Counter Offensive

Geeks... Nerds... Countrymen... I am so so ashamed of you right now. Most of you anyway.

You are whining, inconsolable children.

Your mother tells you she is making chicken for dinner, and you cry. "We had chicken last week mom! I'm tired of chicken!" So your good, saintly mother orders pizza instead. But when the delicious pizza arrives, they didn't put enough mushrooms on it to suit you, and there is too much sauce. You tell your mother you wished she had just made chicken instead.

Man of Steel people. Man of Steel.

You complained and complained about Superman Returns. You cried and whined that it was too beholding to the Donner movies. Lex Luthor again!? Why is this movie so goofy and cartoony? Why is Lex a real estate shark instead of a brilliant evil mastermind? Why does he have a posse of stereotypes following him around? What's with this chick and the dog? Why is Lois too god damn stupid to tell that Clark Kent is Superman? Why cant Superman actually fight someone that he gets to punch?

Let's get something out of the way up front folks. I am not a Superman fan. I did not read the books. I did not follow the stories. I didn't care about the character because he had nothing to offer me. He was a god-like blank, with the most generic idea of "good" that could possibly be imagined. In 1992, or 1993, whenever it was... When DC had the big "Death of Superman" event... even at the height of my comic collecting frenzy, I couldn't be bothered to buy it. Because Superman was dumb.

"What a boring character." I said.

Well I think I might be a Superman fan now because of this movie. And I hope that really pisses you people off.

Since I never followed the comics, instead I'm going to reference what everyone seems to think is the holy grail of Superman movies... Donner's Superman, and the Donner cut of Superman II. These I have seen many times, and never particularly enjoyed. Not because they weren't great films for their time. But just because it was Superman, and meh.

First of all, lets get the complaints I agree with out of the way... Lois Lane was definitely forced upon this movie. Someone said you cant have a Superman film without Lois Lane, and so they stuck her everywhere they possibly could and in several places they shouldn't have. I get the feeling that there was a conscious effort to "empower" Lois by at least making her seem tough by going dangerous places. But then they kind of forgot about that, and just had Superman saving her a lot anyway. It was a bit silly. They should have just met at the end of the film I would think. But whatever.

Johnathon Kent's death is... a little weird, and out of place. I didn't really like that at all. It was just a very strange scene. Also, the disaster porn at the end could have been toned down a bit, however I think it has merit, and I'll explain that later on.

Alright folks... Grab some popcorn, and get comfortable in your chair, because I'm about to punch some parts of the Weapon Mods review through a few buildings. Also, SPOILERS. Back off if you haven't seen this movie.

First order of business..."Russel Crowe has "must beat someones ass" in his contract"? You're god damn right he does. He's fucking Russell Crowe. If you can't appreciate that, why even bother seeing movies folks? I don't see anybody bitching about Sly Stallone or Bruce Willis having the same clause. Well, except for people who hate movies that is.

The opening sequence with Jor-El, accompanied by the AMAZING musical arrangement of this film, really set the tone of awesome from that point on. I liked that they gave Jor-El a reasoning for blasting his son into space other than "MY PLANET IS 'BOUT TO SPLODE!! GET OUT OF HERE SON!!!" by in essence making Kal-El and his family fugitives. I always wondered why the fuck nobody else on the planet had a little baby sized ship to get their kids (or maybe even themselves as well?) the hell out of there. Sure, Jor-El was a big shot scientist, but surely there were all kinds of other scientists there, and surely they would have some interest in preserving their race, and maybe venture a guess that 'sploding was about to occur. It was a nicely played little addition to the story, I think. When I sat down for this film I expected ten minutes of Russell Crowe as Jor-El. Maybe saying something inspirational to his kid and launching him away, and then some hologram shenanigans later on. What I got turned out to be one of my favorite moments, and characters of the whole film.

"The heat vision is overused, and the ice breath wasn't used"

Jeeeeeesus Christ. This is reaching. I'm not even going to dignify this with an argument other than to say that all of his powers were fairly well represented in my opinion, except for the ice breath. Probably because they thought it seemed a little goofy. Because it is.

Clark misusing his powers? I'm going to go ahead and refer you to the diner scene in Superman 2 where Clark returns after getting his powers back just to make a point. In the process he breaks this fool's hand, spins him at super speeds in a chair, then throws him along a bar counter into a pinball machine. But oh... Chris Reeve Superman would never ever fuck up a womanizing pig's vehicle...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nu3CLQm-SI

Next up, complaining about the acceptance of the outfit is just straight up petty nitpicking. Did you really need to see ten minutes of Jor-El explaining to us the significance of the uniform? It was discussed numerous times before the film was even released that the makers wanted to show a reasoning for the suit. They SHOW you that reasoning on Krypton at the very beginning of the film. Krytonians are a cape and armor wearing society, living on a planet with a harsh environment. The traditional "Superman" suit is shown to be a sort of underclothes for their normal armor, and the symbol is explained to be of some meaning. "Hope" in Kal-El's case.

"The audience gets beat over the head with the Superman Messiah mythos"

This coming from the man who told me himself, that Superman is supposed to be "better" than us, and never make mistakes. Not be dark and brooding.

And while we're on the subject of this bullshit "dark and brooding" thing... Where is all of that coming from internet? It's not like they made Superman emo. I mean the child version is a little iffy, but the dude is a kid who could rip bullies in half, but he has to constantly hold back because it's the right thing to do. He saves a whole school bus full of kids who torment him because he's weird, and even goes back to save the guy who just called him "Dick Splash" 5 seconds ago. Look, if I were him, I'd save the bus... But fuck that "Dick Splash" dude... His ass can drown. What is he supposed to do? You think kids wouldn't torment a child like Clark who had to separate himself from everyone like that? I've been to public schools, folks... Guess again.

And the adult Clark is no more dark and brooding than I am shiny and happy. Dude just wants to know who he is and why he's here. It doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me, and it seems very god damned HUMAN as well, for those of you who are complaining that he isn't human enough. Wondering where your place in the world is kind of seems like the most human thing there is if you ask me. Otherwise I've been doing the last 31 years of my life all wrong. It's a little convoluted how they allow him to come to these conclusions about himself (randomly finding a crashed Kryptonian space ship is a bit much...), but with the limited amount of time you have to tell a story, and the dwindling attention spans of people going to movies, you've only got so much to work with here.

But lets look at this "dark" thing on a more practical level...

DC and Warner Brothers obviously want to make a shared "Avengers"-like universe out of their flagship characters. They are practically drooling at the prospect of that kind of money (and yet, they are strangely cowardly about unveiling it... No post credits scene? Only tiny hints at future characters? Come on DC... Go watch Iron Man.). But in order to put all these characters together they are going to have to smooth out some edges of each respective group. I used to use a program to record guitar tracks called Goldwave. Within this program there were all sorts of options to tweak your sound and make things just right. There was one particular option called "normalize" which would take an average of the volume levels from all of the tracks you were mixing, and apply that to the entire song. That way if you played one track just a little louder than the rest, it would tone down to the levels and fit more coherently. What I'm getting at here, is that I think that whatever perceived "darkness" people are finding in this film is the result of DC normalizing their universe. Batman for instance has a pretty dark story and a dark city to go with it. It would be kind of weird for gritty, hard nosed Gotham City to exist in the same universe as "Gee Golly! Look, it's Superman!" Metropolis. I would expect a more... I hesitate to say "realistic"... but grounded take on all the characters to come. That is if the fanboys, and movie haters don't destroy this movie before it even has a chance. In which case we can all expect another Superman reboot in a few years with more cartoon character Lex Luthor, hair pieces, Superman never punching anyone and having absolutely no discernible personality.

Which brings us to the destruction of Metropolis... Which I've already said that even I thought was a bit excessive, but that I think it has reasoning. For those of you who think that there is never collateral damage when Superman battles powerful foes, I would refer you to his battle with Doomsday in the comics which lead to the supposed deaths of both characters (Which by the way... from all that I know, and I could be wrong, it is implied that they both died and that Superman was TRYING to end him because he knew that Doomsday would not stop if he didn't... that's going to be important later.). To support my claims, here are some images, both from comics, and animated films, of destruction that Superman and his enemies have caused that I found with the laziest of google image searches..

Technically I'm pretty sure these are from the same battle... Superman vs. Doomsday... But that is important because I think Zod is the film's version of Doomsday... A madman, with Superman's power levels, rampaging on Earth with no intention to stop.

I will also refer you to this clip from the vaunted Justice League Unlimited cartoon, of Superman cutting loose against Darkseid (Note the property damage...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl_5UwS57X8

Now let's get to the part that has everybody crying that their pizza had too much sauce. Zod meeting his end at the hands of Superman.

Let's examine what's happening here...

From the moment that general Zod first sets foot on Earth, and Clark manages to expose his senses to the atmosphere by damaging his helmet, we are told one very important thing... The ONLY advantage that Clark has over this man is that he has spent 3 decades on our planet becoming accustomed to the way his abilities work. To Zod, all of this is foreign, and it is really all that Clark, a farm boy in his VERY FIRST FIGHT as a superhero, has to work with against this not only highly trained, but BORN warrior.

We're also told something else about Zod, if you're paying attention... and that is that he is mastering his abilities at an alarming rate. As each one manifests he is at first taken aback by them, but then immediately able to bring them under control. When his enhanced senses kick in he reigns them in by force of will. When his heat vision is discovered it is at first an uncontrollable blast... he then begins using it with precision. At first you only see him jumping over long distances and not actually flying, until he removes his armor and reveals that he has mastered flight as well. All of these scenes are important in telling you the story but without hitting you over the head with it by having Superman say "GEE GOLLY GOSH DARN! ZOD SURE IS MASTERING HIS ABILITIES FAST!!! FIDDLESTIX!!"

We're given this information to justify what Clark has to do in the end. Zod tells him in no uncertain terms that he will burn this planet down. And so Superman is given a choice... Sure he could drag the battle out longer, but he will eventually be overpowered by the vastly superior Zod. The only way to end the destruction, and save the people he wishes to protect, was to take the chance he was given and kill Zod. He feels terrible about that, and I'm sure that will be a plot point for future movies (again, if fanboys and movie haters do not destroy this) but it was what was necessary. There is no prison on earth that would hold him. Someone on the Internet suggested "Throw him into space or something."... Well... assuming that he couldn't just fly back, are you maybe saying to kill him by throwing him into the vacuum of space? Cause I think you probably just defeated your own argument. Freeze him with (ridiculous) ice breath? What? Forever? Is Superman to stand there breathing on General Zod eternally to insure that he never breaks free? I cant imagine that a little bit of ice is going to hold a pissed off Kryptonian general for long. What if Clark needs a drink or something? How much ice breath could he really use at any one point in time? Even if he could freeze him in an unbreakable block of ice, and bury him at the deepest point of the arctic where he could never ever ever break free... IS THAT NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING AS KILLING HIM!?!?!? COME ON!!!!

Now...

I think the destruction in this movie sets up a few important things for this universe. In the Marvel universe (which, lets face it people, is THE template now.) we are told that the arrival of Thor, and knowledge that "Gods exist." is a sort of turning point for the world, and that the alien invasion (Which caused massive property damage that nobody seems to complain about because Zach Snyder and Michael Bay weren't involved) is sort of that idea coming to full fruition... I think DC is putting their own spin on that concept in that Superman is their god AND alien. They show the destruction he could cause if he wanted to. They show him to be fallible. They show him trying to learn who he is, and how to be that man. I believe in future movies they will show him to grow into that picture of perfection that all of you "too much sauce" people are whining about... but the dude has been Superman for all of 10 minutes in this movie. Both of his fathers are dead, they both present him with a confusing legacy, and the only people who could possibly understand what he's going through have just showed up to terraform the place and kill all these pesky humans.

By the way, folks complaining that he "didn't save enough people"... He saved the whole god damn planet people. All of it.

Perhaps DC uses the destruction in Metropolis as an angle to justify the existence of more heroes. Perhaps they use Zod's death as an inevitable point of contention between Superman and Batman. Maybe there is no god damn plan at all... I don't know. But I do know that I enjoyed this movie, and I look forward to seeing it again.

Obviously, this is all in fun... If you simply don't like the movie, then you just don't like it. I get it. Everybody hates a few movies. My anger is really more directed at the entitlement of the audience than the dislike of the film itself. Someone like Weapon Mods who simply hates the director, and doesn't like the tone of the film can be forgiven for such things (Even if they are so so wrong.)... But you bastards who just hate it because it's a new Superman movie can just please never see a movie again, I'm tired of hearing from you.

Anyway... I'm tired of typing this. So whatever. Here's a camel.

Wait, no... I'm not finished yet...

I wanted to add an extra bit here... I think this is partially the movie industry's fault for throwing around phrasing like "A more realistic take on Superman". Stop calling your comic book movies "More realistic" hollywood. Some people can't tell the difference between "more realistic" and "DARK! MOODY! BROODING!" and that's what starts these flame wars against movies before they are even released. I think what they mean by "more realistic" is that Superman wont be using his body as railroad tracks in this movie, or flying around the planet so fast that he reverses time.

Okay... that's it. I'm done. /endrant

And one more thing... Where was all the bitching when this line was uttered in another DC movie from the last few years "I'm not going to kill you... But I don't have to save you."




okay... NOW I'm really done. /endendrant.