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Given how many Kryptonians survive for the plot of this movie to unfold and how often a virtual Jor-El continues to be a player in the story post-death, I'm still sort of surprised they didn't just do something like have Jor-El be just alive and on the prison ship and let all the killing of the Kryptonians and Zod fall to him in order to keep Superman's hands clean. It seems like even the comics on a few occasions have had moments where Superman has to make a choice about dying or killing there pops up some other character who makes the choice for Superman doesn't have to.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:12
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The NOT MY SUPERMAN meme is obviously premised on the idea that SOMEONE TOOK MY SUPERMAN. Given that Superman is an ideal of freedom and justice, how is it possible for a corporation to steal him from you? That's the vital question here.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Not my Superman movie, and it shouldn’t be yours. Perhaps I could have been clearer, but my point was not to suggest that such criticisms are straw men wholly invented by fans of MoS. My point was: that (a) the fact that such criticisms were far more common than for any other comics-based superhero film before or since is in itself worthy of analysis; and (b) that, from what I've seen online, the primary attempt to turn "not my Superman"/"not muh Superman" into a full-on meme has been made not by critics of MoS adopting that phrase or something similar as a rallying cry, but by defensive fans of MoS ridiculing any and all such criticism as self-evidently absurd.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:15
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Barry Convex posted:I'm not going to do a Google count, but while that could be true, why does that have to be interpreted as saying everything about the people making that criticism and nothing about the film itself, as the "not my/muh Superman" meme assumes? I don't think it should be terribly controversial, or worthy of blanket dismissal, to suggest that MoS' deviations, if not greater, would at least have to be different from those made by other superhero films in order to engender such a response. Gee, I don't know why "Superman doesn't do that" might be construed with "that's not what my idea of Superman does", especially since Superman has done many if not all of the things portrayed in Man of Steel already! quote:
The comic villains' characterizations only make sense in the context of a Sisyphean system like I described above. For obvious reasons you're not going to have the Joker have an army of lawyers forever putting him into an insane asylum where he escapes from every year or so.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:18
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Barry Convex posted:the primary attempt to turn "not my Superman"/"not muh Superman" into a full-on meme has been made not by critics of MoS adopting that phrase or something similar as a rallying cry, but by defensive fans of MoS ridiculing any and all such criticism as self-evidently absurd. I could be wrong though. Mainly my opinions on MoS amount to "was kind of pretty and pretty boring to watch" and "should've had more Meloni."
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Sep 5, 2014 06:21
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"Audiences hiss the sight of blood now, as if they didn't have it in their own bodies. They hiss those bloody scenes that have the power to shock them, even when the blood isn't excessive. [...] in Eyes of Laura Mars, where the first flash of bloodletting comes right at the beginning, and in The Fury, where the bloodshed is stylized, hyperbolic, insane, audiences who seem hypnotized by the urgency in the moviemaking still hiss the blood. They seem to be saying, "I don't need this!" they hiss the blood as if to belittle it, to make it less menacing. And these movies are treated with condescension." It's a gaggle of liberals shirking from violence, and that is absurd. The blood is already inside them, and the bit that they see is just a droplet of it.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:38
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In The Avengers Tony nukes an army/city/whatever (we're never really given much information on it) and its awesome and nobody in the audience really cares that tons of aliens are dead because gently caress 'em they're evil and invading us. In MoS Clark breaks Zod's neck in what is unquestionably presented as the only course of action (he's not going to stop, he can't be contained, etc) and everyone in the audience is super uncomfortable and frustrated. This is Important.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:48
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The NOT MY SUPERMAN meme is obviously premised on the idea that SOMEONE TOOK MY SUPERMAN. 
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Sep 5, 2014 07:02
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Luminous Obscurity posted:In The Avengers Tony nukes an army/city/whatever (we're never really given much information on it) and its awesome and nobody in the audience really cares that tons of aliens are dead because gently caress 'em they're evil and invading us. It's also important to note how people view Tony Stark and how they view Superman. Tony Stark is not Superman. Superman is Superman, though. Superman was put into a situation where he saw no choice but to murder Zod. Maybe the problem is script put Superman into a situation where he had no choice but to murder Zod.
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Sep 5, 2014 07:07
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Actually, Superman chose to kill Zod, and it was a good choice. Correct; the Superman who chooses never to kill is the decaffeinated t-shirt Superman. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 07:21
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Barry Convex posted:[...} (b) that, from what I've seen online, the primary attempt to turn "not my Superman"/"not muh Superman" into a full-on meme has been made not by critics of MoS adopting that phrase or something similar as a rallying cry, but by defensive fans of MoS ridiculing any and all such criticism as self-evidently absurd. I'd expect that this is because these people know how silly they'd look if they made that their rallying cry.
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Sep 5, 2014 09:46
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CelticPredator posted:I mean, to most people who don't read the comics, Superman is an all American boyscout good person. So it is really loving jarring to see him flat out ignore people in the middle of a battle with a powerful maniac throwing tanker trunks at him(and he just jumps over it...what the hell?). Which is why I think the writing in that movie loving sucks. Maybe 'most people' are wrong about Superman. Dispensing with the crowd you feel the need to hide behind, maybe you are wrong about Superman.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:42
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And if Man of Steel is the 'right' Superman, I'm contented with being wrong, because that was some awful garbage.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:44
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Counterpoint: It was really good.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:47
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Counter-counter point: I wish I liked it. 
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Sep 5, 2014 10:49
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Hbomberguy posted:Maybe 'most people' are wrong about Superman. Maybe they aren't.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:54
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Maybe the truth is in the middle?
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Sep 5, 2014 10:54
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The NOT MY SUPERMAN meme is obviously premised on the idea that SOMEONE TOOK MY SUPERMAN.    
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 10:55
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We're at a strange cross-section in cinema discussion here, where viewers are simultaneously capable of shrugging off the seeming evaporation of human beings in Avengers, but see the existence of struggling human beings in MoS as a fault because Superman is too busy saving the world to save literally every human in crises individually. The scenes where ordinary humans are inspired by Supes to help each other apparently only played in my screening? It's odd that most of the other side of this discussion has to take place in the form of witty one-liners about not wanting to be right and appeals to what the masses think to justify themselves. You can, though I may be wrong, do better.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:55
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Who was inspired by Superman? That scene was not in the movie. One girl said, "He saved us" and that's it.
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Sep 5, 2014 10:57
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I'm referring to the scene with Perry.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:00
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Hbomberguy posted:We're at a strange cross-section in cinema discussion here, where viewers are simultaneously capable of shrugging off the seeming evaporation of human beings in Avengers, but see the existence of struggling human beings in MoS as a fault because Superman is too busy saving the world to save literally every human in crises individually. The scenes where ordinary humans are inspired by Supes to help each other apparently only played in my screening? Well, I might repeat my point from earlier: Avengers is a very trivial movie. We (and the general audience) forgot the seeming evaporation of human beings like we forgot the TV-level direction. MoS, on the other hand, is a very exhausting and heavy movie. It just compounds Superman's failure to protect civilians during combat.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:03
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Hbomberguy posted:I'm referring to the scene with Perry. I always read that scene as the opposite, with Clark being inspired by Perry's selflessness.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:04
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You're being incredibly dishonest if you're acting like Man of Steel's interpretation of Superman, one that's really not all that different to DCAU or Byrne era Supes, is somehow a betrayal of the character comparable with Morrison's SuperDoomsday. AFoolAndHisMoney fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 11:08
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Well, I might repeat my point from earlier: Avengers is a very trivial movie. We (and the general audience) forgot the seeming evaporation of human beings like we forgot the TV-level direction. A kind of bad example, but whatever. It's like Planet Terror. Say whatever you will about the film, but the tone is a pretty easily understandable thing. It's why a attempted rape scene isn't disturbing in the way it should be. It's why castrating a man doesn't bother you the same way it would in another film. Tone is one of the most important things in a film. Possibly the most important. The Avengers gets passes from a lot of people because of it's tone. Maybe you don't like that, but hey. The tone worked for people, and they felt engaged. They see death, but death is skirted under the surface just enough that you can move past it. Not quite enough that you don't still feel affects from it. But enough to have fun and laugh a little. And while people like when things counter the norm and tell the audience to gently caress themselves...most people don't. But I don't think that's something that should be done all the time. There's pretty good tangible reasons why people dislike MOS, And yes, some of it, but not all of it, revolves around "Not my Superman!" because it's loving Superman, and everyone already has preconceived notions on what to expect going in. "It's different. And I don't like things that are different." - Harry S. Plinkett. CelticPredator fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 11:23
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:You're being incredibly dishonest if you're acting like Man of Steel's interpretation of Superman, one that's really not all that different to DCAU or Byrne era Supes, is somehow a betrayal of the character comparable with Morrison's SuperDoomsday. I was mostly talking about how an "ideal of freedom and justice" can be stolen. Onto your point, the key panel is on the third page, where Lois Lane talks about how Superman is turned into a dark, violent anti-hero. This is a common trend that often emphasises how Superman is a struggling and tormented outsider. SuperDoomsday is the culmination of this process, where the character becomes faceless. This process tends to marginalise (as in the case of MoS) one of the most compelling aspects of Superman: that he is, on one level, an Everyman. Morrison himself has pointed out how Superman has a job, a demanding boss, a crush on a coworker, and that other aspects of his mythos are just super-exaggerated versions of everyday life (super-pet, super-relatives, super-toolshed-where-he-can-be-alone, super-friends...). In Morrison's Action Comics, young, brash Clark Kent is initially a leftist "journalist" (i.e. blogger) whose activities as Superman are what a college student with superpowers and a sense of social justice would do (and is basically taken from Action Comics #1 from 1939). The versions you mention bring this aspect to the forefront; Byrne Supes, as I recall, was even very secure and comfortable in his identity as an American. What I'm saying is that Clark Kent/Superman in MoS is very uninteresting. e: CelticPredator posted:"It's different. And I don't like things that are different." Just because something is different doesn't mean it's good. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 11:32
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Well, I might repeat my point from earlier: Avengers is a very trivial movie. We (and the general audience) forgot the seeming evaporation of human beings like we forgot the TV-level direction. "Superman fails to protect american civilians while saving the world." Sure, okay.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:59
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I was mostly talking about how an "ideal of freedom and justice" can be stolen. Again, the idea that Man of Steel is somehow a dark and violent antihero is dishonest (he's ultimately a character who can't hide himself because he feels the need to help everyone in need) and the idea that this is linked to Clark having to struggle is pretty stupid. I mean one of the best eras of Post Crisis Superman's mainline run was probably Johns and Busiek's Action Comics/Superman runs which frequently drew attention to Superman's status as an outsider.   Oh my god look at this edgy, violent anti-hero, such a troubled outsider. Never mind that Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes is one of the best Post-Crisis Superman stories out there that's a great blend of the humbler Byrne era character with the crazy out there ideas of the Silver Age. The Byrne era Superman was a character who often had to struggle with balancing his powers, he was far more flawed than the previous take and was frequently second guessing his actions and his place in the world. The ultimate culmination of this is when he kills Zod and goes into exile over this, worrying about whether he's too dangerous to protect Earth but coming out of it stronger and with much more conviction in his beliefs. Exile isn't perfect (and technically not by Byrne himself but still from that early era and drawing on Byrne's characterisation) but it's one of the better early PC era Superman stories that really gets that being Superman is more than just showing up fully formed with perfect ideals but more about striving to become that ideal. All in all Superman as a character who aims for an ideal that he can't quite reach but will never stop trying and a character who has to really earn this status is exactly what has made him interesting for over 2 decades now. AFoolAndHisMoney fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 12:42
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Hbomberguy posted:We're at a strange cross-section in cinema discussion here, where viewers are simultaneously capable of shrugging off the seeming evaporation of human beings in Avengers, but see the existence of struggling human beings in MoS as a fault because Superman is too busy saving the world to save literally every human in crises individually. The Avengers aren't Superman. Captain America kinda comes close though, and they actually did take a moment in Avengers to show him doing poo poo to take control of the situation and direct officials in evacuation and establishing a perimeter, and saving people being threatened by the Chitauri, reinforcing his characterization and not betraying who he is.
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Sep 5, 2014 12:45
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You mean the scene where he dismembers a faceless Bad Guy and holds his arm aloft as a trophy? Ah yes, I recall when Captain America did that in The First Avenger. Such a solid continuation of the character.
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Sep 5, 2014 12:51
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Hbomberguy posted:"Superman fails to protect american civilians while saving the world." I'll be generous and not assume that you are inferring that I have some bias towards protecting Americans (speaking as a non-American, you should've maybe gone with "Westerner"  ).And since you seem unfamiliar with the concept of immigration, I should inform you that massive Western cities are not the sole domain of Westerners. But I suppose immigrants are just collateral damage too. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 12:55
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:This process tends to marginalise (as in the case of MoS) one of the most compelling aspects of Superman: that he is, on one level, an Everyman. The end of the film is Kal dressed up in his familiar Clark Kent outfit. He's happy and has friends, and the last lines of the film are 'welcome to the planet'. This is a 'character arc' where a character changes over time. Kal goes from an alien drifter to an "everyman", and the cry is the painful but cathartic moment where this happens. Killing Zod is unambiguously good. Superman himself believes that it was unambiguously good. People are only uncomfortable because it's not triumphant. If he smashed Zod into the ground a few times and delivered a quip, no-one would care if Zod stopped breathing. Perhaps if he kicked Zod into a well. Far from being an antihero,the complaint is actually that Superman is too heroic, taking no pleasure in killing while consciously threatening liberal hegemony. CelticPredator calls this a problem of tone - but his highly ideological premise is that Avenger's atmosphere of blithe indifference is the appropriate tone. Simply put, Man Of Steel attacks liberal ideology and this makes liberals uncomfortable. Superman is an 'everyman' who is hinted by drones in the desert, and promises extreme violence against those who threaten the workers. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 12:57
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Hbomberguy posted:You mean the scene where he dismembers a faceless Bad Guy and holds his arm aloft as a trophy? Ah yes, I recall when Captain America did that in The First Avenger. Such a solid continuation of the character. I mean people think of Captain America as a boy scout kinda guy who protects people and always does what's right, similar to Superman. That remained consistent even in Avengers, whereas Man of Steel betrayed the image of Superman that people have have come to expect for the past 80 years. So yeah, you're trying to distract from Man of Steel's flaws by pointing at Avengers, except the situation was actually handled really well in Avengers, so you're just defeating your own argument.
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Sep 5, 2014 13:10
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Lamps: Very well, I retract the word. What's your response now? Superman successfully protected the world and everyone in it, by saving it from the machine that would literally have killed absolutely everyone. There were numerous scenes of Superman saving people's lives, including military men even though he clearly has problems with the military. When the massive world-ending machine starting to kill humanity, he focused on stopping it. Instead of trying to save every person on the planet individually, he pushed the planet to shore. The consistent imagery of the film is good people getting destroyed or manipulated by oppressive systems. Men trapped on oil rigs. Kryptonians trapped on planets, or in rigid caste systems. Children trapped on buses underwater. Adult males stuck working in IHOP. The film is essentially 'about' not getting trapped in trying to fix any of these one individual things, and targeting the source. This is also the plot of the Terminator series, which MoS references explicitly, and also of Star Wars - note how both films make sure to establish that the antagonists are literally encapsulated in an oppressive system, dehumanised and placed behind helmets and so on. The imagery is of 'free, good' people, trapped and altered. Even killing Zod is in some way a defeat, an admission that sometimes violence is the answer. Killing Zod is a heroic thing, but not something that should be celebrated. It should simply be one's duty. The film reminds me of Godzilla in '14, who shatters comfortable bubbles of reality and drowns innocent people just with his arrival - but his arrival heralds the death of an evil that threatens everyone. Speaking of distraction, Jamesman - you seem to have completely ignored part in the scene where Captain America dismsmbers his opponent and holds a body part aloft as a trophy. This is not what a schoolboy hero does, and not what the one in First Avenger did. In fact he was explicitly against such posturing. Making a comparison between two movies that present very similar scenarios is basic criticism, not a distraction. There is simply no consistency between the two iterations. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 13:14
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:Again, the idea that Man of Steel is somehow a dark and violent antihero is dishonest (he's ultimately a character who can't hide himself because he feels the need to help everyone in need) and the idea that this is linked to Clark having to struggle is pretty stupid. I mean one of the best eras of Post Crisis Superman's mainline run was probably Johns and Busiek's Action Comics/Superman runs which frequently drew attention to Superman's status as an outsider. Where do you get that Superman-as-outsider is bad? I just said that it tends to marginalise one of the more interesting and humanising aspects of the character. It's not that it can't work, it just tends to ring hollow when he has a circle of friends and family to support him in his every identity. The tormented outsider part is indicative of a trend, but not inseparable from it. SuperMechagodzilla posted:The end of the film is Kal dressed up in his familiar Clark Kent outfit. He's happy and has friends, and the last lines of the film are 'welcome to the planet'. My problem is that the film so hugely marginalises this element of the character in exchange for this journey where his assimilation into American culture is completed with his killing of the invading foreigner (I have to say, your seemingly unironic acceptance of that as a character-forming exercise is rather disconcerting). This 'character arc' thing that you allude to doesn't save the fact that they merely tease the "complete Superman". If you have a more interesting version of the character, the best bet would probably to focus on that. And I doubt that people think that a quip would've saaved it. Superman's (and Lois Lane's) summary execution of Zod and company in Superman 2 is even more weird and off-putting. I don't necessarily disagree with all of the elements of MoS; I find them badly executed. Also, I don't think the Avengers does it well either. That's why I call it 'trivial'. You might know the word: it signifies bad things. The only reason anybody accepts the destruction is because of its 'triviality'. Man of Steel doesn't manage to persuade me about the righteousness of Superman's particular brand of violence directed at the Other, and I suppose that makes it bad.
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Sep 5, 2014 13:21
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Jamesman posted:Man of Steel betrayed the image of Superman that people have have come to expect for the past 80 years. This is incredibly stupid. Let's keep pumping out the same milquetoast movie over and over just so we don't upset the babbies in the audience.
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Sep 5, 2014 13:27
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Jamesman posted:Man of Steel betrayed the image of Superman that people have have come to expect for the past 80 years. Literally another NOT MY SUPERMAN
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Sep 5, 2014 13:28
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:My problem is that the film so hugely marginalises this element of the character in exchange for this journey where his assimilation into American culture is completed with his killing of the invading foreigner Zod & Co. aren't foreigners, they're Humanity from the future.
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Sep 5, 2014 13:35
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Where do you get that Superman-as-outsider is bad? I just said that it tends to marginalise one of the more interesting and humanising aspects of the character. It's not that it can't work, it just tends to ring hollow when he has a circle of friends and family to support him in his every identity. The tormented outsider part is indicative of a trend, but not inseparable from it. But Superman being apart from humanity feeling that sense of isolation has been a pretty big part of his character for quite a while now and it's not that his friends and family supporting him undermines this idea, his supporting cast are important to actually grounding the character and keep him from losing touch. You're ignoring that people like Lois and his parents are crucial to keeping him down to Earth and he always talks about his admiration of humanity and what keeps him going with his optimism and hope through whatever Lois or Ma/Pa or Jimmy or Bruce or whoever does during these stories. This is something Man of Steel draws on plenty of times. Clark is overburdened by his senses but his mother's voice is what keeps him tuned to where he is and prevents him from completely losing touch with the world. He's overburdened by his abilities but people like Lois or his fathers help him to realise his gift and how he can use it to save the world. By contrast Zod is a character who is completely asexual and barely looks at other members of his race in any kind of familial or sexual manner despite supposedly calling himself a man who serves his people- he's what Clark would be without his parents or Lois keeping him grounded. Superman's friends and family don't somehow diminish his alienation, they further emphasise how crucial it is for Clark to have these intimate relationships due to his Othering and what kind of person he could have been without them.
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Sep 5, 2014 13:47
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Zod & Co. aren't foreigners, they're Humanity from the future. I find that people have different readings of things, and can see things from multiple perspectives. Krypton-as-future has to co-exist with Superman-as-immigrant, which invites some muddled themes. The movie invites reading it from the latter perspective with its focus on the military and Superman being viewed as a dangerous outsider. And Krypton-as-future is a double-edged sword: SMG criticised WS for externalising American flaws onto Hydra as a way to avoid condemning America itself. Similarly, makign Krypton the dystopian future of humanity and having Superman fight against reeks of the same projection of flaws. Hbomberguy posted:Lamps: Very well, I retract the word. What's your response now? It may be a cop-out answer, but I just didn't find it well-executed. It's hard to say right off the bat, but I think it fails to communicate the conflict well. I've mentioned how Superman works as an Everyman, but the conflicts of MoS (outsider vs. society, individual vs. system, etc) are framed and defined in a way that is very alienating and that doesn't resonate well. It's, for example, why having Clark Kent join the Planet at the very end was such a mistake: it basically removed the element in the Superman mythos that really grounds the audience. But I have to say, your posts, among others, have certainly improved my opinion of the movie.
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Sep 5, 2014 14:07
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