After the mess that was Superman Returns, the film-watching
world has been skeptical about a Superman reboot. But this being Hollywood in
the 21st Century, it was obviously just a matter of time before
Warner Bros and DC brought him back. Starring Henry Cavill, who lost out to
Brandon Routh for the role in the previous installment, Man Of Steel chronicles the birth of Kal-El, his childhood as Clark
Kent and his early days as Superman, attempting to stop the rebellion of
General Zod (Michael Shannon) and his plan to exterminate humans in order for
kryptonians to survive on Earth. Director Zack Snyder has opted to make a
darker telling of the superhero’s origin story, as made critically and
commercially popular by Christopher Nolan (who also produces and co-writes Man Of Steel) in his Dark Knight trilogy.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a more
embarrassingly or shamelessly patriotic film since Armageddon. And unluckily for Man
Of Steel, the Michael Bay comparisons do not end there. Half of the film is
made up of scenes inside governmental and military bases, needlessly bombarding
us with line after line of exposition and jargon, and not since the latter
stages of the Transformers franchise,
have I actually been bored by action sequences.
A big part of the problem is that the film
is tonally awry. While it force-feeds us the plot, it is coy about mentioning
‘Superman’ and ‘Metropolis’ and while, for the most part, Snyder tries to copy
Nolan’s take on the superhero film, the odd joke and sarcastic comment make it
feel more like a Marvel picture. But these jokes are so few, that when they do
happen, they fall on their face, harder than a human at the mercy of General
Zod.
I struggle to work out how much input Zack
Snyder had with this film. With Nolan’s Dark
Knight co-creator David S. Goyer writing, and Hans Zimmer scoring with what
could easily be a Dark Knight B-side,
this is certainly not a harsh question to ask. It is well known that while
making both 300 and Watchmen, Snyder used the graphic novels
not just as a basis for creation, but as storyboards for plagiarising, and
while Man Of Steel is obviously based
upon characters from DC comics, it is not a page for page adaptation of any
specific one. I therefore fear Snyder may have got lost with the lack of
restraints, or with being faced with his own decisions to make, and therefore
simply relied on others to help him through.
The Nolan input is clear. The Bay
comparisons have been made. And the extent to which the film uses anamorphic
lens flare and air-born crash zooms almost grants a Creative Consultant credit
for JJ Abrams. Simply put, Snyder does not know what he is doing. If this was
trying to do what Batman Begins did
so well, it has failed. This is most certainly not Superman Starts. Which
leaves both DC and Warner Bros. in a very uncompromising position. With Nolan’s
Batman trilogy over, and with films like Man
Of Steel and The Green Lantern to
fill it’s boots and bridge the gap until the impending Justice League movie,
they are going to have to make on hell of a Wonder Woman film to keep this
sinking ship afloat.
No comments:
Post a Comment