If you have seen the recent Man of Steel movie, some of you may be crying foul because of the ending.
Superman has always been a Christfigure and has always been a symbol of all that is morally good and right in the world. Superman is your basic good guy. Yeah, he struggles with it—there are some days he’d like to kill Lex Luthor (or at least beat him unconscious like Batman does with his villains), but he usually doesn’t. If Superman could, he would solve all his problems nonviolently, but it’s not always an option. Still, he tries to harm someone as little as possible and he certainly never kills anyone.
Lady Saika and I made the mistake of watching Man of Steel together. While I was up in arms about the problems I had with the movie versus the comic books, Saika was actually excited for what the movie did right, specifically women characters.
She had a point. Lois Lane is just all sorts of awesome, although she still kept her ridiculously bad luck when it came to falling from high heights (or good luck, in that Superman is always there to catch her.)
I have never really liked Lois Lane. Not saying that she isn’t a feminist or a well-developed character, I just didn’t like her. I especially didn’t like her relationship with Superman. I was always a big Wonder Woman/Superman shipper (and a little Superman/Catwoman—I love rare ships!) because I thought that Diana actually accepted and understood all of Superman. Lois Lane is notorious for liking Superman, but not Clark Kent, and even in some versions when she gets to know Superman better, she is uncomfortable with his more Kryptonian side (Kal-El). So even though most people see Lois and Superman as the ultimate superhero love story, I always saw it as a problem. Lois loves the hyper-masculine Superman, but dismisses the more sensitive Clark and the more eccentric Kal-El. So basically Lois only seems interested in the stereotypical male she sees Superman as.
Another major problem I have had with Lois is, despite her being a woman who is supposed to be clever, intelligent, and streetwise, she not only gets kidnapped all the time, but also is usually one of the last people to figure out that Clark Kent is Superman, despite having a lot of interaction with both alter egos on a regular basis.
I loved the Man of Steel movie! I adored it, in fact, and not only was it great, but some interesting Christian images crept into it as well. I did a post before about Christ figures and explained how if you don’t realize Superman is a Christ figure then you aren’t watching the movies right. Well, the Man of Steel movie, more than any other Superman movie so far, lays the Christ figure parallels on pretty thickly. Let’s take a look at what this movie did differently to make the parallels more obvious.
I saw Man of Steel last night, and personally thought it was very, very good. I don’t review movies. I think that, if you want to see something, you should see it and judge the movie for yourself.
That being said, there were a couple points in the movie that made me say “I can totally write an IBD about this.” So that’s what I’m doing.
Superman doesn’t have a strong track record when it comes to live-action films. DC’s storytelling strength normally lies better in animation than it does in live-action. I’ll even admit that I don’t know that much about Superman outside animated features and television shows. I’ve read some of the comics, but I prefer his cartoons. And after seeing what the 90’s gave us, I didn’t have that much hope for Man of Steel.
This trailer. This. Goddamn. Trailer. First of all, I am not a huge fan of 3D movies (I’m apathetic at best) but this trailer is absolutely gorgeous in 3D. The cinematography is pretty either way, but I would pay good money just to sit and watch this over and over.
Next of all, I am not a big Superman fan. It’s not that I hate him; it’s just that I’ve never seen any of the Superman movies or TV shows, and I’ve only ever read the very first New52 Superman comic because it was free on Comixology around Christmas.
But this looks like a Superman movie that I can get behind. It portrays Superman as a complex character, who is struggling with his identity and his alien-ness while simultaneously trying to be a good person and even a hero. Supes is not just a one-dimensional white-bread farmboy; he is a genuinely cool character. It looks like we’ll finally get to see him being cool this summer.
My only concern is the director. Zack Snyder is really good at making visually stunning films with really terrible plots and rapey, gross, misogynistic content (I’m looking at you, 300, and especially Sucker Punch). Let’s hope that Christopher Nolan, who’s producing the film, provides a guiding hand, and the fact that this directed toward a far more mainstream audience than Snyder’s other films keeps us away from that sort of content.
There are rumors that this will be the flagship movie for a Justice League franchise if it’s successful; right now, I’m just hoping it’s as exciting as the trailer promises it will be.
I want this to be a good movie. I want it so badly, but the past has taught me that Superman tends to do well in every other medium but the big screen. The last Superman movie flopped, and the ones before that—oh God, they were terrible. The first two were okay, I suppose, but by the fourth one, they got unbearable.
As Lady Geek Girl told me, a lot of people seem to forget that Superman is from another planet and doesn’t fit in with society all that well, and that they view him as really strong and really nice. And yeah, that does tend to be how he comes across, no more depth or personality given. From what I can tell in this trailer, Man of Steel makes it look like he’s going to have to do a lot of soul-searching and coming to terms with who he is before becoming Superman, which I’m all for. Christopher Nolan’s even working on this, so that’s a good sign right there.
I’m not sure why he seems to be a fisherman and not a farm boy. Like seriously, are they setting the film in Maine?
If you have seen the recent Man of Steel movie, some of you may be crying foul because of the ending.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 