I Went And Saw It

Something I did not really intend to do was see the new Superman film "Man Of Steel". I was frankly put off by its very existence. It bugs me that the previous film "Superman Returns" did so well at the box office and with critics, only to be condemned as some kind of disappointment. Even if all that weren't the case, I have decided I don't much like the director Zack Snyder. I had liked "300" and "Watchmen", but the rest are no good to me.

I had read the reviews for "Man Of Steel" (which are generally negative) and heard from those who've seen it (who mostly agree with the critics unless they are the most pronounced sort of fanboys) and felt no real compulsion to see the film. Really I felt vindicated. Somehow or another though, I was drawn into seeing the film. You can chalk it up to my inability to see a movie alone and therefore my suddenly increased willingness to see any movie people are going to see.

I'll grant that it wasn't as bad as I was led to believe. It was not much better than that, though. Like seemingly every big film I see these days, it had a litany of faults large and small that I have a hard time believing professional filmmakers were responsible for. One thing I will not put the film down for generally is that it failed to live up to the comics (as I've never read one of those), but I will observe that  this iteration of Superman seemed more willing to kill and allow innocents to die.

Outside of that, it was a lot of basic storytelling problems. The film certainly did not suffer from an overabundance of talky scenes, but maybe some scenes like that would have helped me care about characters and better understand the story. The action sequences, big and loud though they were, did not achieve that. The film seemed rather eager to get to those,  mostly skipping past Superman's formative years.

There were one or two things about the film which I liked okay. Michael Shannon's General Zod was one of the better-motivated villains I've seen, driven not so much to do evil as to serve his people in a manner that he does not really see as evil but which others clearly would. The film had some pretty stuff and some impressive action, but it just lacked a story I really could get behind, and it lacked much warmth. There are probably fewer and fewer who see that as a problem.

The movie-going excursion was pleasant enough given that I was with my friends, and it helped matters further to have a burrito with them afterwards. We enjoyed discussing the film's shortcomings and owning up to its few virtues. Make no mistake, we did not go to see it with the hopes that it would be bad. We wanted it to be good, and if we had felt otherwise we'd have gotten drunk first. Our intentions were good, so we came by our antipathy for the film honestly.