Superman Re-envisioned

I finally made it out to see Man of Steel. Even a week after it’s release, the place was packed with a dozen shows today. Despite being another origin movie, it was pretty good. It was a bit odd in the fact that it was non-linear with the story jumping from Kal as a baby to him as an adult and the rest being filled in through flashbacks. I would definitely recommend going to see it though. And just so you don’t waste your time waiting, there’s no extra scene at the end. The rest will be behind the standard warning…

The movie starts out on Krypton. Jor-El (the ever sexy Russell Crowe) is arguing with the ruling council of Krypton about the fate of the planet when Zod and his crew crashes the party. Krypton is not the pure and sanitary place of old. There’s a lot more rock than crystal. Neither is Jor-El the scientist that we’ve always seen. Being portrayed by Russell Crowe, he’s a lot more active and adventurous. He also rides a 4 winged dragon. On the upside, they have Kelex in there and the robots use some sort of “smart metal” (for lack of a better phrase) that reshapes itself as needed as it is made up of tiny balls of metal. In the end, Kal-El’s rocket is sent off to Earth with the genetic encoding of all the future Kryptonians and Zod’s crew is sent into the phantom zone. (For some reason they are first wrapped up in some sort of ice that makes them look like giant dildos before sending them to the ship that goes into the phantom zone.

Just as the rocket crashes on Earth, we jump to a bearded Clark as an adult. He’s a novice on a boat when a nearby oil rig starts on fire and gets ready to explode. Clark disappears from the boat and appears out on the rig, working to save the people left there. We get a great look at him bare chested, the first fuzzy Superman. With the chest hair and face fuzz, he is damn hot! Of course, he can’t stay in one place as he keeps saving people. In walks Lois Lane who meets him as Joe at a Canadian outpost. When Clark finds a Kryptonian space shift from millennium prior, she is there but after she sees what he can do he leaves her in the snow when he takes off with it. In the ship, Clark seeing a hologram of Jor-El who explains everything to him with the use of more of the “smart metal” and gives him his costume. (It’s a variation on the New 52 version without the red underwear.) Meanwhile, Lois works to track him down and discovers he is Clark Kent. This all happens just in time for Zod and crew to appear around Earth and demand Kal’s surrender. Of course, that’s just the first part of Zod’s plan to repopulate Earth with the Kryptonian race. The obligatory fight ensures and most of Metropolis seems to get destroyed. (I swear they had to go crashing through every single building in the city. In the end, most of the Kryptonians end up getting sent back to the Phantom Zone (who knew that the device for transporting people there could have also been used as engines for their ships. (Really!?) Superman ends up doing something he would never do… kill Zod… which makes him cry. Yes, he was saving people but this makes him a lot darker if that’s his solution right from the first time he’s Superman. We then see him (with the glasses) get a job at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane (who knows who he is from the start) and a black Perry White. We also got to see Lana Lang as a kid and a very fat, red-headed Pete Ross. They really had fun with modifying the history. I think letting Lois know before he even becomes Superman was a bit too far off.

Overall, it’s not a bad story. Being more of a comic purist, I get a little annoyed when writers change around history but sometimes they just really go too far. I also swear that the movie had to have been paid for my product placement. With he blatant appearances of IHOP, Sears, U-Haul, and probably others I’m not thinking of offhand, the focus on the brands as they appeared made it seem like a commercial at times. (The one fun brand to have appear was LexCorp.) There were come cute parts like when, during a battle, Zod throws Superman into a wall where there’s one of those “___ days without accident” signs which knocks the numbers off leaving a “0” which got some good laughs. When Zod swings Superman by his cape and throws him into a building, all I could think of was Edna Mode and her “No capes!” I was glad to see Lois as a much stronger person than in the last movie. She should be that. I’m looking forward to where things go from here. Hopefully future movies will be better and we can look forward to a live action Justice League movie.