Many, many months ago when the trailer for the film Man of Steel hit the internet, people within my various social networks were whipped into a tizzy. While some were giddy at the idea of a new Superman movie, most seemed disgruntled by what they saw. Some decried the obvious Biblical metaphors that were present while others complained about the moral ambiguity that seemed to lace this preview.
“Superman can’t have doubts about who he is or what he does? He’s all good, all the time. He’s not a morally ambiguous asshole like Batman!”
I thought these dogmatic nerds were being a bit shortsighted in their concerns. Superman is whoever we want him to be. Like so many other mythological figures, his persona and thematic significance evolves with the times, which is a good thing. Why would we want our cultural heroes projecting morals and values from a bygone era?
Unsurprisingly, when the movie came out, many of these same people panned the film. I made the mistake of interpreting their judgment as sour grapes; simply a comic book crowd who disliked the fact that their childhood hero was something they didn’t want him to be.
Well, this weekend I finally got around to watching Man of Steel for myself.
Oh boy.
To be fair, I don’t believe the film’s failings reside in the thematic issues present in the trailer. In fact, the best scenes in the movie are when a young, confused Clark Kent struggles with who he is and who his earthly father thinks he may become. Unfortunately, the film takes a turn for the worse once an older, nomadic Kent learns his true history and dons his iconic red cape. That’s when the movie goes from a sort of cosmic coming of age story to a loud, over the top piece of disaster porn.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… lots of computer animation!
I don’t want to waste too many words describing General Zod’s plot to turn Earth into a nouveau Krypton, but I’ll simply say that lots of shit gets blown up and a sizable dent is placed in the world’s population, or, at the very least, the population of Metropolis and Smallville. In fact, after one battle sequence between Superman, two of Zod’s henchmen, and the U.S. military, I’m pretty sure there are only about 17 residents left alive in Clark Kent’s hometown. (A fact that seems to have little emotional impact on the film or the people in the film.)
All of this brings me to my grumpy old man point of the day… which is I think CGI is killing the sci-fi/super hero genres. Sure, in some cases this rich technology brings to life worlds and characters that could not have existed on film thirty years ago. But at what cost? Well, it certainly seems to be at the expense of plot and story. Kal-el may have come to a really profound understanding of his place in our world, but if he did, I couldn’t hear it over the sounds of explosions and crumbling infrastructure.
In hindsight (admittedly, my favorite kind of sight) the original Superman movie is compelling for two reasons: 1.) The cast was superb and charming (even the bad guys), and 2.) the story was much better developed, probably because they couldn’t rely on special effects as much back then. Sure, they were able to hang Christopher Reeve in front of a green screen (a revolutionary development at the time), but they couldn’t even think about turning Metropolis into a post-apocalyptic hellscape (which is basically what the city looks like by the end of Man of Steel), so instead, they relied on acting, directing and screenwriting. What a concept.
At the end of the first Superman, our hero has made his journey and becomes a fully formed citizen of our planet. Not because he saves the world (which he does with an assist from Miss Teschmacher), but because he falls in love and realizes the pain that sometimes accompanies that very human emotion. Of course, in the end the lesson was undercut somewhat by the ridiculous “fly around the world to turn back time and save Lois” device which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… but I digress. The point is they made a very, very good movie without employing pointlessly long fight scenes between opponents who are basically indestructible as long as they bask in the rays of our sun.
Superman circa 1978 — less property damage, more character.
Jaws was a great movie because they couldn’t get the shark to work right. The original Star Wars Trilogy was brilliant because they had to develop rich characters rather than cartoon everything up. And the original Superman was great because it worked around the limited technology of the day. They needed to tell their stories in more conventional ways.
Of course, special effects aren’t all bad, and in the past twenty years there have been some great movies that utilized computer technology to enhance a great script. In the past decade we’ve had great takes on classic comic book characters like Batman, Spider-man, and the X-Men. But it seems we’ve exited that era and are now increasingly served digitally grandiose spectacles that are low on depth and high on orgiastic destruction.
Fortunately, there are still plenty of great low tech films being produced so perhaps I should save my weekend evenings for that kind of entertainment.
Looks like I have a lot of Meryl Streep movies in my future.
Mr. Sunshine 