Logic bomb: The best part of every Superman movie is always
Superman, never Lois Lane .
The worst part of every Superman movie is always Lois Lane , never Superman.
Therefore, logically speaking, Lois Lane should stop appearing in Superman
movies. It would be the quickest and easiest fix to this ongoing issue of
sub-par Superman reboots. Fear not, though, fanboys, you will survive Lane’s
omission and you will do so with the usual grace, humility and decorum afforded
to obsessive comic-book fans such as yourselves.
Of course, I say all this for the hypothetical next time, for the
next Superman, if there is one.
Because in this one Lois Lane is front and center in Zach Snyder’s Superman
fever dream, Man of Steel, about how the
Boy From Krypton saves our entire planet with the help of a plucky journalist
with impossible sources and unrealistic press access.
It’s not that I don’t believe that Superman can’t have sidekicks,
it’s that I don’t believe his sidekick would be a journalist, especially one
who reminds her editor that she’s a “Pulitzer prize winning reporter” every
chance she gets. I’m sure the Pulitzer-prize winning Chicago Sun-Times photographer who was just replaced by an iPhone
will get a chuckle at her overuse of the phrase. What’s worse, though, is how
the movie gives us bogus excuses — coincidence mostly — for Lois Lane to be in scenes in which she
clearly doesn’t belong. Yes, that’s Lois
Lane in space quick-drawing a galactic space
pistol.
As for Superman, he’s the angsty and brooding oddball that
Christopher Nolan’s Batman films have foreshadowed. (And look: Nolan even
produced this.) It’s easy to draw an emotional line between Batman and
Superman, and call out “done,” but I do like this Superman and his inner
turmoil. His Kryptonian father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), says the people of
Earth will consider him a god — or maybe just God — which is why his Earth
father, Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner), insists he hide his powers. “They won’t
understand you,” he tells a young Clark Kent,
frequent victim to school bullying. This fear of isolation alienates Superman
and troubles his soul, which is why he falls off the grid, takes a job on the Deadliest Catch TV show and wanders
around Alaska
questioning his purpose and very existence. His fear of who he is serves as the
thematic core of Man of Steel, and I loved
how it was all framed within the sci-fi tweaking of his origin story.
Yes, this is a sci-fi movie, more than any other Superman movie
before it. The bulk of the beginning takes place in Krypton, where dragon
monsters roam the skies and large space armadas wage a civil war for Krypton’s
few remaining days before it all goes supernova. Even after the movie leaves
Krypton, there is a great deal of spaceships, warp drives, eugenics workshops,
earth-carving terraformers and sub-orbital space labs. The villain is General
Zod (Michael Shannon), who was exiled from Krypton the same day it blew up;
funny, you’d think the courts would be closed that day. Decades later, he finds
Earth and immediately holds it hostage until he’s given Kal-El, Superman’s
Krypton name, who hasn’t even outed himself to his earthling buddies. Then they
clobber each other until all of Metropolis and every IHOP in Kansas is in ruins.
At least there is action, albeit hyperactive, spastic and manic
in its delivery. The last movie, Superman
Returns, had Superman lifting heavy things. It looked like an Olympic
event. It was a bore. Now here we are with this, Superman punching Zod over three
skyscrapers and then Zod kicking Superman through six. Train cars are tossed
like darts, jets are picked apart midair, missiles are caught and thrown back,
steel beams are swung like foam bats, and bullets are seen ricocheting off
uninjured flesh. This movie is not lacking the gratuitous Superman hero shots,
that’s for sure.
Snyder (300) for all
his excesses in previous films, dials down the style for this one, instead
going for a more straightforward and traditional approach with none of the contrasty
panels of action. I enjoyed how he tapped into the all-American spirit of
Superman. Much of it is in tiny details: wooden church pews, creaky screen
doors, rusty wagons in freshly mowed lawns, laundry drying on the line, swings
blowing in the breeze and flags fluttering from the porch. One can’t help but
feel patriotic watching the Man of Steel,
and then in comes the 9/11 imagery to sucker punch you into submission. I’m
sick and tired of shots of aircraft crashing into buildings. I’m sick of shots
of skyscrapers tumbling down, the floors pancaking under their own weight. I’m
sick of shots of people running away from dust clouds in the canyons of their
cities. The Avengers did it, as have
countless others, and now here it is again with very few differences. It is
exploitative and inappropriate. Steven Soderbergh was right: the entire nation
still has PTSD. And yet, here is Snyder waving it in our face for a cheap
thrill.
Anyways, Superman is played by Henry Cavill (Immortals), a relative newcomer who will hopefully have a better
run than poor Brandon Routh did in the last movie. Cavill, to his credit, seems
to be a more versatile actor, if only because this script is better than that
clunky paperweight of Superman Returns.
His scenes with Costner, and Costner’s scene with younger versions of Superman,
are utterly key to the emotional arc of this Clark Kent. There is real depth here
between this father and his alien son. By the end, as Superman essentially
becomes Superman, it’s abundantly clear that his human father played a
magnificent role in his life. Costner, so often maligned for simply being Kevin
Costner, is an exceptional asset to this movie.
The same can’t be said for Amy Adams, who plays Lois Lane . Adams is a fine actress, but she served no purpose in
this film other than all of the purposes: She’s there when Superman appears to
the military. She’s front and center when they interrogate him. She’s taken up
to space for no reason. She arms bombs. She kills Kryptonian strongmen. She has
a lengthy conversation with Jor-El for heaven’s sakes. At no point is this
movie safe from Lois’ tinkering. Even after Superman zips through Metropolis
doing “Mach 24” Lois Lane
still manages to find him like some kind of weird stalker. She really is forced
upon us, this movie and even Superman, who doesn’t seem emotionally stable
enough for a girlfriend, even a Pulitzer winner who will smooch with one of her
sources — a journalism no-no.
All cards on the table, though, let me drop some sacrilegious
atom bombs here:
I guess I can keep hoping for a Lois Lane -free Superman movie, but that
day seems less and less likely, especially after Man of Steel, which features Lois Lane so heavily it would be nearly
impossible to evict her from the next one.
Oh well, these things are getting rebooted every three years
anyway. Next time, perhaps.
