...In a Single Bound (A Man of Steel Review)

Poster by Martin Ansin.

Behold, I teach you the superman! - Friedrich Nietzsche

The generic template for a superhero is a man in spandex and tights flying about doing good, cape billowing in the wind, and it all started 75 years ago. Superman is more than just a superhero. To paraphrase Tom Baker, he's The Superhero. The definite article, the idea given form. As in fiction, Superman has two fathers: writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who had been plying their craft in the funnypages for years before striking gold. The Superman that appeared in Action Comics #1 was a socialistic demigod, not yet capable of flight, but able to leap tall buildings "in a single bound!" and more than willing to let might make right, fighting against injustice from the street on up.

Over time, Superman evolved into the airborne friend of humanity we all know and love. Well, the one we should all know and love, if it weren't for that emotionally crippled upstart in the bat costume. In film, Superman has had several earthly incarnations. Christopher Reeve pretty much wrote the book on Superman with his mannered, detailed, fantastic performance in Richard Donner's 1978 film, a high every other adaptation has tried to recapture. Superman II suffered from executive interference, leading to two quite different cuts circulating; Superman III had Richard Lester up the slapstick to diminishing returns; Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was...just...sad to behold; and Superman Returns tried in vain to recapture Donner's glory days and instead gave us Superman as Deadbeatdad Man.

Now Zack Snyder, of 300 and Watchmen fame, steps up to the plate for a newer take on the Last Son of Krypton. Warner Bros. have obviously been eyeing up all the bank the Dark Knight films have made, and are keen to recapture the success with Christopher Nolan overseeing production, and David S. Goyer providing a script. Keep in mind, when a studio attempts to catch lightning in a bottle twice, all that's left are burns, so how does Man of Steel manage?

By now, you probably know how Man of Steel starts. It's the same way every Superman-related thing starts: doomed planet (Krypton), desperate scientists (Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van), last hope (their baby son Kal-El, sent away in a rocket), kindly couple (Jonathan and Martha Kent). Kal-El grows up in the Kansas town of Smallville as Clark Kent, alienated because of his powers. Immensely strong, able to see and hear beyond the human scope, and capable of burning with a glance, Clark's natural instinct is to save people, but distances himself from them, drifting from town to town. Soon, he discovers his true origins, and when a long lost Kryptonian army makes its presence in the skies, Clark has to stop hiding in the shadows and choose between the two worlds: his birth planet, or his adopted planet.

Fears that Nolan's involvement would mean a grittier more realistic Superman are unfounded right from the get-go, with Snyder and Goyer driven to make things grandiose whenever they can. Kal-El isn't just born on a dying planet, it's a planet gripped in civil war! Jor-El (a leonine Russell Crowe) isn't just Krypton's greatest scientist, he's also a badass adventurer who rides dragons during war! The rocket containing little Kal takes off with Zod's rebels trying to shoot it down! Even when we leave Krypton, key emotional beats have something big going on in the background, like a tornado, or in an ancient Arctic spaceship with a killer robot guard. Superman has always been best when the stories are on an interstellar scale, and Man of Steel does its best to achieve that, even if the engine it runs on is ramshackle.

Goyer has always been hit-or-miss as a writer. For every Dark Knight or Dark City, there's a Blade Trinity or The Unborn just around the corner. One of his tics is to make everything as literal and connected as possible to the audience. You get this from his very direct way of writing dialogue, honing and honing each line until it's positively skeletal, either advancing the plot, or addressing the ideas of the film. You know how characters in The Dark Knight will often openly raise philosophical questions and monologue about the themes of the film just to make sure people are paying attention at the back? It happens again here, with Crowe, Kevin Costner and a random priest all baldly talking about how important it is Clark chooses what sort of man he is. Sometimes it works - Costner is wonderfully paternal and protective as Jonathan Kent, and manages to give his words weight - but Jor-El keeps popping up again and again long after Krypton has exploded as a simulation to guide characters/wax philosophical. I can understand the need to beef up Jor-El's part, what with bringing Crowe on board, but it isn't fully cohesive with the rest of the film.

(Then again, it isn't as bad as Smallville, where Clark was getting advice from his Computer Daddy for ten goddamn seasons.)

The wiry nature of the writing isn't just limited to the dialogue. On one level, keeping the story of Clark's adult life low-key allows the heart of the film to shine, revealing information and character through implication. Through flashbacks to his childhood, and through the eyes of Lois Lane, his formative experiences reveal someone who tries to do good and help, but also has to deal with the fact he will never truly be one of them, and soldiering on regardless. The drawback, however, are plot elements that are either given short shrift (the Daily Planet crew, Clark's romance with Lois) or are needlessly complicated (the Kryptonian Codex, the font of Krypton's knowledge that connects Superman and Zod but doesn't really do all that much).

Despite this, on a purely visual level. Man of Steel manages to work. Zack Snyder has gotten flack for his idiosyncratic direction, like his overly choreographed fight scenes or the infamous fastfastfastSLOOOOOWWWWWfastfastfast thing he does, but Man of Steel thankfully doesn't have those problems. This is Snyder refined and distilled, and showing off his grasp of cinematic language. There are two distinctive looks: the first is the big space-opera full of leather-clad spacemen where the stars are just the biggest playground in Creation; the second is a naturalistic down-to-earth palette right out of a Terrence Malick picture. Snyder manages to make the two sit neatly together, even if the reliance on handheld cameras to evoke the latter gets distracting at times. The framing and shot composition is truly wonderful, whether at street level or in the clouds, and some amazing set design and attention to detail. I can pinpoint the precise moment the film fully crystallised for me: Clark putting on the Superman duds for the first time and attempting to take flight. This, this, felt like the Superman I've wanted to see since childhood.

Make no mistake, this is going to be the new benchmark for superhero action. Where the medium of film has previously struggled to depict superheroes going at it with full force, Snyder takes it in his stride, going at full blast where others would hold back. There's real kinetic energy to the battles, the warring Kryptonians moving and battling like lightning. It may be a little too high-octane; Metropolis and Smallville get torn up to an absurd extent, with buildings left demolished and citizens fleeing for cover. If they wanted to show the terror such a superhuman fight would cause, mission accomplished, but there comes a point when watching skyscrapers fall down hits diminishing returns.

Like the Dark Knight films, Man of Steel benefits from a well-chosen cast of character actors, including Amy Adams and Laurence Fishburne, making as much as impression as the script will allow them to. This is the first time in a while we've got a convincing Lois Lane as intrepid reporter. Smart, steely, and proactive, Lois isn't a bystander and helps drive the plot forward, moving away from the damsel in distress she tends to get pigeonholed as. The MVP has to be Michael Shannon's General Zod - no two-dimensional caricature, Zod is presented as someone so devoted to his cause, it reaches insanity. His motivations are understandable, and Shannon manages to make Zod a curiously sympathetic villain, rather than trying to ape Terence Stamp's iconic performance.

Speaking of iconic performances, Henry Cavill wisely avoids doing a Christopher Reeve impression and carves out his own niche. He's thoughtful without being mopey, likeable without being saintly. His is a very human Superman, one who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders but doesn't buckle from it. Despite the occasional attempt to convince us he's Jesus (Clark is 33 years old, a talk with a priest is framed to show stained-glass paintings of the Messiah), Cavill keeps him grounded but also beatific in his own way. For example, when he appears before the military, and when he talks to them through a two-way mirror, his body language is completely relaxed; he's just chilling in mid-air, unafraid. And why wouldn't he be? What could they possibly throw at him?

Man of Steel isn't quite an act of cinematic alchemy. The flaws are significant enough that Snyder can't completely transmute the base elements of the script into gold, with the biggest one being the overall feel. The deliberate earthiness of the film makes the acts of superhumanity more distinctive, creating a world touched by the extraordinary, but it also feels too serious. A common criticism of Nolan's Batman films is that they're superhero films that try to downplay the fact they're about superheroes, and the same applies here. It's a space opera without much superheroing in it. There's a sense of awe and wonder, but not much joy.

At the end of the day, the film leaves me at an impasse. While it has a great cast and solid eye for visuals, the core story feels cold and distant, which shouldn't be what a Superman film should do. The ending, without spoiling anything, feels like a steep mountain to climb back down in time for a future sequel. I'm interested to see what happens next, if only to see what Snyder and Goyer do with the toybox given the condition it's left in. Man of Steel looks like the Superman my inner child wanted to see, but the older wiser Jack still needs a bit more convincing.