"Man of Steel"

This is what you get for flying in US
airspace without proper authorisation.

I have to admit that after I first saw the trailer I was kind of hoping that this Superman adaptation would die on its arse for no better reason than because I live in hope that every now and again surely the general audience isn't going to lap up the garbage that Hollywood trough-feeds them several times a year, so when reviews started appearing in 2013 which were hardly giving high praise to Man of Steel I felt as if there wasn't a great need to see the film because evidently I was probably not going to enjoy it. That being said, "controversial" ended up being a better descriptor for Man of Steel because it seemed like lines were fairly divided as to whether it was a refreshing or even necessary new take on Superman or if it was just something Zach Snyder had cooked up on the Watchmen barbecue with the straggly leftovers of Christopher Nolan's imagination. Eventually curiosity got the better of me, however, so I ended up grabbing Man of Steel on DVD so I could check it out, which I just did. So here we go.

Nolan style Red Tornado.

It's not terrible. It's not great. It's not even average. Man of Steel is a really weird film. It feels like half a film, like there are scenes missing, like there are bits left out. With a plot that seems to go from a hyper-extended set up to an equally elongated climax with what I perceived as no identifiable middle ground, filmed on the contemporary digital equivalent of grainy stock, utilising a sparse screenplay, presenting sketchily-developed characters and focusing ultimately on over-the-top CGI action, the film feels vague, dreamlike even. It felt like abstract art to me, the Hollywood superhero equivalent of arthouse or minimalist cinema. Dialogue is heavily plot-driven, generally humourless and interspersed by long periods of silence. Characters talk at each other rather than to each other. I feel like if I had watched it with the sound off I would have still understood what was going on. There is some fairly cack-handed dialogue as well, like Lois blurting out the fact that she's a Pulitzer winner arbitrarily for the sake of the audience and the general asking Superman at the end "Are you effin' stoopid?" How old is he, twelve? I felt like there was little to grasp in the film dramatically, more featuring characters floating in reverie through set pieces. It's a strange.

Obi-Wan finally reaches General Grievous' lair.

Large amounts of the plot, of course, we've seen all before. On Krypton, General Zod and his minions attempt a coup, fail and are trapped in the Phantom Zone. Jor-El and his wife Lara send their son Kal to Earth. Krypton blows up. This is Superman 101. To avoid feeling too repetitious of 1978's "Superman" we see the life of Clark Kent in a series of meaningfully-arranged flashbacks: him discovering his powers, his feelings of isolation, his efforts to discover his identity and his relationship with his foster parents. In this film Pa Kent comes across as a bit of a dick: it seems like he wants Clark to hide himself from the world - or he wants him to just wait until the time is ripe. I don't know, really. Maybe supportive parents like Superman often has in adaptations are too cornball these days or something but Pa just seems irrational here, like he's as scared of change as the people he warns Clark about.

"Zach and Chris thought the old 'cape and tights' wouldn't appeal
to modern audiences, so this is the new Superman costume."

It turns out long ago, before the dark times and the Empire and what not, Kryptonians had outposts all over the galaxy. Superman is seemingly looking for the one on Earth so he can get more information about his origins. He overhears two rather out-of-order soldiers gasbagging about some top secret discovery so I suppose he figures "Hey, might be aliens, I'm an alien, might be to do with me." We have to read this into it, of course. For most of this part of the film adult Clark barely speaks to anyone or expresses anything especially clear about his motivations. Also he wrecks some guy's truck. It's sort of like the bit at the end of "Superman II" where he goes back to the diner and beats up that douchebag in the trucker hat who was mean to him when he didn't have his powers.

'Sup.

Anyway Lois Lane of course turns up and conveniently discovers the alien spaceship as well, but is accosted by alien security. Superman leaves her on the ice where she somehow survives the night and the Kryptonian ship pisses off to the Arctic Circle or something so that Superman can meet the AI replica of his father, who is Russell Crowe channelling Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequels. Somehow Superman's costume is on this ancient Kryptonian ship too. I guess while they were chatting about history robo Jor-El got the ship to do a respray job on an old uniform? Jor-El gives Superman a big speech while inspiring music plays in the background about how he can help the human race and so on, Superman flies through a mountain and then proceeds to do... not very much, because then Zod and his goons show up in a space ship and send a threatening but rather fuzzy television message to humanity. For some reason they can send a message that displays on every device in the world in multiple human languages but they can't get a good picture. They want Superman because they think he has the "codex," an ancient Kryptonian database of genetic code Zod needs to rebuild their race. Oh yeah, in this version Kryptonians are all flesh vat babies and Superman was the first natural birth in centuries. They're all programmed with various purposes, but he's a free agent. Zod's purpose is to be a dick.

"Why hast thou forsaken me?"

So Superman hands himself over to the US military so they can hand him over to Zod after giving them a healthy warning about how to not trust Zod. They do so, and Zod's people take Lois with them too for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Zod outlines his master plan to Superman, Lois uses robo Jor-El to escape, Zod attacks Ma Kent, Superman has a huge fight with Faora, a comic character who nonetheless must inevitably be compared to Ursa from "Superman II," and some other big bloke who never takes his helmet off so they can pay him less. In the ensuing brawl they basically wreck Smallville. After some breathing issues Zod's folks retreat and launch a giant gravity machine that is going to turn Earth into a Krypton-like environment somehow, increasing Earth's mass despite introducing no new material. One end of the device conveniently lands in Metropolis. Superman reveals that his rocket crib will launch everything back into the Phantom Zone somehow, so the army fly off to Metropolis to deliver it despite how obviously useless all their equipment is against Zod's forces, and Superman flies off to the other side of the world to have a boring CGI struggle with some metal tentacles defending the opposite end of the gravity device, which he defeats by letting the runtime drag on.

"Miss Lane, you must follow my instructions to the letter
if we are to assemble the telephone cannon in time."

Having blown up one end, Superman arrives to stop Zod's ship from destroying the plane with his rocket onboard, the soldiers all sacrifice themselves, the machine and all of Zod's chaps get sucked back into the Phantom Zone, Lois conveniently falls out of the plane, Superman catches her and they have hot sloppy make outs in the middle of a dustbowl. Why was Lois even on the plane? She's just a reporter. Incidentally the gravity machine absolutely wrecks central Metropolis, knocking over numerous buildings and presumably killing tens of thousands in some of the most heinous post-9-11 masturbatory fervour imaginable with modern effects. This is to give Laurence Fishburne's Perry White, some guy, and some girl who might be female Jimmy Olsen something to do in the film where they feel present mostly as lip service. Also, Superman must wear some special Kryptonian concrete in his hair because despite getting thrown through about a hundred buildings in this film he never musses it up.

"We must test the resilience of every part of your body."

Zod's still alive so he and Superman have a final big dust-up in Metropolis where they wreck the place even more, and then Zod forces Superman to kill him in order to save some innocents. I know traditionally Superman doesn't kill, but meh, I mean, Zod was a dick and he was about to be an even bigger dick. Then again, couldn't Superman have, I don't know, flown in the air while keeping him in that headlock? Dunno what he'd do with him then but that's the screenwriter's job. Superman lets out a giant howl of anguish, he puts his head comfortingly against Lois' maternal regions, knocks a drone plane out of the sky because hey, he's Superman and he's a dick, and gets a job at the Daily Planet. Interesting alternative take, by the way - in this version Lois knows Clark is Superman. It's just that everyone else doesn't. I don't mind. I just wish they'd had more dialogue together. Amy Adams is okay as Lois, presenting her as a reasonably competent person doing the best in a situation where she's extremely out of her depth, but at times it does feel like the film is forcing her into the plot without much explanation. Henry Cavill's got a nice, calm, reassuring tone as Superman, and I would have liked to have seen more of that. We see plenty of him doing things, flying around and beating people up, mostly, but not enough of him just being a person, like in the interview scene or the drone plane scene. Also, he seems to transform from being a troubled guy trying to find his place in the world, brooding on his past and occasionally lashing out, to the familiarly calmly-spoken Superman we know who wants to put people at their ease and do the right thing as much as possible, without much of a clear transition. My favourite parts were the conversations where they actually let Superman talk and feel like Superman, and I think we needed a bit more of that so that we could see him change a bit more clearly. Characterisation definitely gets the short straw.

"Kneel, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Zod in his underpants!"

So that's Man of Steel for you. There are definitely some interesting ideas. For example, the notion embodied in Zod is that often "evil" people, for want of a better term, use their "nature" or circumstances as an excuse for their deeds. Faora's remarks about their amorality shows an awareness of their wrongdoing which belies their rationalisation. I don't think we can simply see Zod as misguided because he starts wrecking Earth purely out of impatience and seems to care not so much for the codex and the genetic survival of his race as he does about a Kryptonian existing who is not under his rule. Michael Shannon's a bit of a funny looking fellow but all in all I did find his Zod reasonably compelling. Another notion which the film conveys with ruthless effectiveness is the artificiality and frailty of what many of us take for granted: the modern, especially urban, world. All our technology, organisation and infrastructure of our increasingly complex society despite their fundamental importance to our modern lifestyle are nonetheless existentially brittle. It's effective in taking the kind of thoughtless urban mayhem from recent blockbusters like the Transformers films and The Avengers and exaggerating it to its logical extreme. What meaning have office blocks, freight trains, petrol stations against the raw fury of nature? It's a troubling thought, and might reflect Pa Kent's inconsistent protectiveness of the status quo. In this regard what I fear gets glossed over, however, are any consequences for the film's events. Surely a disaster like this would cripple the nation, with so much of a city being destroyed? Yet it's left unrevealed, suggestions in the media being that it will be explored in the sequel with Batman. Why doesn't Superman try to steer the conflict towards more neutral ground where civilians won't get hurt? Regardless, I found it problematic.

They'll be disappointed it's too late to invade Krypton after this.

As such in my opinion this film needed to pace itself a little better. I feel like there needed to be some middle ground after he became Superman but before Zod showed up, and a less rushed coda. The action is artificial and extremely repetitive - Kryptonians blasting each other through multiple walls or vehicles, and buildings falling over as fleeing civilians are swallowed up in clouds of smoke and dust are the two items on the menu - and it seems to me like Zach Snyder exhausts his bag of tricks by the end of the Smallville battle. Its impression of a two-act structure reminds me more than anything of another 2013 action blockbuster with which it has numerous parallels - "Star Trek Into Darkness" (seriously: the villain is a superhuman who believes in eugenics and genetic superiority, the second half of the film is one giant climax, the protagonist loses a father figure, skyscrapers get knocked over by a big spaceship) - but Man of Steel feels more confused than fatuous like that one.

Superman's new look. He calls it 'Magnum.'

I don't believe that a perfect Superman film has ever been made, but the closest approach is easily the 1978 one. Man of Steel is an interesting film in many ways, but at the same time I personally think it is held back by an ultimately insurmountable insubstantiality in its narrative and dialogue. In fact if anything it actually rather reminds me of 2011's Green Lantern. There are films that are held back by an excessive focus on characterisation - usually, simplistic, manipulative, broadly-drawn characterisation - which limits the development of the ideas and the plot, but this is a film where the plot overrides characterisation, and where occasionally ideas cause the plot to buckle, such as Pa Kent's motivations. As I've said, however, some memorable ideas are conveyed, Henry Cavill's very watchable as Superman when they give him the opportunity to be, and Shannon's Zod is surprisingly effective. There are definitely good bits in here, but they're not capitalised upon sufficiently. This film really needed to step back, take a breath and sort out a better balance of its components. As it is the work feels dimly glimpsed, like a plot synopsis brought to life or a daydream rather than an actual film, and I hope with the sequel and the apparent assembly of a broader DC comics film narrative that the future films take a more grounded approach.

Hindsight: A 2013 Cinematic Retrospective

Apparently I didn't see as many films in 2013 as I did in 2012, so I suppose I can claim that as a small victory. Yeah, take that Hollywood, your billion-dollar coffers ended up about sixty dollars less than they were the year before. That would generally mean I couldn't do quite as expansive a gaze as I might otherwise would have, but let's not permit reality to get in the way of a good article and begin with my "Main 5 films you might have expected me to see but I didn't."

Main 5 Films You might have Expected Me to See but I Didn't

5. Kick Ass 2: I read the original comic, saw the original film, film wasn't as good as the comic (quelle surprise). Was I going to bother reading the sequel comic? No way, Mark Millar's one of those boring writers these days who took the wrong lesson from Watchmen and thinks that it's cool and edgy to have superheroes swear and molest each other. Why would I see the film?

"What's all the hubbub, bub?"

4. The Wolverine: The first Wolverine-only film (and no I don't mean X-Men 1) was pretty crap, especially if you're the kind of person who cares that they messed up Deadpool (I am not one of those people). Before it got taken down, I watched the post-credits sequence from this new one with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen setting up X-Men: Days of Future Past, but there was no way I was going to watch the whole film. Life's just too short.

3. Pacific Rim: If I want to see giant CGI robots fighting giant CGI dinosaurs - oh wait, I have absolutely no interest in seeing that.

2. The Great Gatsby: I very much like the book, as you'd expect, but I couldn't be arsed seeing some over-the-top Baz Luhrmann extravaganza with a modern soundtrack. C'mon, Gatsby in 3D? Fitzgerald's original novel was about the superificality of interbellum culture. It seems kind of blinkered to adapt it as a flashy one hundred million dollar film.

"I'm always around."

1. Man of Steel: I was originally optimistic about a Snyder-directed, Nolan-produced Superman film, but then I saw The Dark Knight Rises and I realised that if there was anything I wanted less than any more of the Nolan treatment on Batman, it was the Nolan treatment on Superman. I'll probably catch it on DVD one day but at the time I didn't have anywhere near sufficient motivation to bother with typical Hollywood dark, angsty crap, especially applied to Superman of all people. Maybe it's a good film, but somehow I doubt it.

Main 1 Film I didn't see which also has a very easy to parody name

"The Secret Life of Walter Shitty"

Yeah, I know it's based on a short story, but still, it was all too perfect given that anyone could see about five seconds of the trailer for this and know that it would be a disaster. No offence to Ben Stiller, but he can piss off. 

Middle 5 Films of 2013:

These are five films I happened to see in 2013, none of which really seriously impressed me, but none of which are going to go into the "bottom three" either.

Gangster Squad: Yeah, this is a 2013 film. I was surprised too, given how long ago it feels like it has been since I saw it. Was it a particularly good film? Not especially. Was it a particularly bad film? By no means. You know what I went into Gangster Squad expecting? A film about a bunch of guys in suits and fedoras in the 1940s gunning down gangsters with tommy guns. You know what I got? Exactly that. Yeah, it could have been better, but I enjoyed it well enough, and the brain-to-burger-patty gag was kind of funny.

Mama: Written by Neil Cross, who wrote some of 2013's episodes of New Who, this was an okay horror film that kind of turned into borderline fantasy by the end. Featuring some decent moments of tension and some pretty disturbing imagery concerning two little girls being raised in an isolated cabin by a ghost, it probably gave the resident spook a bit too much attention at the end, lessening some of the creature's impact. Also the psychologist goes off to the haunted cabin by himself, which is pretty cliché.

The World's End: I don't know what it was, but this film just didn't do it for me. It wasn't funny enough. Yes, it had a certain bite that the previous films arguably didn't have, but frankly I just didn't find the parody to be sufficiently effective or noteworthy and as a general rule I don't think the premise lent itself to comedy that well. Hot Fuzz is still the best of these films by a mile, and I think I would probably prefer Shaun of the Dead to this one as well.

Forsooth!

Thor: The Dark World: I have a bit of a soft spot for the original Thor so I was relatively optimistic about this one, and I think it's a decent if not especially memorable instalment. It probably sells itself a bit too shamelessly to the fandom's obsession with Loki and the proper villain, Malekith, is a waste of Christopher Eccleston in a silly role. I thought the ending was far stronger than the opening, when the film basically turned into an action comedy with portals. I didn't like Selvig going crazy but for some reason Darcy really did it for me in this one. I thought Frigga's murder was forced angst but I really enjoyed Chris Evans' cameo as Loki-as-Cap. How does Chris O'Dowd manage to get into everything?

Black with twinkly bits.

Gravity: There was a lot of buzz around this film. I guess it looks nice, but other than the effects it's fairly insubstantial and the scenario is absurdly contrived. Sandra Bullock puts in a perfectly adequate performance in the lead role but the film sorely misses George Clooney after his character is killed off at the end of the first act, which I'm sure was a largely conscious decision to enhance our sense of isolation and despair with the dour Ryan. The film has a decent amount of tension but there's not much to say in terms of story and character, and in my opinion impressive effects do not an impressive film make, especially when they're all cooked up in a computer anyway.

Bottom 3 Films of 2013

These are the three films I saw in 2013 that I was disappointed by or I consider to have wasted my time. The last instalment gets my award for worst film of 2013.

Where does his nose go?

Iron Man 3: This isn't a terrible film but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as everyone else seems to. I feel like I'm expected to relate to Tony Stark's problems, but I don't. He's rich, he has loads of armoured suits and he's dating Gwyneth Paltrow. Sure, he had to fly through a space hole in The Avengers carrying a nuclear missile, but so what? Why was that so traumatic? The main villain, Killian, is boring, Iron Man spends ages hanging around with a little kid, and the finale is a typical "spend the CGI budget" anaesthetic disaster of Stark jumping in and out of flying suits that never appeared before or since. Unlike some people, I didn't care about the twist regarding the Mandarin, but I would still have taken events in a different direction. I actually liked the menace of Ben Kingsley's character's performances and, if played straight, I think the character could have been a far superior alternative to Guy Pearce breathing fire. The film could also, I feel, have taken a more apocalyptic tone as in the Mandarin's broadcasts, which were what I found most compelling about the film. Seriously, how long does he spend out of the suit? I might need to rewatch this but I wasn't impressed.

Smaug with his gold.

Okay, I rewatched it. It's better than I remembered but it's still not great.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: I've already reviewed this in exhaustive detail here. Put simply, it's too long, it's boring, it plays a really weird game with the source material, it doesn't live up even to the other films, there's too much CGI, it's still too unfocused from the title character and it feels incredibly schizophrenic, as if it can't decide if it's a serious or comedic film. It's crap.

And thus my award for worst film of 2013 goes to:

"Just Khan? Nothing else?"

Star Trek Into Darkness: Like the previous film, my review of this film provides, I think, sufficient detail. To sum it up, however, this is a boring, lowbrow, CGI-ridden action film puppeteering the long-dead corpse of a franchise that used to have some kind of satirical or reflective purpose but is now nothing more than brainless, crass exploitation. The script is mediocre, the performances are all uninspiring and it tries to score points by blatantly ripping stuff off from the vastly, stratospherically superior The Wrath of Khan. It's the utterly worst, most abysmal, sleazily corporate forced-geek-nostalgia garbage I can imagine for an audience that prefers to be told what to enjoy and be interested in than actually make their own decisions. This is junk cinema that represents everything that is wrong with modern Hollywood and modern Western pop culture in general.

Top Film of 2013

I did not enjoy drawing this.

So with that out of the way, there's only one option left for my top film of 2013, and it's more earned that spot by a process of elimination than anything else because I honestly didn't even like it that much. I just can't think of another film it'd be worth giving this spot to, except maybe Thor: The Dark World, and I definitely didn't enjoy that to a huge extent so what choice do I have?

The Conjuring: Yep, it's a horror film by James Wan starring Patrick Wilson. It was spooky with a nice sense of tension and in my opinion effectively set up the notion of a haunted location in a way that didn't seem too predictable. Making a scenario featuring a large family and consequently large cast still give a frustrating sense of isolation and abandonment work was quite impressive in my view and the relative complexity of the plot worked in its favour, along with a healthy dose of 1970s atmosphere which served to keep things interesting. I'll be curious to see the sequel.