2013 Year In Review: The Pragmatic Superman of Man of Steel

Forget about the safer phrase “There may not have been”, I’ll come right out and say it; there was no film more heavily anticipated in 2013 than Man of Steel.  The second that chill inducing “trailer #3” started popping up around the internet the buzz would not stop.  And while we mostly have Hans Zimmer to thank for making that three minute masterpiece so awe inspiring, we also might ask him to shoulder some of the blame for raising our expectations to a point that not even Superman could match.

Man of Steel was released to lukewarm reviews from critics and oft repeated complaints from viewers.  “It’s too dark” and  “There’s too much mindless action” the most common. 

Even on Imdb.com, where big budget crowd-pleasers and “cool” movies get an irrational boost, Man of Steel only has a rating of 7.4 out of 10.  Compare that to a rating of 8.2 for The Avengers and an ungodly 9.0 for The Dark Knight.

I have found a lot of the criticisms leveled against Man of Steel to be confusing and hypocritical when it is compared to its more beloved superhero contemporaries.  Now, I have already talked ad infinitum about how I think The Dark Knight is pound for pound the most overrated piece of cinema conceived in my lifetime, so I will try not to go to into detail about its failings here.  But where the most recent Batman films get a pass from a lot of fans, they bury Man of Steel.

 I just can't let it go...

Context is Everything

In story telling, if you establish early on that - in a particular world - it may not be so out of the ordinary to see something out of the ordinary, then the reader/viewer/listener is willing to accept it when you see something happen that exceeds the bounds of reality.  That’s why when you see a superhero with no superpowers like Hawkeye jump off a building, turn and shoot an alien monster in the face and then somehow make it to the ground unscathed we say “okay” because it’s the Avengers and things like that happen.

I look at Man of Steel and see a movie more entrenched in its comic book roots of fantasy and science fiction than that of a real world drama.  The first fifteen minutes of the movie take place on an alien planet with Russell Crowe riding a giant flying bug lizard for Pete's sake! 

Man of Steel never pretends that all real world laws apply, so we shouldn't be so surprised when they don't.

Too Much Action

 

It's matter of opinion I suppose.  I personally found that the scenes with Lois Lane and the “control room” military talking heads broke up the action enough that it didn’t feel like a never ending fight scene. 

It’s Too Dark

Another chief complaint by detractors of the film.  This was a big one with movie blogs.  Red Letter Media, Screen Junkies, and Spill all lambasted Man of Steel for being too grim and frightening a take on the fun, kid friendly, superhero.  Once again, ignoring how this same standard doesn’t applying to Batman (especially when Batman was easily the most watched superhero cartoon of my childhood), this complaint always perplexes me because it flies in the face of so many “kid friendly” films I watched growing up.  You’re going to try and tell me that The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t a dark film?  What about A Never Ending Story?  Just about every single Don Bluth film from the 80s (An American Tail, All Dogs Go to Heaven, The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time) had very adult themes worked into the story and I watched all of them dozens of times before I was ten.

If I can handle watching Artax slowly drown in the Swamp of Sadness, I think kids today can handle a few explosions and Michael Shannon screaming at people.

As for the collateral damage, it is true that Superman holds human life in high regard and it plays a factor in all of his confrontations on Earth.  This is, however, a very emotional battle for Superman as he is trying to protect his adoptive home against what he believes to be the very last of his own race.  While Superman does have a strong moral code, he has been shown to bend it in the past when his emotions get involved. 

He also isn’t just protecting Smallville or Metropolis, he’s fighting to protect the entire planet.  So if he needs to sacrifice a train depot in middle America to ensure the furthered existence of the human race, that’s a trade off he seems to be willing to make.  It may be a more pragmatic Superman than we’re used to, but it isn’t entirely out of character.

And anyway, are we even sure he was responsible for any human deaths while fighting Zod and the Kryptonians?  We never see any people dying because of his actions.  In fact, any time he or Zod is thrown threw a building in Metropolis they appear to be evacuated.  It might be hard to believe that so much destruction would yield no loss in human life, but it’s not any more ridiculous than believing Bruce Wayne was able to recover from a broken back in three months while living in an underground prison with no medical attention (Dark Knight Rises got an 8.6 rating on IMDB).

The only area where the movie really strikes out for me is with the way that Superman’s adoptive father, Jonathan Kent, is written.  I understand the desire to create a foil to Jor-El’s idealism and it is an interesting change of pace for the “sagely old man” archetype to suggest that it is better to let a school bus full of children die than to risk revealing your true identity, but is it really believable?   I mean, the whole thing with the Tornado?  Stupidity.

 What does papa Kent teach young Kal-El? Don't help the little guy and look out for number one. Must be a fan of Rush Limbaugh.

People like to beat on Superman for being overpowered and uninteresting.  But I found Man of Steel to have one of the most compelling and complex protagonists of any of the countless Superhero films Hollywood has tried to cash in with lately.  His motivations are clear and he has a defined external and internal struggle that he must overcome as the film progresses.  Maybe if Henry Cavill mumbled in a half intelligible grunt speech like Christian Bale people would have found his character more intriguing, I don’t know.

No one is going to claim that Man of Steel was a perfect movie, or even a great movie.  It was never going to live up to the expectations it made for itself after those great trailers and marketing campaign.  But I look at the backlash it absorbed upon its release and I have trouble seeing how it is any different from any other superhero film from the last decade.

It might not have been the Superman of our dreams, but it was a Superman we can accept.  And certainly a hell of a lot better than Superman Returns.

2013 Year in Review: The Infinite Dilemma of Bioshock III

Few titles were more anticipated this year in the realm of gaming than the third installment of the Bioshock series, Bioshock Infinite.  Partly because the original Bioshock is widely considered one of the greatest achievements in modern gaming.  Partly because the trailers looked incredible.  Partly because its release date was pushed back multiple times because it just wasn’t awesome enough yet.  It finally came out early this year and, I just now got around to finishing it (twice).  So, was it any good?  Mostly.

The game play is injected with a faster pace and enough new gadgets to make it feel fresh while still being familiar to fans of the series.   The graphics and visuals of the world created by Bioshock Infinite don’t quite reach the level of imagination and creativity that made the first Bioshock so mesmerizing but the sky city of Columbia is breathtaking on any other scale.

 Yeah, it looks good. (actual screenshot)

While the game play itself can be intense and challenging at times (good thing) and one of the first things I noticed after the game got going was the increase in gore (decapitations galore!) the decision was clearly made to move the game away from the survival-horror genre that helped to make the first game so memorable.  One of the most impressive things about the original Bioshock was the atmospheric sound editing and voice acting.  The nerve racking sensation of being trapped in a dark room with five bad guys and only four bullets in your gun; you know they’re in there, you can hear them, you just can’t see them.  Haunting images like the Fort Frolic bathroom and Dr. Steinman's Operating Room stick in the player’s head long after they turn off the game.

 Take a moment to digest this, then understand this is one of the mild images from the twisted world of Rapture.

The story is…

Well, the story is compelling enough to keep you playing and maybe even want to play it again when you’re done.  The voice acting is fantastic, just as in the rest of the series.  The ending is probably the most talked about ending to a videogame in years and while it is woefully convoluted, it will certainly leave you thinking (more on this later).  The place where the game falls tragically short of it’s two predecessors is in the department of characters and atmosphere.

Bioshock Infinite has two, interesting, complex, well written characters.  Booker DeWitt is easily the most fleshed out protagonist of any game in the series.  Every other character, however, is completely one dimensional and exists only to further the plot and the story as it relates to those two aforementioned characters.

 We learn a lot about Booker and Elizabeth, but what about everyone else?

One of the best parts of the game experience with the Original Bioshock (and to a lesser extent, Bioshock II) are the many side stories and characters that the player learns of while exploring the city-under-the-sea Rapture.  Just from listening to a few clips of dialogue from audio diaries - left behind for the player to discover – so much is learned of characters.  Their daily lives, what motivates them, their goals, their fears, their dreams.  It creates a world for the player that feels like a real place, that has a history, rather than just one room after another filled with bag guys.

The original Bioshock also had the advantage of being connected to a famous piece of existing literature.  The entire world of Rapture in the game is built up to be a scathing critique of Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy, “Atlas Shrugged.”  It is fascinating to see the creators of the game bring Ayn Rand’s dream society to life only to have it devolve into a ruin of drugs and corruption filled with megalomaniacs and psychopaths.  There are even two characters named after Rand (One, Andrew Ryan, a primary villain of the game.  Another, Anya Andersotter, a minor character – who bears a strong resemblance to Rand herself - that exchanges sexual favors with lowlifes in order to try and gain information for killing Ryan).

The Ending:  We've been here before and we'll be here again.

Bioshock Infinite perhaps was trying to make up for this lack of source material with its highly ambitious ending.  An ending that borrowed themes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and John Gardner's Grendel just to name a few. An ending that was nearly terrible, but ultimately just missed out on being truly great.  I could talk a long time talking about the ending, but in the interest of keeping this spoiler free (and under 50,000 words) I'll control myself.  It was saved from being terrible thanks to a post credits scene that brought the theme of the game full circle (pun intended).  But fell short of great, because even with the post credit scene soooo many questions were left unanswered.

The Coin Flip. It's a exercise in trying to change the inevitable and probably the most important scene in the game for understanding the ending. Only problem is that it happens in the first half hour of the game and is never referenced again. 

Ultimately, Bioshock Infinite is a fun game and one that I will return to play again, and probably more than once.  But, I’ll never be able to disconnect it from the first two games of the series enough not to think of it as a heartbreaking missed opportunity.  I really wish I could’ve learned more about the world and the characters that made Columbia what it was.  And what’s worse, the parts were there to make these things happen.  There had to have been more to Comstock than the player discovers.  It was plain to see that character like the Lutece twins and Preston E. Downs had fascinating back-stories that the game only would have benefited from sharing.  Much of this ironically was probably held back because the creators were worried it would take away from the impact of the ending when, in all likelihood, it would have made it that much more satisfying.  The original Bioshock games were great jigsaw puzzles of mystery with pieces strewn about for the player meticulously put together to create a beautiful story.  Bioshock Infinite tried to do the same thing, but the final product was missing just a few key pieces.

The more a world opens up to you, the more invested in it you will become.  So much of Columbia remains a mystery for the player, when it could have been an exciting and fascinating place.

At least we’ll always have this totally badass trailer.  *AND* This beautiful version of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".