rainwaterspark | Man of Steel

"Flight" is probably my favorite track from Man of Steel. Hans Zimmer's work is as exquisite as usual, and "Flight" has an amazing balance of triumph and gravitas, sorrow and beauty that characterizes the whole film pretty well.

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The first time I watched Man of Steel, I had drunk pretty heavily from the MCU koolaid, I had read all the reviews that criticized the movie for being too "dark" and "gritty" and eagerly hopped on the bandwagon. To me, the whole movie was forgettable, just a several-hours-long experiment in how many buildings could be blown up via CGI.

Fastforward a year later. I was disillusioned by the MCU and many Marvel fans, had read alternative takes on the movie, was excited by the initial teaser for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and decided to give Man of Steel another go.

And my opinion of the movie ended up changing pretty dramatically.

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Man of Steel is not the same kind of popcorn flick that MCU movies by and large are. It is a different kind of movie, and has goals and execution that are very, very unlike what Marvel tries to accomplish in the MCU movies.

From the beginning, the opening scene captures the balance of triumph and sorrow that sets the tone for the film. The film begins with the beauty of new life, set amongst the tragedy of a dying world. The only way for Jor-El and Lara to save their son is to send him away, knowing that they will never see him again, knowing there is a chance he will die in space, alone, but that sending him away is the best chance they can give him of survival. That sense of bittersweetness and sorrow is echoed again in the finale—in the immense destruction left in the wake of the Kryptonians' attempted terraforming, and Clark's anguish over having to kill Zod just to stop him from murdering a family. [*Sidenote: Anyone who thinks Superman has a "no-kill rule" or that Superman killing Zod is a shocking thing is not an expert on Superman and should not claim to be.] This is a movie in which characters sacrifice much for the greater good, and nothing can be achieved without a cost.

In the first half, the film is like a puzzle, the various elements from Clark's life, captured with a micro-focused lens, slowly coming together to paint a portrait of what kind of man he is. And the film does it well: from Clark's very first scene saving the workers on the oil rig, we have a sense that he is a bit of an outsider, that he seems isolated from other people in certain ways, and yet he has a fundamental desire to help humanity. We see that Clark is an invincible being of immense power, and yet he is human and vulnerable, too. That as a boy, he suffers from his overwhelming gifts but also from regular schoolyard bullying, and as a man, he's still trying to figure out where he belongs. And that's something that anchors the film: Clark's own humanity and his respect and love for the rest of humanity around him, in spite of the negative side of human nature.

The negatives are plenty. Lara and the Kents' fears for Clark are very real—he could well have been captured by the government and dissected or locked away as a lab rat, if not outright killed. Clark gets bullied, both as a kid and as an adult. He encounters douchebags like the truck driver who sexually harasses a waitress. The government is more than willing to sacrifice him to Zod if that will make Zod go away. And the thing is, these reactions all feel so real. "People are afraid of what they don't understand," Jonathan says—and it's true. Just like how in the Nolan films, the police initially reacted with fear toward the vigilante Batman, it's hard to imagine people wouldn't react the way they do in Man of Steel in the face of a powerful alien being.

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Can I take a moment to talk about the female characters in the film? Because the film's treatment of female characters is above-average, and gets bumped up to "pretty great" when you start comparing it with other superhero films.

Lois Lane is the deuteragonist of the film. Her quest for the truth about Clark is interwoven with Clark's quest to find the truth about himself, her faith in Clark inspires him, and she ends up playing a pivotal role in helping to destroy the World Engine.

Lara Lor-Van and Martha Kent are both pretty darn cool. Faora-Ul is a badass. She's Zod's second-in-command and an absolutely terrifying combatant. The American military includes several women shown in its ranks. Jenny, the Daily Planet intern, is pretty significantly featured for a secondary character. Not to mention, Clark himself is extremely respectful towards women and has a great relationship with his mother. And not a single woman is gratuitously sexualized or fridged in the film.

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"You'll just have to decide what kind of man you'll want to grow up to be, Clark, because, whoever that man is, good character or bad, he's—he's gonna change the world." - Jonathan Kent

It's easy, as an audience member who knows the basics about Superman because of the enduring cultural currency the character has, to watch the movie with a sense of blasé security about the kind of man Superman will grow up to be, but that's not the best way to view this film. It strikes me how precarious young Clark's situation is in the universe of the film, because here you have this being who is more powerful than anything that exists on Earth, and if he wanted to, he could conquer the world and become a global dictator (*cough*Injustice*cough*).

That's what makes Clark's story all the more amazing. He could become a god—as Jor-El suggests—but instead, he doesn't. Clark respects humanity. That's why he, in his own words, "let his father die": because he loved and respected Jonathan Kent enough to honor his last wishes, even though the choice obviously caused him great pain. That scene gets criticized a lot, but for Clark to have ignored Jonathan's express command would have been an act of disrespect. It would've been a statement that Clark knew better than him what was the "right" thing to do. And sure, the image of the authority-disobeying rebel who turns out to know better than the rigid, uncreative authority figures is often attractive to American audiences. But objectively, is the idea that authorities are all idiots and disobedience makes someone a hero really a positive one? Man of Steel makes it clear that it's not.

It's why when Zod broadcasts his ultimatum to Earth, Clark decides to hand himself over to the government, so humanity can receive the credit for cooperating with Zod. Lois and Clark even explicitly point out that that's why he lets the government put him in handcuffs—not because they actually do anything, but so humanity can feel safe around him. He surrenders himself to mankind. If he wanted to, Clark could've flown into outer space and taken on Zod himself. But he doesn't. Even though he expresses mistrust of humanity to the priest, he doesn't. Because he views himself as (partly) human, not above humans, and he has respect for his fellow humans. So much so that he cooperates with the American military in order to stop the World Engine, instead of just trying to save the world himself. The film is not about a solitary savior who views himself as above humanity, but about Clark coming together with humanity, as an equal, to face a shared threat together.

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"You are weak, Son of El. Unsure of yourself. The fact that you possess a sense of morality, and we do not, gives us an evolutionary advantage. And if history has proven anything...it is that evolution always wins." - Faora-Ul

Man of Steel reminds me of Pacific Rim in a way: both movies are about humanity facing an enemy they cannot hope to win against.

Zod, Faora, and the other Kryptonians are way beyond humanity's league. They are stronger, faster, bulletproof, technologically lightyears ahead, and have no weakness except the Sun's ultraviolet rays and Earth's atmosphere—and even then, with just a bit of concentration, those become a nonissue. They manage to cause so much death and destruction because humanity can't stop them. It's not "grimdark" to explore what would happen if humanity's worst nightmare for sentient alien life—alien beings who are physically and technologically superior to humanity—decided they wanted to invade Earth.

The Kryptonians are even beyond Superman's league. It's hard for me to wrap my head around why people seem to hate the mass destruction in Man of Steel, considering that the film does the same thing many films do: have a villain who far outclasses the hero. And that's what Zod and Faora are to Clark. Somehow, people seem to forget not just that Clark has never saved the world before, but also that Clark has quite literally not even so much as thrown a punch before fighting them. He's spent his entire life not fighting. Now he's fighting enemies who not only match him in terms of abilities, but who also, unlike him, were genetically engineered to be perfect soldiers and spent their entire lives honing their combat skills.

(Which, in case you missed it, Zod explicitly hammers home by yelling at Clark: "Where did you train? ON A FARM?!?")

If people want a film where Superman faces a villain who actually gives him a run for his money, a villain who can actually punch him back, it's not "grimdark" to show the consequences of that confrontation and the collateral damage to a planet that was literally not meant for beings of such power to exist.

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"The symbol of the House of El means 'hope.' Embodied within that hope is the fundamental belief in the potential of every person to be a force for good. That's what you can bring them.
[...]
You will give people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble; they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders." - Jor-El

People who call Man of Steel "dark" and "gritty" are using those terms in an overly broad way. Man of Steel is about consequences and loss, but it is far from "gritty."

People point to the destruction in Metropolis as evidence of Clark somehow "not caring" about saving people. Even though while Metropolis was being flattened, he was on the other side of the planet, trying to save the world. Even though he spent the entire movie saving people, from the bus full of his classmates to the workers on the oil rig to Lois Lane to the American soldiers during the fight in Smallville. The essence of Superman is still there in the movie.

Yet while the movie is about Clark's immense power and his capacity to save humanity ("You can save her, Kal. You can save all of them," Jor-El later tells him), it is also, equally, about how Clark helps people to save themselves, to rise to the occasion in the face of unimaginable odds. Like The Dark Knight before it, Man of Steel believes that in spite of the flaws, human nature is a powerful force for good.

This is evident in Clark's first scene. The scene shows Clark on a fishing boat, unaware as a metal cage is about to drop on top of him. We, the audience, know that Clark wouldn't be hurt. But the other fishermen don't know that, and one of them risks his own safety to push Clark out of the way. It is an amazing inversion of what you'd normally expect would be an introductory scene for Superman: instead of Superman saving a civilian, a civilian saves Superman. It's this facet of human nature, this instinct to help and do good, that Clark reciprocates, that inspires him as Superman, and that he inspires in turn.

Humans aren't lost, frightened sheep to be herded to salvation in the movie. The American military constantly takes charge to defend the United States and American citizens. When Metropolis is being flattened into dust, policemen are frantically redirecting people to safety (without Clark's direction, unlike in The Avengers). Lois does her darndest to save herself from Zod's ship. Jor-El's choice of words to Clark is crucial: not "you will accomplish wonders for them," but "you will help them accomplish wonders."

Over and over again, Man of Steel shows that every ordinary human being has the ability to become a hero. We see it in Lois Lane's decision to drop her story about Clark because it's the right thing to do. We see it in Colonel Hardy and every American soldier who goes to fight the Kryptonians, knowing that they are hopelessly outmatched, knowing that they may have no chance, but they are willing to lay down their lives if that is what it takes. We see it in Perry and Lombard trying to help Jenny out of the rubble, even though they know they will probably die trying, and staying with her so that she wouldn't have to be alone. And the film deliberately shows Perry's act of heroism as parallel to Clark's attempt to destroy the World Engine, because even ordinary people are capable of extraordinary heroism.

And that's a profound statement of optimism if I've ever heard one.

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My point is not to convince everyone that they should love Man of Steel, or to demand that the haters change their opinion. It is fine not to prefer the tone of Man of Steel as a movie about sacrifice and facing consequences. And obviously, Man of Steel isn't a perfect movie, if such a thing even exists. (Personally, I really, really wanted an explanation as for why the Superman suit just happened to be on a really old Kryptonian scout ship.)

However, I will say that much of the criticism of Man of Steel is framed in quite baffling ways. The most common things people say are either factually inaccurate (i.e. "Superman didn't care about dying civilians," "Superman failed Metropolis," "Clark had no good reason not to save his father," "Superman is supposed to have a no-kill rule") or have an underlying current of moral superiority, often when comparing Man of Steel to Marvel movies (I swear, if I see one more comparison between Man of Steel and Captain America: The Winter Soldier or The Avengers, I will destroy a power plant). People are obviously free to disagree with the artistic and narrative choices made in a film, but it's equally obvious that just because you don't agree with a choice, doesn't mean that choice is necessarily inferior.

I think it's worth trying to watch Man of Steel without any preconceptions about what a "Superman movie" should be. When you accept the movie for what it is and what it's trying to do, rather than trying to compare it to Marvel or some hypothetical "ideal Superman movie," it can be a rewarding experience.

[BONUS: Man of Steel Myths: Superman Saved No One, Fighting Zod Was Easy - Kal Caused Collateral Damage, Metropolis Was Annihilated]