Man of Steel

2.5/4 stars

After the wise decision to abandon the story arc of 2006’s laborious Superman Returns and give the franchise a true reboot under the supervision of Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, fans had hope that Man of Steel would be the film that finally does for Superman what Nolan and Goyer’s Dark Knight trilogy did for Batman. Seeing Zack Snyder, director of the excellent Watchmen adaptation, at the helm certainly didn’t hurt either. But Man of Steel is at best a partial success in this goal, burdened with an excess of increasingly meaningless action scenes and too little background to hold them together.

The film opens with an extended sequence set in the last days of Krypton, starring Russell Crowe as Superman’s biological father Jor-El and featuring plenty of action scenes of its own. This sequence serves to introduce the origin of Superman himself, as well as antagonist General Zod, and the primary McGuffin. The first thing that struck me was this film’s incredible lack of patience. It’s always providing us with beautiful, interesting things to look at and almost no time to take them in. This Kryptonian prelude manages to feel overwritten and underdeveloped at the same time.

When the movie gets going, it does manage to draw compelling versions of the Superman cast. Henry Cavill plays the title role with all the requisite charm and authority, and Amy Adams’ Lois Lane may be one of the best interpretations of the character yet. There are good supporting performances too, particularly Laurence Fishburne’s intimidating but fatherly Perry White. Two of my favorite television actors, Richard Schiff and Tahmoh Penikett, are also seen, but sorely underutilized. The script also provides plenty of interesting opportunities for dramatic hooks and variations on the known Superman mythos. But the film doesn’t seem to care about any of this back story it introduces, as it pushes aside any chance for real drama or unpredictable complications in favor of more straightforward action sequences. Superman has no time to establish himself as a hero, or have any interaction with most of his supporting cast, because the moment Clark Kent discover the truth about himself, he inadvertently broadcasts his location to General Zod and the rest of the Kryptonian refugees, and from there the action hardly takes a breath.

Michael Shannon’s turn as Zod is another missed opportunity. Shannon is a fantastic actor, capable of playing a rational yet ruthless enemy. But the plot robs him of any real chance to communicate with Superman with anything other than his fists, leaving the stakes of their conflict feeling half-baked. On the occasions when the movie does pause for a dramatic moment, it’s usually a flashback of young Clark being taught some formative lesson by Pa Kent. There’s nothing wrong with these scenes per se, and they’re made no worse by Kevin Costner’s familiar paternal presence, but Goyer hits the same note too many times, and in the process, misses the opportunity to have Clark’s character development more relevant to the people he interacts with in the main story.

Man of Steel has all the ingredients necessary to be the kind of superhero epic that stands beside The Dark Knight or the recent string of quality offerings from Marvel. But it isn’t that movie, nonetheless, because the filmmakers decided they had time for more explosions and special effects, but not enough for good storytelling.

Watchmen

3.5/4 stars

Comic book films took some time to make their way from geeky popcorn entertainment to a major part of the mainstream cinematic sensibility, and if the snubbing of The Dark Knight from a well deserved spot in the Best Picture category at the recent Oscars is any indication, they may have some way to go. Still, the fact that movies like it are being made at all is testament to a change in perception, and Watchmen is a landmark achievement to that end. Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen has been acknowledged as a major work in superhero literature for many years, but in addition to the technology necessary to make a successful adaptation, there was also the need for an audience. The movie-going public has seen the superhero parody before, but Watchmen demonstrates that they are finally ready for the superhero deconstruction.

There is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Watchmen is unlike most comic book movies (but not unlike 2005’s V for Vendetta, also originally by Moore) in that it is a true adaptation of a story, not just its characters. The film, like the novel before it, seeks to challenge an audience that is largely accustomed to being simply entertained. At this it is hugely successful. The questioning themes of the novel are faithfully realized: its take on complexities of the superhero genre, its search for a cause for optimism. The major characters are deftly illuminated through flashbacks that always seem to have something more of the story to tell us than merely what is relevant to that particular character. The big screen also enables certain devices that the page does not; in particular, the addition of era-appropriate music (often the same songs that Moore quoted as chapter epigraphs) does tremendous work in creating mood. The opening credits montage, which shows us the various subtle differences in the history of the film’s world and our own, is also outstanding. Where the story is altered from the original, it is actually made cleaner, more symmetric, a rarity in film adaptations.

Many of the performances in Watchmen are virtuoso level, though they work so well together, and are so faithful to the source material that they become somewhat invisible. Patrick Wilson hits all the right notes as Daniel, Malin Akerman brings both allure and a sense of reality to the second Silk Spectre, and Matthew Goode captures the cold moral certainty of Ozymandias. Billy Crudup’s Doctor Manhattan will be long remembered among cinema’s great aliens, characters that looked at humanity from outside with human faces. Rorschach, played by Jackie Earle Haley, is such a perfect deconstruction of the vigilante archetype that I wonder if he will make all future Batman films obsolete (how will we witness Batman’s conviction without recalling Rorschach’s madness?). Jeffrey Dean Morgan is also a revelation as The Comedian; scary, charismatic, compelling.

The place where the film suffers may be its director. I’ve heard stories of Zack Snyder saving the project from lobotomizing studio executives and truly awful early drafts, seen interviews in which he shows a great reverence for the source material, and an enthusiastic vision for the film. What he has done would have required these virtues, as well as great craft and patience. But I’m afraid that Snyder’s affinity for intense and graphic violence has brought an unsavory character to much of the film. Watchmen was a violent graphic novel, to be sure. Praised for being gritty, it challenged its audience by showing them things they would rather not see, made them consider the dark side of their superhero fantasies. The violence in this movie is not grimly realistic however, but joyfully indulgent. The unfettered machismo of 300 has no place in this story, but Snyder remains true to the style that made him successful there. This, along with a problematically meandering ending, is the gnawing fault of an otherwise excellent movie.