Also, since the flick grossed well over a half-billion dollars globally, I think it's safe to say that not only is it probably not as universally detested as they interwebs might indicate, but that in fact quite a few people seem to have actually enjoyed it, to say the least. In fact, one might even argue that mounting a defense of Man of Steel against the internet commentariat is a bit like defending the likeable, affable captain of the football team against the scowling cluster of angry nerds at the back of the lunchroom who wonder why girls don't like nice guys like them.
To be clear, I didn't love Man of Steel or anything. I only thought it was fine. It has its flaws, viz: the film never quite reconciles Producer Christopher Nolan's "gritty realism" (™) with Director Zach Snyder's fawning comic-book fidelity, resulting in a somewhat uneven tone. The opener on Krypton runs a bit too long. A lot of the dialogue is clunky. I can totally get why, after all the hype, some folks could claim that Man of Steel was a bit of a disappointment.
But I do feel that the vitriolic hatred directed at the film by the comment boards is largely unjustified. Maybe my viewing benefited from lowered expectation following its many mediocre reviews; it certainly benefited from my having then recently seen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which really is a long, dull, poorly-paced, boring slog of a misfire that fails its source material at every turn--serious, every movie looks better after seeing The Hobbit. In any case, I actually enjoyed Man of Steel, and although, again, a mega-successful blockbuster probably doesn't need much defending, I do feel this bizarre need to vindicate this movie against the most common charges leveled against it.
First: The Commentariat claim to be appalled--appalled, I tell you!--by the staggering amount of civilian deaths and property damage inflicted upon Metropolis by the film's climactic battle. This accusation always felt strange to me, because I've seen The Avengers too, a film that is uniformly beloved by all the comic book nerds, and justifiably so--it's a dumb film, but it's the right kind of dumb, a really fun dumb that takes itself just seriously enough for there to be real stakes but not so seriously that it ever forgets that this is still just a comic-book movie. Nevertheless, that film's climactic battle likewise features a staggering civilian death toll and property damage upon New York--a non-fictional city, mind you! (Apparently we're finally over 9/11 now?)
"Ah, but the difference is that the Avengers were constantly trying to protect civilians while battling the invading space hordes!" is what I've heard some cry out. To which I say: how convenient! I'm sure if Superman had had a group of super-friends to fight along his side, then he could also have prevented quite the same level of wanton death and destruction! But whereas The Avengers had each other and thus could teach a whole new generation of 9-year-olds the importance of teamwork, need I remind anyone that Superman was fighting this alien invasion all by himself?!
And not only was he fighting all by his lonesome self, but against a half-dozen supermen with all the equivalent powers as him--what's more, General Zod and his posse are certainly not the knock-off Phantom Menace drone-soldiers of The Avengers, but trained warriors and brilliant tacticians with zero empathy or sense of morality, manning a hyper-advanced starship that is trying to murder every living thing on Earth in order to terraform it into a second Krypton. Superman here is not only outnumbered, but (to paraphrase Nick Fury) hilariously out-gunned; if Supes forgets to catch a falling civilian from a collapsing sky-scraper, well, it's probably because he was a little side-tracked trying to stop the psychotic death machine from killing literally everyone else. Superman gets lambasted as an amoral sociopath, even though that's exactly who he's fighting! When the Third Reich blitz-bombed London, the English did not get mad at the RAF for shooting back.
Second: Spoiler Alert! Superman kills General Zod at the end. Darth Vader is also Luke's father and Bruce Willis was dead all along. Anyways, apparently if you're a comic book purist or whatever, then you find Superman's killing of Zod to be some complete betrayal of the character's ethos, who I guess is supposed to be virtue and decency personified, and thus bends over backwards to never kill anyone, even a genocidal sociopath, apparently. Of course, if someone's a comic book purist or whatever, then they should probably remember all the other times Superman has killed villains throughout his long, convoluted publishing history (I seem to remember Doomsday being a super-being he killed to save others? And Brainiac? And Darkseid? And, well, Zod? I also hear tell that in his early history, Superman battled mob-bosses and Union-busters by punching them. Probably killed them).
But besides the inconsistency of lambasting a super hero based upon an inconsistent comic book series, there's the rather stark simplicity of Superman's moral dilemma: This ain't the ol' Philosophy 101 thought problem of whether one should flip the railroad switch to save 2 people tied to the tracks up ahead but kills 1 other person on the other tracks or whatever. There isn't a profound moral quandary here. Simply put, Zod is Superman without the empathy. He is just as indestructible and powerful, and he's already demonstrated his willingness to kill everything on Earth given half a chance. I should hope Superman kills him, the same way he would a rabid dog. In fact, if Superman had somehow spared Zod, only for Zod to later break out of space-prison or whatever to try and destroy Earth again in the sequel, resulting in millions more civilian deaths and property damage, that would truly have been morally unconscionable! Not to mention a cheat. Superman kills Zod to prevent him from repeating the exact same destruction the Commentariat so lambasts about Man of Steel. Be consistent, nerds: you can't condemn the destruction in Man of Steel and Superman killing Zod in the same breath.
Third: Maybe not as major a plot point, but I've heard some folks complain about that penultimate scene when Superman destroys the drone that's been spying on him. "That's a $12 million piece of hardware!" shouts the general. "It was," corrects Superman. This scene for some feels emblematic of Man of Steel's utter disregard for the gratuitous destruction that this iteration of Superman wrecks everywhere he goes. To which all I can say is: Guys, when on Earth did we start defending Drone Warfare?! The U.S. government is spying on its own citizens, Edward Snowden has confirmed this for us, and Superman, who's Mr. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" incarnate, shows the government exactly what he thinks about that. The new Captain America sequel is basically anti-Drones and Edward Snowden with 'splosions, and the nerds love that movie (me included). In fact, Captain America 2 ends with the Cap destroying 3 trillion-dollar hover-carriers (price estimated), basically because they were our worst fears about Drone Warfare embodied, as well he should. So why get mad at Superman for destroying one single actual drone, then? Guys, we should be encouraging drone destruction in our pop art.
Frankly, the anger about the death toll and property damage in Man of Steel feels like a justification for hating on the flick, an a posteriori rationalization, not the primary motivation. (It's certainly not like massive destruction is a new feature of Hollywood films). So from whence cometh all the hate? My current theory is that folks still love the original Christopher Reeve Superman films; and especially after Reeve became some sort of folk hero after his paralysis and death, any attempts to reboot the franchise have been met with unconscious resentment. Now, I actually went and rewatched the original 1978 Superman when Man of Steel came out; I have fond childhood memories of that film, and I was curious to see how it holds up. And indeed, the Reeve love is mostly justified, he is a very charismatic actor with a boyish charm who has defined the roll for a generation; anytime Reeve is on screen, the movie sparkles. But what many forget is that there are large swaths of the film where Reeve is not on screen.
For example, do you remember that Lex Luthor has a comedic henchman named Olaf in the film? He's as unfunny as he sounds. There's also that scene of Superman flying through the night sky with Lois Lane in a hot-pink nightie, while she spoken-word recites the lyrics to the movie's love theme--it is so diabolically cringe-worthy that I assume most everyone blocks it out when they praise the film. Gene Hackman also really hams up Luthor with some of the dumbest real estate plans in existence: nuking the west coast to sink it into the sea? Really? He honestly thinks he'll be able to flip his Nevada beach-front property and not, say, be executed for crimes against humanity? Moreover, Superman III and IV both really sucked, giving the Reeve films a .500 batting average at best. Also--and apparently this bares repeating--you can't actually make the Earth spin backwards simply by flying really, really fast around it, and even if you could, such would not make one travel back in time. Superman is the late-70s equivalent of The Avengers--a fundamentally dumb film, but at least the right kind of dumb, a fun dumb. But still dumb. (I suspect The Avengers will age the same way).
Contrast the stupidity of Lex Luthor against the lead villain in Man of Steel--a xenophobic, nationalistic, patriotic yet sociopathic General Zod, who, driven mad first by his failed coup and then by the destruction of his home, goes off the deep end as he madly tries to reconstruct a lost world for his people by destroying Earth. His motivations are almost sympathetic, even as his methods are monstrous. There is a sort of weary plausibility to this Zod, because there are in fact people like Zod in real life, willing to kill and destroy everyone to create a homeland (I believe some of them are in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine as we speak). Hackman's Lex, meanwhile, is only cartoonishly evil, in the dumbest way possible.
Other things I preferred about Man of Steel: Lois Lane figures out from the beginning that Clark Kent is Superman. I frankly found that refreshing. Leave the will-they-won't-they schtick to Cheers and Friends, it was tired as a comic book trope over 30 years ago. I also liked the portrayal of the U.S. military, which in most of Hollywood is either impossibly competent (e.g. Independence Day) or impossibly incompetent and in need of rescuing (e.g. well, The Avengers). But in Man of Steel, they are appropriately distrustful of Superman when they first meet him, then appropriately trustful when he fights alongside them, and though they stand their ground when they can and are even reasonably competent in delivering that Phantom-Zone thingamajig, they are still absolutely outclassed and lose every battle with Zod everywhere, because, well, they are battling a super-advanced alien civilization.
The film is also very well-paced, which is the single most underrated element of any action film (though again, I admittedly may just think so cause everything is well-paced compared to The Hobbit. Mold growing between shower tiles is well-paced compared to The Hobbit.)
Again, I only liked Man of Steel, I certainly didn't love it or anything. I only wrote about this silly film for this long because I live in the ever-present dread that if I'm not constantly always writing about something, then I'll forget how to write altogether. (Practice makes perfect, after all). Maybe the larger lesson here is simply that I quit reading internet comment boards altogether, and thus find better things to write about. But in the meantime, I thought Man of Steel was a perfectly serviceable film, and hating on it is not only a disproportionate response, but frankly kind of an idiotic one, too.
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