t much point in Snyder simply recreating the Richard Donner films with its bright primary colours and Reeve’s wholesome, clean cut portrayal of Superman but I had to roll my eyes at this film’s attempt to give us a ‘gritty’ take on Clark Kent.\u00a0 Is this really something that people want?<\/p>\n

I think the ingredients are there for a good Superman<\/em> film.\u00a0 General Zod is an entertaining foil, you’ve got a great cast (Michael Shannon, Richard Schiff, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe…) and the film is given plenty of time to tell a story and show off some fantastic action set pieces.\u00a0 I just hate the aesthetics of the film and how weirdly militaristic it was.<\/p>\n

Under Snyder’s direction, Man of Steel<\/em> is a dark, grey film that looks dour and miserable.\u00a0 The fight sequences between Zod and Superman, which go on for quite some time, are visually unintelligible so you get lost in the noise and commotion.\u00a0 Where are they fighting in the context of their surroundings?\u00a0 One minute they’re in a dessert landscape, the next they’re in Metropolis.\u00a0 Why is everything blurry?\u00a0 Did they really just smash through and topple another<\/em> building?\u00a0 And now what’s going on?\u00a0 You’re in a landscape that looks like New York and you’re showing bodies falling out of buildings, clouds of dust and spaceships slamming into the sides of buildings.\u00a0 Are you really evoking 9\/11 for a blockbuster super hero movie?<\/p>\n

I’m presuming that Michael Bay’s Transformers<\/em> films are an influence here because for some reason, we get not one but four characters from the U.S military that are given prominent screen time and importance to the plot.\u00a0 Its as if the film is ultimately about Superman’s relationship with the army, not with the common man.\u00a0 I don’t understand why anyone would think this is a good idea.<\/p>\n

After a passable first hour, the second hour of the film descends into a gigantic never-ending battle.\u00a0 A battle where the rules are made up as they go along and about four layers of McGuffins are introduced as a twist.\u00a0 Zod wants the codex.\u00a0 So Superman tries to send him to the Phantom Zone.\u00a0 Zod counters by activating the Genesis Chamber.\u00a0 Toby from The West Wing<\/em> has to stop him by using a USB key with an ‘S’ on it.\u00a0 It is utter nonsense.<\/p>\n

I don’t think this will be the film to revitalize the Superman<\/em> brand as a film franchise.\u00a0 It’s too broody and it feels like a hodge-podge of a dozen blockbuster films before it.\u00a0 The film suffers the same problems as 2006’s Superman Returns<\/em>.\u00a0 It awkwardly tries to shoehorn contemporary action film aesthetics onto a comic book about a brightly coloured altruistic boyscout who flies around helping people.\u00a0 If you don’t want to embrace that then…why are you making a Superman<\/em> movie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men In Tights<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1113,1671,1672,2092],"class_list":["post-11628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-henry-cavill","tag-man-of-steel","tag-superman","tag-zack-snyder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11628"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11640,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11628\/revisions\/11640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}