Skip to main content

Occasional Media Consumption: Man of Steel (2013)

Every so often, there's a movie where I watch it and think, "that was pretty bad", and then time goes by, and I see other people talking about it, and so I watch it again, thinking I was too harsh on it, and after watching it again, I think "not only was that movie bad, it was worse than I remember". I try very hard not to hate-watch anything, movies or TV or whatever, because that's a waste of time, energy, and emotion. My expectation was that my first reading of this film was overblown, that my reaction to it was as an outsider, someone who didn't know the depth and breadth of the Clark Kent / Kal-El story, and who couldn't appreciate the subtleties or easter eggs or whatever. But in the intervening years, I've read a bunch of DC comics, and many of them Superman comics. And I've come to a conclusion upon rewatching this movie, one that surprised me given the budget, the cast, and the story being told.

Rarely has any movie so misunderstood it's source material, the message of the source material, or for that matter the message the actual movie is sending. This is a movie that chooses wrong at every turn, placing spectacle and "cool" and "edgy" and "dark" above any faithfulness to the concepts it purports to refer to and the source material it borrows from. 

I was going to spend a bunch of time breaking down the ways in which this movie is bad, but I'm bored with it now. If you really want me to do that, then buy me a drink and we can have a discussion about it. Otherwise, just take my word on it: if you want to watch a good Superman movie, watch Christopher Reeve's Superman (1978). It gets it (mostly) right. Hell, even 2006's Superman Returns got more of it than this movie (Brandon Routh was done dirty in his portrayal of Clark, and deserved better than the material he had to work with, but that's another blog post). 

Honestly, watching paint dry is probably a better use of two hours of your time. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Organizing And You: Lessons from Labor History

    I made a joke on Twitter a while ago: Do I need to post the Thomas M Comeau Organizing Principles again? https://t.co/QQIrJ9Sd3i — Jerome Comeau says Defund The Police (@Heronymus) July 15, 2021 and it recently came back up because a member of my family got their first union job and was like "every job should be offering these sorts of benefits" and so I went ahead and wrote down what I remember of what my dad told me. My father had many jobs, but his profession was basically a labor union organizer, and he talked a lot about the bedrock foundation items needed to be serious about organizing collective action. Here's what I remember.    The Thomas M. Comeau Principles of Organizing -- a fundamental list for finding and building worker solidarity from 50 years of Union Involvement. This list is not ranked; all of the principles stated herein are coequal in their importance. Numbering is a rhetorical choice, not a valuation. 1) Be good at your job. Even in...
Post a Comment
Read more

#RPGaDay 2017 -- Day 18

Which RPG have you played the most in your life? If you count all the editions of D&D as one RPG, then the answer is D&D. I never was serious about 1st or 2nd Ed., but I was part of a 3E playtest group, and I started a 4E campaign basically as soon as I could. If you don't count all of the D&D editions as one, then the answer is HERO system, specifically Champions 4th Ed, the Big Blue Book. I was part of a group that played with the BBB for quite a while, through two multi-year campaigns. I have to admit, there is something rather satisfying about chucking great fistfuls of d6s across the battlemat and being able to figure out the body damage basically instantly. After that, I think it's GURPS, and then after that would be Pathfinder, and then 4E. I've dabbled so much with so many systems that the long-term campaigns basically swamp everything else.
Post a Comment
Read more

#RPGaDay 2018 Day 19: What music enhances your game?

Again, this really depends on the game and whether or not I'm playing or running or what have you. The RIFTS game I just storyran leaned heavily on Tell That Devil by Jill Andrews and Neko Case's Hold On, Hold On  for mood and setting. Sometimes, I think about themes for my characters. I had a dwarven knight that used to ride around humming Shostakovich's 5th . And there's a good chance that my newest character will hum chiptunes to themselves, since they're a robot.
Post a Comment
Read more