Man of Steel: Who Booked This?!

17th June 2013 by Scott Keith

Seriously, your top heel is jobbing to a freakin’ scientist in the build up to the main event (and don’t give me that ‘gets his heat back’ sneak attack excuse)? Way to build up your challenger, Goyer. A workhorse like Shannon deserves more than this.

Babyface is also a completely unrelateable goody two-shoes whose no selling all over the place and what is up with Zack Snyder’s obsession with sinewy abs and big bicep?

Other than that movie was okay.

I really loved it, although the constant flashbacks made me feel like I was watching Lost after a while, but the second half where we got to see Superman cut loose and PUNCH DUDES full force and destroy cities and shit was pretty boss. It was the biggest and most global we’ve seen Superman on the big screen, and felt suitably epic for the story being told. I understand the criticisms and can certainly see why people might hate it, but it was a giant improvement on Superman Returns and I like the Lois & Clark dynamic there.

Also, the next night I saw This Is The End and it may have been one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, so it was a good weekend at the theater for me.

Spoiler space added to discuss a specific plot point:

Couple of people wrote in about the Zod death after I posted this:

Not the first time, but a long time, etc, etc. Anyway, here’s my real problem with Man of Steel. I thought it was mostly good (strong referenceable backstory, Lois is a dumb ass, real consequences to the destruction), but I did have a major problem. In the comics, Superman DOES NOT KILL. Ever. When he had to kill Zod in the post-Crisis reboot, it fucked him up. He ran into space to find himself. He had violated his entire coda. But here? He offs the first really bad guy he meets! What’s next, play Operation with the new Lex?

And another guy adds…

I keep hearing people complaining about Superman killing Zod in Man of Steel, and saying that’s not what Superman does. However didn’t Superman kill Zod at the end of Superman II? He threw Zod off a cliff and this was after Zod lost his powers. Anyway I loved MOS.

I wouldn’t really call Superman II canon or anything, but yeah, he killed the Kryptonians in the Byrne-verse, and don’t forget that he killed the shit out of Doomsday and even dropped him at the end of the universe to die repeatedly for eternity, so it’s not necessarily that he NEVER kills, it’s that he needs to be pushed EXTREMELY far to justify it. And really, Zod was going to burn a bunch of innocent bystanders alive and wouldn’t ever stop trying to wipe out the human race, so what other choice did Superman have in the moment? He’s an fallible human being, not a soul-less alien, that’s part of the point of the movie. But as I said, I can totally dig how people might hate the plot point and take the movie down a notch as a result, and that’s cool.