Hmmm.
Let’s start with the prologue on Krypton. It looks alien in a way which vaguely reminded
me of Giger in a way I can’t quite put my finger on – perhaps it’s the spiky,
metallic nature of much of the design. The fluid metal communicators, for
instance, are things of beauty. You can
see there’s a lot of time and money been lavished on this big opening sequence.
It’s a shame that it feels far too long, delaying us from actually getting to the
story of Superman himself. With the need to justify the expense of the designs
(and probably Russell Crowe’s salary) of the focus of the story is sacrificed
right from the start. Much of what this tells could have been done with clever
dialogue but no, everything regarding Superman’s background and Zod’s origins
is painstakingly shown on screen. The audience is not trusted, not allowed to
use any imagination, instead you’re being told to marvel at some pseudo-mythic
spectacle with accompanying stilted dialogue. None of the actors are good enough
(or directed well enough) to lift the scenes. The deliberate portentousness
kills any sense of engagement with what you’re watching and you realise the
common sense of Russell T Davies’ decree when running Doctor Who that every
story should relate to or jeopardise Earth in some way. There’s just nothing to
draw you into the story here, a fatal error symptomatic of the larger problems
of the film (those problems being ‘Snyder’, ‘Nolan’, ‘Goyer’ and the
combination thereof).
I suspect, given the Comic Con announcement of Batman vs
Superman, that Nolan was on board to make sure this Superman was tonally
compatible with his Batman. Nolan’s approach to Batman was one which can suit
the character as much as say Adam West’s high camp version or Tim Burton’s
gothic fantasia does. Batman invites an exploration of what makes someone dress
up in a daft costume and fight crime – his origin story introduces a certain
psychological complexity into the character. But as The Dark Knight Rises showed, it’s one
which can wear down over a period of time and with a lack of jokes it doesn’t
necessarily age well. It’s also completely unsuited to Superman, a character
with no real dark side whose motivations have essentially been uncomplicated
since the beginning. It’s trying to forcibly introduce a complexity into the
character which isn’t naturally there.
Which leads us to the second problem, David S Goyer. Let’s
charitably assume that his brief included the necessity of exploring Superman’s
psychology. Then let’s uncharitably note that he does that through American art’s
most overused trope, the daddy issue. As is the case throughout the film the
Earth heritage sequences are well done, mainly thanks to Kevin Costner, one of
the few spot on pieces of casting in the film. Costner sells a fairly thankless
role in the same way Martin Sheen nailed Uncle Ben in The Amazing Spider-Man
and stops you noticing that this actually reduces Superman to the same
motivations as every other movie superhero. Costner actually makes them the
best part of the film. And I say that as someone who’s never been a fan of
Costner.
Then there are Goyer’s
words. It’s terrifying when a big budget Hollywood blockbuster gets made with
the following dialogue:
“There’s only one way this ends Kal… either you die or I do”
Read that again. That’s a genuine line of dialogue given to
a supposedly intelligent, level headed character. The words ‘only one way’ and ‘either’
are not compatible. The only conclusion I drew is that Goyer doesn’t actually
understand what words mean. Also, that Snyder needed to hire a script editor
because it’s hard to believe that any remotely competent editor would have let
that one through. There might be an argument to say the character in question
is psychologically unstable at that point, but it’s so unclear and looks so
clunky it would’ve been best avoided. On top of this the characters are constantly
given to telling us what to think of them – at one point one of the villains
proclaims they have ‘no morality’ – seriously, she might be alien but no
morality? There are different types of morality but no-one, perhaps excepting
the Marquis de Sade, has ever gone around proclaiming nonsense in that way. And
while there are no contrivances as clumsy as the laughable moment in Superman Returns
where Lois took her son into the villain’s HQ (seriously, whoever wrote that
has no idea of how humans function) there are a few that aren’t far off – for
instance, the split ship in the climax simply being a deliberate, expensive and
unnecessary delay to the climax of the film which adds nothing to the narrative.
It left me thinking that the script needed at least another draft. It’s not all
bad though, the notion of Superman’s famous S being a symbol of hope on his
home world is the one hint that Goyer might understand Superman. I couldn’t
help but feeling the whole film needed another draft to focus it and someone
who knows how people talk to write the dialogue.
And so to the final problem. Based on his previous movies I’m
not a fan of Zack Snyder at all. Both 300 and Watchmen were overly slavish
adaptations which were often visually beautiful and exceptional in reproducing
the most striking panels from their respective comics. Leaving aside the fact
that I’m not a big fan of Frank Miller and wasn’t inclined to like 300 anyway,
I thought the exact reason he was wrong for Watchmen was that he missed
everything that made Watchmen the landmark it was. Watchmen essentially asked
what the psychology of people who ran round in masks and fought crime would be
in real life. Snyder was more interested in the spectacle of Dr Manhattan’s
strangeness and Rorschach’s violence on screen Leaving aside that arguably
Watchman’s most original trick has been done to death on page and on screen
since Snyder’s big weakness is that he’s fabulous as spectacle but bad with
people – with Watchmen I felt I was just watching people as moving props in
front of some beautiful backdrops. Which isn’t a problem with Dr Manhattan, who’s
evolved far beyond us, but is when it comes to convincing us of why Nite Owl
and Silk Spectre Junior get it on later in the film. And he has the same
problem here. Compounding the faults of Goyer’s script is that everyone
involved seems to have been told to play it in approved ‘smell the fart’ style,
where everything becomes portentous. It just doesn’t engage, doesn’t let the
human element come through and left both my wife and I unengaged and ultimately
bored. Snyder’s problem this time extends to spectacle too. With no comic book
to draw on he piles on the CGI spectacle to little effect. I’ve already
mentioned the pointless second ship that’s just Superman against some CGI metal
and achieves nothing but his worst crime is in Metropolis. Zod’s plan inflicts
carnage upon the city that dwarfs any terrorist attacks you could conceive. It
should be terrifying but it’s essentially CGI wanking. There’s no sense of
scale to the destruction, it’s just yet another skyscraper falling over. There’s no sense of the stakes here, no sense
of psychological trauma. And, guess what… all the characters we’ve been introduced
to survive and even at the end of the film it seems like a reset button’s been
pressed, characters having simply brushed off what’s happened. It needed some
acknowledgement.
All these problems come to a head in the film’s climax. As a
villain Zod’s been reduced to a humourless psychopath, Michael Shannon having
nothing of the presence of Terence Stamp’s original interpretation. We have some
grand fight scenes with the characters knocking seven bells out of each other,
which is fine and to be expected in a superhero movie. But how does Superman defeat
Zod? By outsmarting someone ostensibly his equal? Well no. The planned
destruction of Earth is defeated by the self-sacrifice of others and Superman
simply breaks Zod’s neck. That’s it. There’s no sense of an epic conclusion, an
earned victory. It’s just ‘I’m better in a fight than the other guy’. There’s
no real reason to Superman’s triumph but dumb luck. What should be the moment
that tells us just why the character’s so great ends up diminishing him,
cheating the audience. There’s nothing to tell me why I should be coming back
next time to cheer him on. Instead of establishing this version of Superman
they achieve the opposite.
Nolan, Goyer and Snyder will apparently all be back for ‘World’s
Finest’, the Superman/Batman movie. I never thought I’d say it about a Superman/Batman
film but based on this I severely doubt I will be.
