Man of Steel
You will give the people an ideal to strive towards.
Jor-El’s words might easily apply to Zack Snyder, a man who makes $100m+ art movies, whose capacity for creation – it must be said, following the reaction to his masterpiece, Sucker Punch – exceeds the audience’s will for interpretation. And while the internet fanboys would be much more comfortable to believe in their partisan brains that this is Christopher Nolan’s Man of Steel, this is a Snyder picture through and through.
From the (frankly amazing) opening on Krypton, with its council dressed to impress 300‘s Xerxes, Snyder continues to create intertextual bridges between his worlds in order to incorporate their meanings. How inspired that the film’s villain should be the reborn Leonidas! And in an intelligent retelling of the Superman myth, the hero’s parallels to Watchmen‘s Doctor Manhattan are inevitable (and historically the reverse), but the opportunity is taken to develop ideas that played a key role in the one movie, under the lens of another. It will take me at least another viewing to interpret Sucker Punch‘s place, but the echoes are there – “For some, he was a guardian angel”, says a Lois Lane as inquisitive as the audience should be. “To others, a ghost who never quite fit in.” Certainly those who would dismiss the boom-smash finale would be wise to remember that this is a man who deconstructed the cinematic action scene, and would be quite willing to reconstruct it according to the meanings deciphered. But in terms of what most people are going to see, in terms of entertainment, there is evidence again that there are few as imaginative at the wheel of a blockbuster.
Are you ready?
what do you have to say about all the negative reviews?
This.
I think I will elaborate and ask is why people seem to be taking issue with the serious tone or the action and the like?
How people can call this movie too serious and not The Dark Knight escapes me.
People like to lump things together, like, this part is for thinking, this part is action. If you feel it is brainless, it is because you have decided to be!
But RJ is on the money: when people complain about Zack’s movies, it means he’s doing something right.
I still haven’t seen the movie, for all I know, I may hate it but I am baffled with the critical reaction to every Snyder movie post-300. And I say that as someone who agrees with some of the negative critical reception to every film since then, but I feel that either critics have an axe to grind for God knows what reasons or/and he makes movies that are genuienly divisive.
He disturbs their platonic ideals.
This movie too, everyone’s going to have an opinion on what “should be different”. Like, I’m convinced giving Clark a lost love in flashback could’ve been really powerful. But obviously that’s not canon, and what do I know? I bite the heads off of fish.
I can’t wait to see this movie and get into arguments with people. Although it may be a while before that happens.