Trailer Park: Ant v Scream: Genisys of the Force

Today saw the launch of a new feature on Hex Dimension. It's a weekly spot that will collect all the week's best film trailers in one place, and give a quick analysis of each. It's a really great idea that I wish I could take credit for, but that honour falls to Emily King. It seems so obvious in retrospect - having one single place to look every week, instead of trawling through film sites - yet I'm not sure I've ever seen it done quite like this before. In the absence of Doctor Who, I've been looking for something I could write regularly (not to mention something I could overanalyse), so when Emily suggested this to the team it seemed like the perfect fit. I took it and ran with it and now it's here!

We call it... The Trailer Park.

There was no real reason why I decided to start it this week - things just worked out that way. Yet, somehow, I managed to choose the week that both the new Star Wars and Batman v Superman trailers broke. There won't be another week with two mega-trailers like that for a while! So, to find out what I thought of the two biggest trailers of the year (and a couple of the week's slightly-less-big trailers) click the pic below. And check back next week for more!

Thor: The Dark World Review

Dear Man of Steel,
I saw two different films this year that ended with godlike aliens hitting each other impossibly hard over and over again. One of them managed to keep this fresh and interesting, and had personal stakes for the audience to connect to. The other one was you.

Thor: The Dark World manages to keep its final battle entertaining and engaging, even though it's just a repetitive sequence of blows, by constantly changing the nature of the fight. It keeps shifting location, so the visuals never get stale and the fighters have to deal with their environment as well as each other - caught on a collapsing ledge or sliding down a building. The tone keeps shifting too, breaking the tension with funny moments, which makes the serious parts all the more impactful.
Even though the combatants are pretty much invincible, the fight has real peril and danger because there are human characters running around and helping, almost getting killed in the process. It's a battle over the fate of the world - nay, the universe - but it's the fate of these characters that we actually care about. That's also what the hero cares about, fighting to protect these people rather than just fighting to win.

What I'm saying, Man of Steel, is that Thor 2 does everything you didn't. I hope you're taking notes.

Before the ascension of The Avengers, benevolent god-king of superhero movies, the original Thor was the film that, to me, felt most like a comic book. These are silly films about silly people in silly costumes, and Thor's bombastic, over-the-top tone captured that perfectly. It's just so much fun, from its first frame to its last.
But a lot of people disagree. Thor usually gets ranked at the bottom of the Marvel pile for exactly this reason - people don't like that it's silly. So, when Marvel announced that gritty Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor would be at the (winged) helm of the sequel, and later when all the stills and footage looked like Lord of the Rings, there was a real danger that this light-hearted series had been turned into, well, you.
But rest assured, though it even goes so far as having "Dark" in the title, Thor 2 is every bit as light and breezy as its predecessor.

What Taylor does bring is a sense of realism that was missing from Kenneth Branagh's very operatic original. This is the same thing you were aiming for, Man of Steel, but Taylor understands that it needn't sap the joy out of the experience. The acting here is more naturalistic, and Asgard feels much more like a real place, but the movie still knows how to find enjoyment and humour in that - something you completely forgot. Though it does carve out a more believable world for itself, nested within the larger Marvel Universe, that doesn't prevent it from shoving the massive God of Thunder into a tiny car or having Stellan Skarsgård in his pants. Realistic doesn’t have to mean serious.

Yet The Dark World has its share of serious, too. The plot this time kicks off when Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster becomes the unwitting host of the Aether - an ancient, all-purpose alien superweapon. This is staggeringly convenient, of course, but it works because it immediately gives Thor, and us, a reason to heavily invest in what is otherwise a very bland McGuffin. Thor spirits Jane away to Asgard to figure out what’s going on, and the two quickly rekindle their romance because, in both cases, wouldn’t you?
The seriousness comes from the fact that Jane is slowly dying from exposure to the Aether, and that having it also makes her a target for the villains of the piece. They want to use the Aether to destroy the universe but, problematically, they’re also the only ones who can get it out of Jane. This all works to make her a more active part of the story than last time, as she finds herself at the centre of the conflict rather than watching from the sidelines.

For that reason and others, it’s a stronger and more propulsive story than the first Thor, rushing us through scenes and locations where the original often meandered. This is great in that everything feels very urgent and energetic, but not so great in that is skims over things that probably needed more explanation and depth - namely those villains.
The Dark Elves are a race who existed before the universe (somehow) and who now want to destroy that universe. They have awesome designs and technology, which leads to some brilliant action, but there’s barely anything to them. They feel both underused and underserved - especially their leader, Malekith. There's talk of his backstory and motivations, but there's nothing there we can actually latch onto. He basically boils down to angry guy with grudge. He's certainly no Loki - but the film ultimately gets away with that because Loki is Loki, and he's here too.

In a lot of ways this is actually Loki's movie. He has the strongest character journey, going from traitorous prisoner to untrusted ally and beyond. This is probably Tom Hiddleston's best performance yet, as this arc means he can play more than just the jealous prince. Loki gets to be a brother and a son; an enemy and a friend; wrong but also wronged. More than anything else, though, Thor 2 reminds us that Loki is the God of Mischief, not of Evil, and he gets to be far more of a trickster here than he has in the past.

Loki, like Jane, also has more to do. That’s something that applies to almost every character, actually. Even minor players like Kat Denning’s Darcy, Rene Russo’s Frigga, and Idris Elba’s awesome awesome Heimdall are far more involved in the story this time. Sif and the Warriors Three may be missing a member for some reason, and they may even have less screentime, but they feel more fleshed out and have a bigger impact on the plot. Everyone feels necessary and important.
The only person with less to do, weirdly, is Thor himself. Because the main arcs of the film aren’t his - they’re Jane’s and Loki’s - he sometimes seems to just be along for the ride. It’s never a problem, though, because Chris Hemsworth continues to embody the character so wonderfully. Whether he’s cheerfully destroying rock monsters or angrily confronting his brother, Thor is such a great presence that you don’t mind his reduced role.

Any other problems are similarly minor. An important scene involving Malekith's face is mishandled, and a subplot with Sif is implied but never takes off. There's also nothing that comes even close to that one blisteringly hot kiss from the first film. But these are tiny complaints, drowned out by the overwhelming positives - and when Hemsworth gets his shirt off, in a scene that’s somehow even more gratuitous than the first Thor, you’ll be willing to overlook all of them.

Thor: The Dark World is a great addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe but, far more than that, it’s a great continuation of the Thor series. It takes the groundwork of the original film and builds upwards in every way. The world and characters are both more fleshed out and more grounded; the story is more focused and polished, and gives every single character (except one) something to do; the action is bigger and better; and all the while it sticks to the world and the light-hearted tone established by its predecessor.

The reason I'm telling you all this, Man of Steel, is that the first Thor suffers from many of the same problems as you: characters are underdeveloped or don't have much to do, and the story is nebulous and unfocused. If Thor 2 can build on these problems to become something stronger, then I'm hoping you can too.
Of course, Thor still worked because it offset these problems with an abundance of fun and energy, where you opted for darkness and brooding. You can learn from Thor 2 here, as well. This world feels as real as yours, without having to sacrifice its sense of humour. It feels more real, in fact, because it's easier to relate to the people who live there.

Failing that, at the very least, please try to learn something from that final action scene. When I watch two space-gods repeatedly punch each other, I want to see variety and creativity, I want to see highs and lows, peaks and troughs, I want to feel real human stakes and, above all else, I want to enjoy it.
And that's exactly what The Dark World delivers.

Best wishes for the future,
Matthew


P.S. One last thing to learn from Marvel is that you should call your sequel Man of Steel 2, either with or without a subtitle. Dropping the numbers from their non-Iron Man films is the one slip-up Marvel have made thus far, and now is your big chance to exploit it. Who knows - being easy to arrange on a shelf might make all the difference!

Superman's First Day

There is a Simpsons episode - you probably know the one - where Homer somehow ends up in command of a nuclear submarine. After almost causing an international war, he finds himself and his crew surrounded by battleships from all over the world, readying their guns. It’s ok though because Homer says, "It’s my first day!" and, laughing, they all let him off the hook.

Now, I hate to be that guy who feels the need to explain the joke (note: I don’t hate to be that guy), but the reason this is funny is that Homer’s excuse is no excuse whatsoever. The fact that it’s his first day on the job, whether that’s true or not, does not make it ok. It’s funny when they accept his pathetic excuse because, in real life, that would never happen - Homer would be arrested and severely punished.

I bring this up because, now that summer’s over, a number of sites have run Best Film of the Year So Far lists, and that means people are talking about Man of Steel. I’m not doing a list because the winner is so self-evidently GI Joe. If I was to write that list, of course, there is no way in hell that Man of Steel would be on it, but I don’t begrudge anyone who puts it on theirs. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when these lists say things like, "Sure Superman made a few mistakes, but give him a break, he’s new at this."
Or, to put it another way, "It’s his first day!"

Let’s go back to The Simpsons. In that episode (which Google tells me is called Simpson Tide) Homer, like Superman, makes a few mistakes. His mistakes are firing the submarine’s captain at another submarine, and illegally entering Russian territory. That’s it. And we still know, naturally, that his excuse for this is terrible and that he would not get away with it.

Let’s raise the stakes. I want you to imagine, instead, that Homer’s mistakes had been far more severe. Let’s say that he gets into a fight with another sub somewhere just out of harbour, right by a coastal city. Being Homer Simpson, he probably still fires the captain at them. But then, when the enemy returns fire, instead of running away as he does in the episode, imagine Captain Homer indiscriminately fires a huge barrage of missiles in vaguely the right direction. The harbour explodes in an enormous fireball; one of the city’s bridges collapses; a couple of high-rise waterfront offices collapse into rubble. The enemy ship returns fire, taking out another bridge, the pier, and the entire seafront hotel district. It’s a really sunny day, so keep in mind how busy it is - the death-toll is already in the thousands. Homer keeps firing, though, obliterating the sea-wall, destroying what little is left of the beach, and reducing an enormous residential complex to ash and rubble. And so it goes on…
When Homer is finally apprehended, after he eventually targeted and destroyed the actual enemy sub (presumably because it threatened a family of three that was swimming nearby), he is understandably put on trial. Then, mid-trial, he wriggles out of his handcuffs and punches out the guard holding him. As the judge and assembled military staff look on in shock and horror he says, "Don’t worry, guys, you can trust me. I grew up in Springfield. I’m about as American as it gets." And with that, Homer Simpson strolls out of the courtroom and vanishes into the night. Nobody moves to stop him because, hey, he’s from Springfield, they can trust him. Besides - it was his first day.

People do see that this is what happens in Man of Steel, right? People do understand that? Because the number of people suggesting that "it’s his first day" is a reasonable excuse for mass-murder (or manslaughter if we’re being generous) is simply staggering.

You and me can screw up on our first day, because our screw ups aren’t particularly dangerous. We just get told that it’s wrong and we have to fix it or do it again. It’s not a big deal.
A job that involves guns or explosives or chemicals - where people’s lives hang in the balance - does not work the same way. If an armed cop or soldier, straight out of the proverbial academy, were to shoot up an entire street (or an entire town) of civilians, just to get one criminal, would anyone be ok with that person continuing to be a cop or a soldier? Of course not! We’d want them locked up and never ever let near a weapon again. That kind of screw up is a big deal, and the consequences would be serious.
What about the same situation with a superhero; a guy who can destroy buildings with one punch, and shoot fire out of his eyes. A godlike being with the potential to do far more damage than our cop or soldier ever could. If this guy screws up on his first day, this is a far bigger deal, and the consequences should be far bigger again. Like the rookies above, we’d want him locked away and we certainly wouldn’t want him to continue being a superhero. The bigger the damage and harm that someone can cause, the smaller the margin of error they’re allowed, and the less they can get away with a screw up.

I’m sure there’s a phrase for this exact idea. A saying of some kind. Oh right, that’s it:

"With Great Power comes Great Responsibility."

Peter Parker - Spider-Man - screwed up on his first day, too. He didn’t give any thought to the people on the street when he let a thief run by unchallenged - just as Kal-El didn’t give any thought to the people in the buildings as he punched Zod through them. And that thief killed Peter’s uncle.

Peter Parker has spent every moment of his life since trying to make up for that mistake, and knowing, deep down, that he never can. The weight of that one failure is what pushes Spider-Man to be better than he is - to always do the right thing, no matter how impossible it seems. Because Peter understands that he absolutely should not have screwed up, and that there is no excuse for it. Not even on his first day.
Spider-Man is a hero precisely because he recognises the enormity of his mistake and he wants to do better. Yet we are failing to recognise the enormity of Superman’s mistake just because he is a hero and we assume he’ll do better. To me, one of those seems incredibly backwards.

If Man of Steel is one of your favourite films of summer, or of the year, or even ever, than that’s great. I’m glad you liked it - have fun. But don’t you dare make excuses for it. A hell of a lot of people died in that film and Superman is responsible. It doesn’t matter that he was concentrating on fighting. It doesn’t matter that Zod struck first. And it certainly doesn’t bloody matter that it was his first day.
Superman doesn’t just have great power - Superman pretty much has all the power. And with that, like it or not, comes all the responsibility. Uncle Ben’s famous words apply to Spider-Man, they apply to Superman, and they absolutely apply to the real world.

But they don’t always apply to Homer Simpson. That’s the joke.

A Different Superman Film

I was planning to post a link to this anyway, just to counteract all the recent Superman negativity on this blog, but I've just watched it again, and it's actually more relevant than ever in the wake of Man of Steel.

The "this" I'm talking about is Max Landis' demented seventeen-minute retelling of The Death and Return of Superman. It may seem like a weird antidote to my Superman complaints, because it's basically quarter of an hour of Landis (writer of Chronicle; son of John) complaining about Superman, but it's not really that at all - it's just pointing out how dumb comics actually are. Not Superman, not DC, just comics in general. They are all like this and, much as we may complain, it's a big part of why we love them.

What makes it even funnier, post-Man of Steel, is how much applies to what that film did. The Doomsday fight, for instance - "Punch face; lets see who goes harder until one of us passes out!" - perfectly sums up all the fights in Snyder's movie.
When Lois Lane asks the villain if he's Clark Kent, and the exasperated response is, "I just killed thirty-thousand people!" I actually burst out laughing. In Man of Steel, that death-count could absolutely still apply to Clark!
Also, just hearing The Death of Superman recounted brings back memories of Kevin Smith's horrible script for Burton's Superman Lives. Despite all the problems Man of Steel has, it could have been a lot worse.

You may not like the film, of course. It is very sweary (I advise my prudish brother JJ to skip it) and Landis is maybe a little smug and annoying (intentionally, and no worse than anyone else on the internet) but, if you can get past that, it's a great little celebration of the beautiful stupidity of superheroes.

Click here for The Death and Return of Superman. It's educational!

Man of Steel, Script of Lead

The first draft of my review for Man of Punching was actually much longer than the version that I ended up posting. It originally went into detail about the numerous issues I had with the film's script. The screenplay is by David S. Goyer, one of the writers on the Batman films, and it's kind of terrible. Ultimately, I cut those sections out because, as well as getting way too long, the review was coming across as almost entirely negative, where my feelings are actually about half-and-half. The script issues are definite problems, but they aren't the problems that kept me from enjoying the movie, so the review worked fine without them.
I still feel they're worth discussing, though, and I have that first draft lying here unused, so lets use it to take a deeper look now. This post is quite long, and will get into a few story specifics, but the only real spoiler is clearly labelled and easily avoided. Let's do this.

The scene that best sums up everything wrong with this script is one at the end of the first act. Superman's father, Jor-El, explains to his son that, where other Kryptonians have their purpose and destiny chosen for them and imprinted upon them before birth, he, Superman, is free to choose a destiny for himself. Then Jor-El immediately follows this speech with, "So here is exactly what I've decided you must do with your life..." and hands him a suit to wear.
Putting aside the questions of what the suit is doing there (on a scout-ship from thousands of years ago that has nothing to do with the House of El) and why its colours don't match any others used by Krypton, this scene highlights three problems that are indicative of the entire film: a problem with exposition, a problem with setup and payoff, and a problem with convolution.


1: Exposition

The scene above is one where Jor-El just stands and talks at Clark (or Kal) about the plot. It goes on for quite a while, and Jor-El even has some Kryptonian PowerPoint slides prepared.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, everything he is explaining has already been dealt with, or at least touched on, earlier in the film. We've already seen how the caste system works, we already know that Kal-El was born naturally, we watched General Zod attempt a coup, and we saw Krypton explode. This was all established in the film's fifteen minute prologue on Krypton. It's fair to give us a refresher on this stuff, but there's no need to spell it all out in detail as though it's new information - otherwise, what's the point of showing that prologue in the first place?
That's not even the last time this stuff gets explained! Zod himself rehashes some of it when he first meets Supes, he later repeats it in a debate with Jor-El, and then, during the final battle, he finds time in his busy, punch-filled schedule to clearly lay out all his motivation - detailing the history of both his character and his people. Again.

It's a - if not the - basic rule of storytelling: show, don't tell.
No-one in a story should ever have to explain their motivation (except possibly in a mystery reveal) because we should be shown those motivations through their actions, inactions and interactions. It can even be done through costumes and props - think how much more effective it would be to just see a framed Pulitzer on Lois Lane's desk, rather than having her exclaim, "I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist!" to her own boss.

In a way, Man of Steel is actually very true to the early era of comics, when writers didn't trust the artists to convey meaning, so they filled every panel with a massive speech bubble of the hero saying out loud what they were doing or thinking.
This is never clearer than in the Krypton-set prologue. That part actually looks like a Golden Age sci-fi comic, too - all weird creatures, insane costumes and nonsense technology. I'm pretty sure there's Kirby Dots.
The writing in this sequence is as pulpy as the design. All anyone does is hurriedly explain the plot to each other, using unwieldy semi-classical language. Jor-El is in the middle of explaining Krypton's doomed fate to a council who keep explaining Krypton's history, when Zod bursts in and explains why he's starting a coup, prompting Jor-El to explain his history with Zod and all his thoughts on all of this. He then goes home and explains to his wife a plan they've no doubt been discussing for months. It's ridiculous but, because the four-winged dragons and the council's giant hats are also ridiculous, it isn't noticeably out of place. It's not until we get to Earth, and the film decides to act deadly serious, that this style of exposition-filled dialogue really starts to grate.

The Krypton stuff is actually some of the better exposition in the film because at least people are explaining things that we are actually seeing. It's not showing or telling - it's doing both. At its worst, Goyer's script doesn't even stretch that far, telling us - and expecting us to accept on faith - things that it never shows us for ourselves.

There's a scene in an IHoP (product placement!) where Superman faces Zod's sidekick Faora. They have an awesome, but way too short, fight, which Faora wins by being better at punching. Then she tells Supes that he can never win because he is held back by his morality, and her advantage is that she has none. Then she proceeds to beat him by being better at punching.
You would think, after (or maybe just before) telling him that, she would demonstrate her point by using his morality against him. Like, say, distracting him by threatening one of the many humans in the room. But no - she just punches him some more. This little speech is seemingly prompted by nothing - there's no reason for her to be saying that right now.
There's no reason for her to say it at any point, actually. We never see any evidence that Superman's morality is putting him at a disadvantage. We never see any evidence that Superman really has much morality anyway (see: carparks, petrol-stations, death). It comes up once much much later but, other than that, Faora's monologue is the only evidence the film gives us - it tells, but it never shows.

Jonathan Kent, Clark's father, has many similar monologues. He's one of the better characters in the film, but he gets the worst exposition by far. Every line he utters is a warning to his son that people are not ready to see his powers, that the world will fear him, and that no-one can be trusted. Kevin Costner makes this work somehow, but on the page it's just flat preachy statements from his first line to his last.
That's pretty terrible in itself, but what makes it far worse is that we never see any evidence to back him up. There's a woman whose son sees Clark using his powers, and she seems a bit worried or concerned, but hardly terrified. Yet Jonathan keeps telling his son, again and again, how careful he needs to be because people won't be able to handle it and will go for their pitchforks.
There's also a bit where Perry White won't print a story for the same reason, which made me giggle. He's a newspaper editor - that's exactly the kind of public reaction they usually aim for!
Both Perry and Jonathan are guilty of telling without showing. Nothing in the film suggests that people are afraid of Superman, yet we're expected to believe it because it's explained in dialogue. People do seem a little uncertain and twitchy around him, and the military do fire on him at one point - but that's because he's actively destroying a town, which is honestly fair enough. As it is, because Jonathan Kent keeps saying these things so fervently without anything else in the film backing him up, he just seems paranoid and crazy. He does some pretty messed up things based on this belief of his but, without seeing his fears confirmed, it's impossible for us to agree with his actions.
He's a nutjob, frankly. But he didn't need to be a nutjob. If we'd actually witnessed a violent, crazed reaction from someone who found out about Clark, we'd be on his dad's side without question. But we never do - we just hear about it from a man who hasn't witnessed it either. Jonathan is only a nutjob because Man of Steel relies too much on spoken exposition.

Again and again, this movie stops doing whatever it's doing so that it can tell us what it's doing. Worse, it often tells us what it's not doing instead of actually doing it. It's a problem.
At one point this excessive amount of exposition is actually what drives the plot! When Zod experiences super-hearing and vision for the first time, he is overwhelmed and disoriented by it. We know this because we already saw Clark go through it himself. Showing us was enough - we get it. But, just in case we don't get it, the script then has Superman explain to Zod exactly what he's experiencing, explain that he learnt how to deal with it as a child, then explain how he deals with it. Zod later uses this information to cope with the problem himself, allowing him to commit mass-murder.
As a general rule, if the exposition in your film directly leads to hundreds of deaths, your film probably has too much exposition.


2: Setup and Payoff

Jor-El, in that first scene above, is a total hypocrite. He goes on at length about Kal's freedom to choose his own fate, then straight-up tells him the fate (and clothes) that he's picked out for him.
The same thing happens with Jonathan Kent - he keeps telling Clark that he must choose if and when to reveal himself and then, in the same breath, outright telling him not to. When Clark actually does have to make that decision - when a certain important thing happens - Jonathan raises a hand, looks stern, and denies his son the very choice he kept lecturing him about. Also, shouldn't Martha, Clark's mother and Jonathan's wife, get some say in that moment? I'm amazed that she ever speaks to her son again.
Both Clark's adoptive and real father often pay lip service to the idea of "choice", yet both then continually dictate his actions. The only time he does make a choice, it's not the "what kind of man will you be?" that all the parental monologues have been setting up, but rather "will you hand yourself in to save the planet?" It's similar in some ways but, really, it's a very different question.
The setup here does not match the payoff. His parents set up certain choices, then make the choices for him, denying us a payoff. When we do get a decision-based payoff later on, it's to a decision which was never set up.

There are weird incongruities like this throughout Man of Steel. Wasted setups that don't really lead anywhere. When the film establishes Clark's super-senses (x-ray-vision, super-hearing), for instance, it's setting up an expectation that they will reappear. There is one gag about seeing through a mirror but, otherwise, he never uses these powers again. Why do we even see these skills if they never factor into the plot? Zod experiences them later, as mentioned above, but he gets over them so quickly (and also never uses them again) that their inclusion effectively serves no purpose, even then. They are set up, and then forgotten about. Again, no payoff. Which is a shame because they might have spiced up the repetitive action a bit.

Much more problematic are the unearned payoffs that the film fails to prepare us for. In the IHoP scene (again) it's established, through bad exposition, that Superman's weakness is his morality and compassion. Yet this weakness is never used against him until one specific point at the end. That one point is supposed to be the payoff to this morality setup, but it comes after we've watched Superman let carparks explode and buildings fall down and never once display any concern for the humans getting trampled underfoot. We've effectively forgotten Faora's speech by this point, because it was never reinforced by the action. So, while there is a payoff, it comes after an extended period of pointedly ignoring and contradicting the setup, which makes it feel like it comes out of nowhere.

Most damning of all, though, is another thing that comes out of nowhere, in the exact same scene at the end. A thing which is a massive spoiler, so skip ahead if you haven't seen it.

The conclusion of the final fight is so out-of-the-blue it's ridiculous.
We've been watching Kryptonians punch each other for over an hour now and at no point has there been any evidence that they can actually harm each other. No matter how many times they get punched through city-blocks or punched into space, they never bruise, they never cut, they never sprain or twist or fracture anything, and they never seem to get tired. Even their hair can't be damaged. There is never a single moment of setup - not one - to suggest that Kryptonians can hurt each other on Earth.
So, when Superman snaps Zod's neck, it's a complete shock. It is meant to be shocking, of course, but it's meant to be shocking because we don't expect Superman to kill people, not because we never knew it was even an option!
If the fight was going to end the way it did then we needed to be aware that Kryptonians can actually hurt each other (which would have made the endless punching more dramatic, too, because we might actually have felt some concern for the hero) and we needed more evidence that Superman is compassionate. As it stands, neither of these things are set up enough for the payoff to feel satisfying. It's a poorly handled ending to a poorly handled fight.

End of spoiler.

Many times, Man of Steel sets things up and doesn't pay them off, pays things off that it never sets up, and sets things up only to pay them off later, long after they've been actively contradicted. The disjointed feeling this causes is one of the film's biggest problems.


3: Convolution

Returning again to that first scene we mentioned, Kal-El was born naturally, where most Kryptonians are bred in Matrix-pods for a specific task. His DNA is natural and unaltered. That, Jor-El tells him, is why his destiny is a choice - he could become anything or anyone.
Zod wants to repopulate Krypton (or the Kryptonian species, at any rate), but he can't currently do it because he only has soldiers with him and their DNA is too limited. To complete his task he needs genetic templates for the other castes.
There is already a clear story emerging here. Zod needs a broader sample of DNA; Kal-El's DNA is malleable and undefined. If Zod gets hold of Kal, he will have pure Kryptonian DNA to work from.

That's it, surely. That's the story.
I'd be willing to bet a fair amount that, in an earlier draft of the script, that was the whole story. But, in the finished film, there's an entire extra layer of unnecessary complexity added onto it.

In the final script, Jor-El steals the Codex (a database containing the genetic templates for all Kryptonians) and somehow transfers that information into his son's cells. This essentially serves the same purpose as the scenario above - Zod needs Kal-El's DNA - but it's more complicated when it doesn't need to be.
It also raises a bunch of stupid questions. Why does Jor implant it into Kal, rather than just giving it to him? Why does he give it to Kal anyway? Allegedly it's so Kal can bring the species back at some point - but Jor continually says the race must start afresh, free of the caste system, where this Codex is the embodiment of that system. Why would he want to keep that? If he did want to keep it, why wouldn't he tell his son about it? And why the hell was it originally stored on the side of a broken skull?!
This stuff is ridiculous and, as we saw above, it could have been avoided easily while actually telling a simpler, neater story. In the movie Kal was born naturally, and Zod is hunting him for a different, unrelated reason. Wouldn't the film function better structurally and thematically if Zod was hunting him because he was born naturally?
It's convoluted and it's silly. And it doesn't stop there.

Zod and his micro-army attack Earth with a ship that's actually several ships that's actually a modified dimensional portal or something.
When the Kryptonians try to terraform the planet (technically "kryptoform", because "terra" means "Earth") they use a world-engine which is also a spaceship on one side of the planet, and a spaceship which is also a space-portal on the other side, which they then use to create a portal which links to the world-engine so that the portal-ship can also function as a world-engine. Maybe.
I've heard other explanations - all totally different - for exactly what is going on here. The point is that it's ridiculously complicated and it doesn't need to be. Why does the script not give Zod two world-engines? Or just use one? Having two gives Superman another thing to punch, I suppose, but why the portal stuff? There is a narrative reason, technically, but it's not one that can't be easily written around by using a slightly different narrative reason.

None of this stuff is necessary - it's convolution for the sake of convolution. And, for a film that loves to stop and explain things that are obvious, it skims over the needlessly confusing stuff without a second thought!


The more I think about it, the more terrible this script becomes. It ignores a whole list of basic storytelling rules, and expects us to swallow a lot of nonsense and bad dialogue instead.
What works in Man of Steel works because Cavill and Adams carry the film on much better performances than it deserved, and because, much as I am loath to admit it, Zack Snyder actually made a half-decent movie.
Looking back on his career so far, Watchmen notwithstanding (that one is entirely on him) it's a sequence of terrible scripts - Dawn of the Dead, 300, Sucker Punch - that he directed pretty damn well. Sucker Punch is a terrible script that he himself wrote, of course, but the direction's actually not bad.

If Snyder was given a decent script, without much depth and subtlety (he's not good at subtlety) - and if he could only find someone more imaginative to storyboard his action - then one day, one beautiful day, his films might actually be good!

But still not great.

Man of Steel Review

Hello. My name is Matthew, and I am a Michael Bay apologist.
Most people hate his films at this point but I still really kinda like them. I find a lot to love in Transformers 3 (which honestly isn't that bad) and I even enjoy Transformers 2 (which really is that bad and gets worse every time). Despite everything he does wrong - the lack of characterisation, the terrible and inappropriate humour, the rampant sexism - I've never understood the complaints about Bay's action scenes. The usual complaint is that those scenes look good, but are overlong, unengaging, and even boring; but I always find his action, dare I say it... awesome.
I bring this up not because Bay directed Man of Steel (he didn't), but because I finally understand how other people feel about his films. I felt the same during this one. The action in Man of Steel is spectacular - but that's all it is.

Superman (who only gets called that once, and everyone seems pretty embarrassed about it) can't be hurt. That's his thing. But that's murder to a compelling action scene - things bounce off him and he bounces off things and not once do we wonder if he'll be ok, because of course he will; he's Superman. It's true that you never really fear for the hero of any film - but at least in other films, you wonder how they'll win without dying, and the excitement comes from finding out. There's no wondering about it in this film - he's going to not die by being Superman, so it doesn't actually matter what happens to him.
Despite this, there are ways to make Superman compelling, action wise, and films in the past have pulled it off much better. Since the hero is never in any peril, put other characters in peril - less important characters who potentially could die - and have us worry whether Superman will manage to save them in time. The film does try this once - with Perry White and Jenny Olson (yes, you read that right) trapped in a collapsing street - but it falls flat because, although Supes does save them indirectly, he does so on literally the other side of the planet. He doesn't choose to save them or mean to save them, they just happen to be saved by what he does.
In fact, Superman barely saves anyone in Man of Steel. He saves Lois Lane a couple of times and he catches a falling guy at some point; but when main villain General Zod throws a petrol-tanker at his head, he ducks and lets it blow up a massive multi-story carpark. A carpark which we saw, just two shots ago, is full of people. Superman just lets them die and doesn't even glance back, and that's far from the only time it happens. His final fight with Zod levels buildings and flattens city blocks and, in that fight, the collateral damage must be enormous - thousands of people surely must get killed. That blood is as much on the hero's hands as the villain's, and that's a bit disturbing.

Going back to my Michael Bay comparison, I would say that Bay's action has a better sense of stakes in both of the ways I've mentioned. The heroes are not invincible and frequently get beaten up or killed (Dark of the Moon's best moment is when Bumblebee is about to be executed) and there are human characters that the robots do their best to save. But where the comparison really comes into play is in the variety of the action.
The action in Transformers includes fights with guns, fights with swords, fights with fists, one-on-one fights, one-against-many, many-against-many, fights in one place, fights on the move, fights to reach a target, fights to defend a target, and more. People find the action repetitive because it's all robots and explosions, but the circumstances - the objectives and events of those battles - are all different. In Man of Steel, by comparison, the aim of every single action scene is to break something (be it a doomsday weapon, a spaceship, or Zod's face) and Superman's approach to the problem is always the same: fly at it really fast and punch it really hard. If that doesn't work, he flies at it even faster and punches it even harder! Very occasionally he uses his heat-vision, but you can always be sure that, when his eyes stop glowing, his next move will involve flying. And punching.
Dealing with a squad of Zod's goons - flying fast and punching hard. With a Terraforming machine - flying, punching. Alien gunship - flying and punching! Zod himself - fly, punch, fly, punch, FLY, PUNCH. A lot of this flying and punching goes through buildings and stuff before it hits its target, which is a nice touch the first couple of times, but is wearing thin by the time Smallville has no buildings left. Then we go to Metropolis, where it happens all over again, but with bigger buildings.

There's one tiny scene - a minor beat in one of these huge action sequences - where Supes faces Zod's second-in-command in the wreckage of an IHoP. For a brief moment they have a pseudo-kung-fu fist-fight, where no-one flies through or gets thrown through anything. Some of the punches are blocked or dodged - and you suddenly realise that those are the first punches in the entire film that haven't connected. There's some finesse to this fight - it's tightly choreographed and it has rhythm. Then, as quick as it began, it's over again, and we're back to the flying. And the punching. That tiny scuffle really stood out to me as a great moment - just because it was something different.

The action in Man of Steel is unengaging, repetitive, and tedious - I actually blanked out during some of it and found myself daydreaming (there's a weird scene with robot-tentacles which was either really really short or I zoned out for most of it) which is something that's never happened to me before - but, with that unpleasantness out of the way, now we can talk about what the film does right. Because, believe it or not, I actually quite liked the first half of this movie!

My dark history with director Zack Snyder is well documented, but he does by far his best work here. All his films are great looking, and this one is no different - but this time the direction is steadier and he's finally developed some restraint against his worse impulses. There is slow-motion in Man of Steel, and there is fast-motion to show superpowers, but gone is the slow-fast-slow speed-ramping for which he is infamous. It is not missed.
He can't suppress his tonal problems, however, and there is an arthouse feel to a lot of it that feels out of place. Strange close-ups of buckets in the rain, or the wings of a moth, are followed up by blunt and obvious symbolim (Superman wonders if he should give himself up, backlit by a stained-glass window of Jesus at Gethsemane). It's all a bit confused, but the usually haphazard Snyder at least uses it to make specific points, which is definite progress.
More impressive, though, is that, for the first time ever, Snyder actually makes us care about the characters - though it's unclear how much of that is him and how much is down to the actors.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane is easily the best version of the character I've ever seen - and that's after only a few seconds on screen. She's still an investigative reporter, but here the emphasis is very much on investigative, as she actively chases stories, wrestles information out of people and won't take no for an answer. She still needs saving a few times, but only because she's such an active part of the story. She's brilliant - and she perfectly nails all the film's best lines.
Henry Cavill as Clark Kent and Kal-El (he's not even credited as Superman) is equally great as a subtly different version of the famous character. His Clark is an unformed entity at this point - he hasn't figured out his human self yet, because he hasn't figured out the rest - which is interesting in itself, but it's his Superman that really impresses. He's got an edge we've never seen before; friendly and polite, but at all times it is clear that he's dangerously in control of the situation, and almost everything he says can be interpreted as a subtle threat. He just casually breaks out of handcuffs at one point and quietly terrifies a room full of soldiers. I loved that about him, and I really wish we could have spent more time with this version of the character before the punching started.
The two leads have a really great relationship, too, that we've never seen before. Lois is someone Superman can confide in about his insecurities - she's the only one he can act human around, which is the opposite of the way this usually works. She's his only real friend, and that dynamic works perfectly for the characters... right up until they kiss. They never feel like a romantic couple, and that kiss feels like it's only there because it's expected to be there, not because it's earnt. It's weird. Other than that, though, they are the heart and soul of the movie.

Outside that central couple, the supporting cast do pretty well, but they're underserved by a script that constantly insists on leaden exposition - most of which either never pays off, or just restates the painfully obvious ("Either you die... or I do!" says Zod, helpfully explaining how fights work).
Russell Crowe's Jor-El, Superman's birth father, is swallowed by this and becomes Expositionman - especially in a stunted introduction where every line of dialogue is forcing setup down our throats, and later in an unnecessary scene where he recounts the exact same information all over again.
Kevin Costner's Jonathan Kent, Superman's adoptive father, fares much better. He fills the role with love and warmth, and a deep, aching sadness. He's probably the standout - leaving a lasting impression despite very little screentime, awful preachy dialogue, and some monumentally wrong-headed character decisions.
Lastly, Michael Shannon as General Zod has been getting a lot of attention and fanfare and, frankly, I don't see it. He's just shouty. The script gives him decent motivation but, like everything else, spells it out so obtusely - with Zod explaining himself again and again - that it just feels false. He's not bad by any stretch, but I really don't see what the fuss is about.

There's one other character that also deserves mentioning. The true star of the film, in the end, is Hans Zimmer's score. It's fantastically powerful and suitably epic, although it never actually blossoms into the triumphant version we heard in that one decent trailer.
Snyder has a reputation for essentially making music videos (see: Sucker Punch) but in the case of Man of Steel that becomes a strength, as his intense images complement that sweeping theme. However little I may have connected to the action on screen, the music frequently gave me goosebumps - it's a really great soundtrack and perhaps the best proof of this is that you never once feel the absence of John Williams.

So, I'm obviously sort of torn about Man of Steel overall. The first half, despite a very clumsy script, is bolstered by great performances into a fairly compelling and engaging character piece; but that's all quickly undone by the second half's endless sequence of things getting hit by flying things. Zack Snyder is primarily a stylist, and he's undoubtedly made a stylish film. He even manages to craft some interesting characters in the early stages but, come the second half, that's all forgotten in favour of shallow, repetitive visuals. Like all his films, the style overwhelms and obliterates any meaningful depth. It continues to look incredibly pretty but, beyond a certain point, just watching guys punch and fly through stuff again and again, with no variation, cannot get by on "pretty" alone. It is horribly dull.

I suppose I'd still recommend it, though? Maybe? You might have a different experience to me; I certainly seem to be in a minority among my friends, and most people are calling the action amazing. And that's fine - I'm glad they enjoyed it. But, to those people, I'd like to recommend that they check out the Transformers series. If this film honestly impressed them, then the imaginative variety of Michael Bay will surely blow their minds. Or possibly punch their minds. At high speed.

Personal Growth

As well as having Christopher Nolan producing and Christian Bale starring, there was another part to yesterday's Justice League rumours that I never actually mentioned: there's also talk of my old friend Zack Snyder directing the thing.

Now, even though Snyder plays a part in those rumours, and even though I was talking about tone and meaning and all the things Snyder is bad at, and even though I mentioned Man of Steel which he actually directed, I somehow resisted the urge to call him a talentless hack.

I'm quite impressed with myself. I consider that progress.

Who Watches the Zack Snyder?

"Zack Snyder to direct Star Wars film!"

I read that headline last week and my heart nearly stopped. The walls began closing in. One of my least favourite directors was to work on one of my most beloved properties. The thought made me feel physically ill.
The next day, Snyder and his agents thankfully denied all knowledge (though that itself could be a lie) and I started breathing again. But now he's on my mind, itching in the back of my brain, so I want to share my thoughts:

Snyder is a director who actually gets a lot of love, particularly among the geek community, but who I simply cannot stand. That opinion is born not from his obsessive use of speed-ramping (though that is incredibly annoying) but from his atrocious handling of one film in particular.

The rest of his films are exercises in style-over-substance, with varying degrees of success. They are all undeniably stylish, but also undeniably hollow.
Dawn of the Dead is stupid, but it knows it's stupid and plays along (zombie baby!) which at times is kind of fun. 300 is equally stupid but plays it straight, which turns out to be even more fun. Sucker Punch seems to think it isn't stupid and tries to have some kind of message - but whatever that message is meant to be gets garbled in delivery (and it gives its shock ending away before it's even started). I have to admit to not having seen Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, but it looks very stylish and (like its title) very stupid.

Which brings us to Watchmen.
For those who don't know, Watchmen is an adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name - often voted the greatest comic of all time. I'd read it when I saw the film, but I wouldn't have called myself a fan. It wasn't until I left the cinema, my blood boiling with rage and loathing, that I realised how much I did appreciate the comic! In its own way, the film convinced me I was a fan of the book.

Whenever I say I don't like Snyder's Watchmen (by which I mean I hate Snyder's Watchmen) the reaction is always the same: "But it looks just like the comic!"
Indeed, it does look like the comic. Snyder captures the look and the style of Dave Gibbons' art perfectly. But that's all he captures. Like everything else he's made, it's an abundance of style at the complete expense of substance. Watchmen looks just like the comic, but it feels completely wrong.
Not since Garth Jennings' unholy violation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a film so totally misread the tone and messages of its source-material.

To explore this idea, we'll be delving into deep spoilers for both versions.

Before we start, let's make one thing clear: this is not about the squid. Getting rid of the squid is actually the only intelligent change the film makes. Tying the story back into Dr. Manhattan, instead of introducing this extra outside element (not to mention the weird inclusion of psychics), is definitely more concise and a neater ending for a film - not to mention that it's probably a better ending in general. I like that the squid is gone; I just don't like anything else.

Watchmen the comic shocked people, infamously so, because of the way it depicted violence. No-one had ever seen violence like this in a comic before. And Snyder seeks to replicate that shock value for a modern audience, so he ramps the violence up much higher.
What he fails to understand is that Watchmen didn't shock people because of how extreme it was (though that was certainly a factor), but rather how realistic it was. Watchmen's entire point is to ask what superheroes would be like in the real world; so, when they fight, it is real-world violence. Violence in comics had always been stylised and cartoonish ("Whack!" "Clud!" "Zonk!") and suddenly Watchmen appeared, showing actual realistic violence - that's where the shock came from. When Snyder (for example) has Silk Spectre literally kick someone's arm in half, he may be making it more extreme and shocking but he's also undermining that realism. Watchmen the film becomes an over-the-top cartoon again, which is exactly what the comic was pushing against.

The one time Snyder's extreme gore and shock-tactics are appropriate - the one time where the comic does this - is at the very end, where we see the devastation of the book's events. The final issue of the comic opens with pages and pages and pages of blood and mangled corpses. At this point, Watchmen is seeking to shock us - to show us the terrible human cost of what has occurred - so Snyder should be free to go all out. So why does he choose this one moment to discover restraint? Why is all we see a blasted cityscape with a few fires burning? Where is that final gut-punch? Where the comic sought realism, Snyder goes over-the-top; where the comic went over-the-top, Snyder shows us nothing at all!

Similarly intended to be shocking is the moment when Rorschach finally snaps. In the comic, on discovering the child-murderer, Rorschach very calmly cuffs him to a radiator and throws him a hacksaw, then sets the building on fire and says the man can either saw off his own hand or burn to death. Then he strolls outside to watch. No one comes out.
Realising that this was shocking at the time, but wouldn't be remotely shocking to a modern audience who already saw exactly that in Saw, Snyder again seeks to make it more extreme. In the film, Rorschach wordlessly attacks the man's head with a meat-cleaver again and again in a fit of rage.
One of these acts is a cold, calculated murder - the other is a crime of passion. This moment is the birth of Rorschach - this moment entirely defines his character - and the two events portray totally different people. One shows that Rorschach has made a very conscious decision to cross a line, where the other shows that he was overcome by his emotions. The first shows us an actual psychopath; the second shows us a man who lost control for a moment.
Snyder's mistake was not to change the events of the scene (there are other ways Rorschach could have killed him, and still remained chillingly detached) but to change the meaning of the scene. Snyder seems unable to see what the scene is supposed to be saying - only what it looks like and how shocking it is.
In that one moment, Snyder changes who Rorschach is, in relation to the story as well as to himself. But that's nothing compared to what he does to Ozymandias. Which brings us to the crux of the problem - the reason that Watchmen made me reject Zack Snyder so angrily.

Alan Moore's Watchmen does not have a protagonist or an antagonist. It has Rorschach - an unpleasant fascist sociopath - who stumbles upon and tries to stop a conspiracy that endangers thousands; and it has Ozymandias - a much nicer man - who is driven to do something unspeakable to (as he sees it) protect the world. It has characters doing the right thing for completely the wrong reason; it has characters doing the wrong thing for absolutely the right reason. There are no "good" or "bad" guys - there are just the characters, what they do, and whether or not you agree with them. This is what makes Watchmen great. Not the violence, not the style, but the fact it makes you think and weigh up your own values. It's written entirely in shades of grey.
Snyder's Watchmen, on the other hand, has a fairly clear protagonist in Rorschach, and a very clear antagonist in Ozymandias. Ozy is given all the depth of a pantomime villain - sneering, condescending, German - and none of his motivations ring true. Far from doing what he does to save the world, he seems to do it just because he's evil. It's so cut-and-dry that it makes me want to scream.
Snyder doesn't even hide the fact that he's the "villain". There's a point where Ozymandias is attacked by an assassin (that he himself hired) in a room full of civilians. This serves to remove the characters' (and our) suspicions from him, as the unseen bad-guys surely wouldn't try to kill him if he was involved. At least, that would be the point of the scene if Snyder hadn't instead used it to show how evil he is. In the comic Ozymandias singlehandedly tackles the gunman - risking his own life to save civilians, like the superhero he is meant to be. In the film he actually ducks behind the civilians and uses them as meat-shields. This superhero is apparently a massive coward and an uncaring bastard, if not entirely evil. Who's behind all this? wonders the audience. Could it be the guy who just got those innocent people killed?
Maybe Snyder decided to play the scene this way to demonstrate how little Ozymandias values human life, as a precursor to his killing thousands. But that's just it - that's what annoys me so much. When, at the end of the comic, he says, "I've made myself feel every death," he clearly means it. This is the one moment that we see the pain and the weight of his terrible actions. He believes he has done the right thing, but it's cost him his soul.
In the film he says the same line, but it feels like an empty platitude. He delivers it with the same lack of emotion that he gives all his other dialogue. How strange that Snyder decided to make Ozymandias detached in this emotional moment, when he made Rorschach so emotional in the scene we mentioned before. Again, he does not see the purpose of the line - he's oblivious to the depth of the character.

It may seem harsh to pin all this on Snyder, but I truly believe this is all his doing. Nothing in the script is wrong - the words and events are fine - it's in the presentation and delivery that Watchmen falls apart. It's the director who asked Ozymandias to give a Ming the Merciless performance. It's the director who shot the violence as an over-stylised cartoon. It's the director who captured the colours, lighting and angle of actual frames from the comic; and then completely undermined the narrative purpose of those frames. It's Snyder who read the comic and saw only shallow style, base shock-value, and plain black and white.
Watchmen's morality should shift and blur like Rorschach's mask (did Moore do that on purpose?) but Snyder takes it at face value. The result is a hollow, empty, worthless film - but it tucks its parts away and dances in front of the mirror wearing Watchmen's face.

Normally this would not annoy me so much. Normally I would let a poor adaptation slide by and just roll my eyes. But this film constantly makes Best Comic-Book Movie of All Time lists at position two or three. This film is more popular among fans of the comic than those who haven't read it. This film is somehow considered a good adaptation. That's why Watchmen fills me with rage - because this praise makes no sense to me!
There's more to an adaptation than mimicking how something looks. Especially something that is revered for the weighty themes at its heart. But, like all Snyder's work, he pours his attention into the style and lets the substance pass him by. As a result, Watchmen not only fails to address, but completely ignores the message of the book.
Zack Snyder got Watchmen wrong. I don't even consider that an opinion. It's a fact.

If that's how violently my body rejected Watchmen - a property I didn't actually realise I was a fan of - imagine the fallout if Snyder got his hands on Star Wars. I wonder if I'd commit clinical murder or a crime of passion? And would he even notice the difference?