The Superman/Batman Movie: An Exercise in "Me Too"

From The Independent:

It is the news for which superhero fans have always longed: Superman and Batman are to appear together in the same film for the first time. 

At San Diego’s annual Comic-Con this weekend, the Man of Steel director Zack Snyder revealed that DC Comics’ best-known heroes will meet on the big screen – and will be fighting each other. 

“Let’s face it, it’s beyond mythological to have Superman and our new Batman facing off, since they are the greatest superheroes in the world,” said Snyder, who will direct the as-yet unnamed film, scheduled for release in summer 2015.

A  lot of geeks just shat themselves over the weekend.  Me? I think it's a little early for this kind of movie. Superman/Clark Kent needs more character development first. We've only seen a few seconds of Clark Kent the reporter and none of his life in Metropolis yet. This movie should be after the next Superman movie - that is, after we care a little more.

Nevermind the fact that the Batman character was left completely up in the air at the end of the last Dark Knight film. That means we need more character development there, too.

Too much, too soon.

DC is so busy trying to catch up to Marvel and the Avengers that it's lost sight of real story development and its characters. It's squandering a decade - perhaps two - of superhero movies for a quick buck.

Man of Steel Review

(This review is going to contain spoilers, so this is your warning.)

I am - for those of you who may not know already - a huge Superman fan. One of the biggest you're likely to find, actually, and I have been since I was a kid. I've lost track of how many capes and Superman shirts I've owned through the years. I'm telling you this so that you'll know that I went into Man of Steel really, really wanting to like it.

I didn't.

I'm not quite sure where to begin, so I'll begin with the most obvious thing to me as I was watching it: the movie just didn't have whole lot of heart to it. I was very encouraged by the trailers. They made it seem as though we were going to finally get the Superman movie many of us have always wanted: one that focused on Clark's character, his influences and upbringing, his wanderings post-college and what makes him relatable - his humanity. We thought we were going to be seeing something akin to Batman Begins and see the process and the journey that Clark takes that makes him the man in Superman.

Unfortunately, what little there was of that was played out in a series of short, incomplete and muddled vignettes that made Clark look more like a clueless wanderer than a man searching for his place in the world. And it turns out that the movie is about the least relatable part of Superman - the Kryptonian part of him. He's not Clark. He's Kal. And that focus, I think, is where the disconnect begins.

The plot is a convoluted, confusing mess. The movie jumps around so much that it's often difficult to follow who we're supposed to be focused on and where we are in the world and who is there and whom we should be caring about. And there are no truly inspirational moments where you just want to stand up and clap or cheer or feel a huge sense or relief that Superman is there. Think of the moment in Superman: the Motion Picture where Superman is freed from the kryptonite chains in Luthor's underground lair. Or the moment in Superman II when Superman regains his powers and shows back up on the scene to fight Zod. Those kind of moments are wholly missing in Man of Steel.

And that's another thing that makes this movie a failure in my eyes - we just don't care about Clark or Lois or anyone, really, to be affected by their imminent danger.

The characters in Man of Steel are paper-thin. There's just no depth there. I found Lois's personality inconsistent throughout the film. Perry White was there, but Jimmy Olsen wasn't. But Steve freaking Lombard was there. I can't comprehend that decision at all. Clark Kent - the reporter - doesn't even make an appearance until the last minute or so of the film. Zod's motives are confusing from the beginning and Jol-El's appearance throughout the film is just weird. It's almost as if they said, "well, we've got Amy Adams and Russell Crowe in this movie, so we might as well write them into some scenes." And what's troubling is that the main character , Clark Kent (I don't say Superman because he clearly isn't that character), is an unknown to both himself and to the audience. We're not really given any reason to care about the characters other than that we know we should because we recognize their names.

And then there's the cursing. Why the cursing? I winced almost every time (with the exception of when Clark gets called dumbass on the fishing boat, which felt natural in the context) because it was  unnecessary. Three a-bombs, one a-hole and two d-words... in a Superman movie? In fact, it's the one thing (other than Zod's death scene at the end - more on that in a moment) that will keep me from taking my kids to see this film.  I'm just glad they bucked the trend of slipping at least one f-bomb into a PG-13 movie. Yes, this was supposed to be a darker telling of Superman, but let's not forget that at the very core that he's known for being clean and wholesome, and his movie should at least make an attempt to come close.

This movie was clearly written and made with the intention of trying to capitalize on The Dark Knight films, right down to the music. But that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Makes Superman Superman. He's the light to Batman's dark. He's the hope to Batman's fear. We only get a couple of brief glimpses of anything remotely approaching Superman or Clark Kent, most notably at the end of the film when Superman/Kal-el tells the army general that he was grew up in Kansas. And then there's the fact that Man of Steel breaks one of the cardinal rules of Superman: he doesn't kill. He kills Zod and he causes so much destruction in the form of falling buildings that literally thousands of people had to have been killed in the movie's hour-long fight sequence. And even worse, it doesn't seem to bother Clark/Kal-el.

The music was good, but it sounded a little more Dark Knight-ish (both were composed by Hans Zimmer)with it's heavy staccato and loud drones. And it troubled me that there was no real hook line to grab onto. There was nothing to hum. Batman had a hook. Star Trek had a hook. Heck, even Iron Man had a hook. The music was good, but I just didn't find it very memorable or heroic.
[edit: after a re-listen to some of the music from Man of Steel, I'd like to amend this statement slightly. The music does have a bit of a hook to it (at least in the main overture), but I just don't think it's as strong as it could be. It's no Star Wars theme or Terminator 2 or even, well, Superman. But I do like it.]

I did like the dynamic between Lois and Clark, however, or at least that Lois figures out that the mystery man is Clark Kent before there is ever even a Superman or a secret identity. It's an interesting twist that pays off at the end of the film when reporter Clark finally makes an appearance. But their relationship never felt like a romance to me. The filmmakers seemed to disagree, however. To me Lois and Clark/Kal seemed more two people who weren't really friends, but shared a secret. It was a bit awkward.

I thought the more sic-fi aspects of Krypton were interesting, as well. Not awesome, but interesting. I couldn't figure out why Krypton's top scientist - on a world where tech is everywhere, including ships that are capable of interplanetary flight - would ride around on a dragon-like creature. It was interesting. It just didn't seem to fit.

There are several things I don't understand about the film:

• Kal-el gets his super powers from Earth's yellow sun (as referenced many times throughout the film.) His cells act like solar batteries. Being on a Kryptonian ship in Earth's orbit would NOT strip him of his powers, regardless of whether the atmosphere aboard was set for Kryptonian physiology.

• Why would Zod need to kill Kal to get the codex of the Kryptonian people? Didn't we see Kal getting blood drawn on Zod's ship?

• Why was there a Kryptonian under suit that just happened to be outfitted with the crest of the House of El on a ship that crash-landed on Earth and had been there for 18,000 years?

• Why was Kal-el's Kryptonian suit colored red, blue and yellow when there was no color to any of the other Kryptonian suits in the movie, even on Krypton?

I started writing what man of Steel should have been, but I think I'll save that for another time. If the movie had lived up to the feel and the ideals of the teaser trailers, it would have been a good movie. It should have been a character piece exploring Clark's search for his identity and clues to where he came from. Lois Lane didn't even have to be in this movie, much less Perry White or any of the other Metropolis part of Clark that would come later. This should've been the search for Clark and the realization that despite the fact that he was raised as a normal child with loving parents, that he can do things that no mere mortal can do. The climax of the film could've been the eventual revelation of his Kryptonian heritage and his denial of the implications of that - that he's not a normal human, that he's all alone, that he's completely different, that's he's the answer to "are we alone in the Universe." We needed to see why, not just how he decided to become a hero and champion for justice (and actually, Man of Steel never really explains how, either). It needed to be more relatable. More human. More tender. It was headed that way, but it all fell apart pretty quickly on.

As a young boy, Superman captured my imagination. I was about my son's age when I went to go see Superman: The Movie in the theater. I remember seeing Superman II with my grandma one afternoon, and it was awesome. But Man of Steel won't be that movie for a new generation. There's not much here that separates him from any other random superhero in any other movie. And that's a shame.

It looks like we'll have to wait another generation to see if Hollywood can create a Superman origin story that really captures just what a great, human hero Superman is - not because he's from another planet, but in spite of it.

100 Years of Set Locations

From Box Office Quant:

I’ve taken the top 2000 films from 1910-2010 according to IMDB, and fed their locations into the Google Map below. You can browse in the window below or click the “full screen” link to see a larger version.

Amazing. Check this out right now and thank me later.

That Sound Was Bantha Poodoo Hitting the Theater Screen

From Engadget:

"Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace returns to theaters in 3D February 12, 2012"

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Actually, at least it isn't the original trilogy that he's re-releasing in 3D. Lucas must be really, really stupid to think that people actually liked the prequel movies enough to pay again - nay, extra - to see them again in theaters.

This is good time to once again link to the best movie review of all time.

Of COURSE There's a Monkey

If you're seeing this on Facebook, click on the post title to watch this video.

Movie Marathon

I'm doing something today that I've never done before - I'm going to a movie marathon. Luckily, it's not the kind where you run 26.2 miles while you watch a movie. It's ten movies - the ten films that are nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards - in 24 hours, and I'm actually really excited about going. I've never done anything like this before, so I'm really curious what it's going to be like.

I'm going with my buddy, Steve, who is a huge movie buff and aspiring screenwriter. He's got it all charted out from what time the movies start and finish to what time the breaks are and how long they are.

The first film that starts off the marathon this morning is Toy Story 3. I'm going to skip that one because I've seen it - literally - 20 times already (I have a 2-year-old). And the movies go throughout the day ad night tonight , winding up with The King' Speech tomorrow morning. I'm not much of a night owl, so I'm curious if I'll fall asleep at 8:30 right in the middle of The Fighter. And I'm kinda bummed that Inception isn't playing until 2am.

My strategy is that I'm going to take a couple of naps through a couple of the films I've already seen - The Social Network and True Grit. The only problem is that I really want to see them again. And I can't find any other films that I'd really want to miss. Most every other year there are some art films or films that are there jut because George Clooney is in them that I wouldn't mind sleeping through. But it turns out that I want to see all the films that are nominated this year. Why couldn't they have put Toy Story 3 at 9:45 tonight instead of Winter's Bone?

Anyway, that's what I've got in store today. Happy Saturday (and part of Sunday)!

Honest Abe Kickin' the Undead

From /Film:

There's a new film coming out next year (presumably) called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This is the basic plot:

The film is based on a novel by Seth Grahame-Smith that surmises Lincoln’s mother was killed by vampires and that the eventual 16th President of the United States dedicated his life to destroying blood-suckers with an axe. He continued to do so all the way through his Presidency.

Sign me up.

Incidentally, I think all the recent mash-ups of historical figures as fantasy heroes are kinda cheesy, but in a cool way (Cowboys vs. Aliens, zombie mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops and now Abe Lincoln).

The Man of Tomorrow

From Deadline.com:

Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures have found their new Man of Steel. Deadline had been hearing for the past weeks that British actor Henry Cavill was the frontrunner for the much coveted Clark Kent/Superman role in this much anticipated reboot.

...

Warner Bros clearly has chosen a more macho leading man for Superman than the previous Brandon Routh or even Christopher Reeve. "He's got an amazing quality. He doesn't look too much like Reeve and Routh but he's big and strong and he has a very modern feel to him," a Warner Bros exec just told us.

No idea who this guy is, but that doesn't matter to me. I'll be going to the theater to see Superman, not some big-name-star playing Superman.

But the most encouraging news from this article was one little word: reboot.

The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo Boo

This would be the only way I would ever agree to go see this movie in the theater.

Train Wreck Coming

From /film (reporting a review of an early screening of Cars 2):

"There’s no focus on McQueen, despite it being his race that gets Mater into the film’s plot, and everyone else including Sally are relegated to making cameo appearances. The bigger plot and bigger locations keep the cast out of Radiator Springs for 95% of the movie and there’s no nostalgia or charm in the cold world of Europe. Cars 2 plays like an animated Austin Powers or any other sequel that gets a bigger budget and thinks everything should be “more!” Cars 2 is good, but it never feels PIXAR good. At times the movie plays like a sequel made to capitalize on the merchandise sales and goodwill of the original. The side characters are highly entertaining but this should be retitled “Mater” as there’s no connection to the original characters.”

I hate to hear this. I truly love Cars, and I would love nothing more than to see a genuinely heartwarming followup to the original, as they did with the Toy Story movies. But when I saw the trailer, I started to get worried. Looks like my fears my be coming true. Sometimes I hate it when I'm right.

Cars 2

My favorite thing about the original Cars - one of my favorite movies of all time - was its heart. This looks like it will be a really fun movie, but I'll certainly miss the heart that Radiator Springs provided.

Interesting also that Pixar is releasing two sequels back to back (Toy Story 3 and Cars 2) rather than something new. I hope this isn't a trend that continues.

Why Is Christian Film So Bad?

From Relevant Magazine:

The term Christian film has become synonymous with substandard production values, stilted dialogue and childish plots.

Even with successes (Bella, Facing the Giants), we are on the outside looking in. You can have the huge budget, skilled and experienced technical crew and a firmly executed marketing plan, but if you film a pedantic script with summer-stock-reject actors, your better-looking product is simply lipstick on a pig. Throw in Christian film’s inherently agenda-driven plots and dialogue and you have lipstick on a preachy pig.

Rather than developing organically, the average Christian film is more pushy and sanctimonious than the global-warming agenda movies. Violence is almost non-existent, salty language never happens, unmarried people never struggle with lust and evil is never very bad, because showing various forms of sin is not allowed. By movie’s end, everyone is converted with no residual issues. Life is reduced to an after-school special with prayer thrown in for good measure.

If a film claims to be Christian, it was supposedly done for the glory of God, but we do not glorify God by making lousy movies.

We need great films.

I've often wondered why "Christian films" have to be so bad. Even successes such as "Left Behind," "Facing the Giants" and "Fireproof" come off as stilted and, well, just not real or relatable.

I maintain, just as in life, that sometimes the best way to deliver a message is not to come out and say it. Let the viewer realize the message on his own. Christian filmmakers simply don't have the self-restraint not to deliver a sermon in the story.

It seems to me that what Christian filmmakers need to do is to make the kind of films that Hollywood made fifty or sixty years ago. They had a message, usually wholesome, and are beloved even by audiences today. I think the people are hungry for more quality entertainment like that.

No. Dear God, NO!!!! Not Star Wars, too!!!!!

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Sources indicate that George Lucas is set on rereleasing the "Star Wars" franchise in new 3D conversions beginning in 2012.

Starting with "Phantom Menace," Lucasfilm would use several higher-end conversion houses to work on the project.

Fitting that the suckiest of all the movies is due up first in the suckiest way to watch a movie ever. I'll be so glad when this current 3D fad is over.

PS- if you're not familiar with The Phantom Menace, be sure to check out the best review of it ever. It will convince you to save your money.

True Grit

This is the trailer for the remake of the John Wayne classic, True Grit. This is the movie they were making in Blanco earlier in the year when I was out on a photo trip.

I know what I'm doing this Christmas.

Hot Tub Time Machine

On a whim, Kristi and I rented Hot Tub Time Machine last night. She loves John Cusack and I love stupid movies, so we thought it would be perfect. Just based on the title and the trailer, our expectations weren't very high. It looks like one of those movies where all the funny parts are in the trailer. But we were pleasantly surprised. It was actually a pretty good movie.

It had a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and a lot of great throw away lines and subtle jokes. I suspect that watching it again would be just as entertaining. It's one of those movies where you just don't catch everything the first time.

But the best part is that Hot Tub Time Machine doesn't take itself seriously at all. It knows its premise is stupid and its characters are wonderfully flawed.

It is IN NO WAY safe for kids to watch. Lots of language, drug references, sex and nudity. I can't really say that it's good clean fun. But it's a lot of fun. If The Wedding Singer, Back to the Future and Superbad had a baby, this would be it. And its soundtrack is awesome, too, with '80s tracks all over the board from heavy metal to pop (or pretty much the kinds of music you would have heard mashed together on the same radio station back in the '80s.)

It's got the Destructo seal of approval©. I highly recommend it.

Anyone Want to Bet Me on This?

Regarding the new Smurfs movie I posted about a few days ago...

Anyone want to bet that the following phrase will be used at sometime during the film:

"Go Smurf yourself!"

And if it is, then it will perfectly illustrate my point about how far movies and creativity (and family values) in films and television have fallen in twenty years.

Toy Story 3

Kayci's birthday party on Friday was a Toy Story movie party. We had a party at the theater and saw Toy Story 3 on its first day of release. Kayci has been pumpedmfor almost a year, ever since she found outnthat Toy Story 3 was coming out on her birthday. I, on the other hand was excited just by the fact that there would be a Toy Story 3.

Toy Story was a groundbreaking film, and I remember going to see it in the theater with my college roommate, Johnny. It was mind-blowing, not only because it was the first full-length animated feature, but because the story and the animation are just so good. 

Toy Story 2 also has a lot of great memories surrounding it for me.  When it came out in 1999, it was a fun period in my life.  We were relative newlyweds still learning how to be adults and learning about life and each other. Kristi wanted Woody and Jessie dolls, so I had a lot of fun finding them and ordering them on ebay for Christmas.

Toy Story 2 had some genuinely sad moments,  such as Jessie's flashback to her old owner.  It still moves me. But it has nothing on the emotion in Toy Story 3. 

Toy Story 3 is a much darker film than the others, dealing with much heavier themes. Toy Story was a buddy picture and dealt with themes such as trust and redemption.  Toy Story 2 was about loyalty and deciding for yourself what your path will be. But Toy Story 3 deals mostly with age and facing one's own mortality.

Andy is preparing to go to college and must decide what he wants to do with his favorite childhood toys, which have been shut up in a toy chest for years. And one striking thing is that only the majors are left. Bo Peep, Etch, RC and other familiar secondary characters from the previous films are all gone - given away or sold in yard sales over the years. Woody calls a staff meeting, similar to the way he does in the first film, and wonders where all the toys are.  One of the other toys explains "we're all that are left."

I guess that what's hard about the third installment is that the toys all know that they're done and past their prime. There is a very keen awareness that they're about to go into mothballs for years and years with the hopefulness that they can maybe be one day useful again when Andy or Molly has kids.

We've all been through this with our toys, only - just as in the first Toy Story - we've never really thought of the ramifications from their perspective. That's what makes Toy Story 3 hard to watch. We've all thrown away beloved toys or watched them sold in garage sales or buried them in the backyard, never to be unearthed again. It can be tough enough to let those things go, especially when years later - with the distance and maturity of age - we wish we had them back. But to see our toys actually yearning, longing to be played with, even just held again, is tough.

The end of the film is enough to make you cry. I won't give away the ending, other than to say that it accurately captures an emotion that we all must go through at some point at our lives if we are introspective enough to let ourselves recognize what it is. We all must grow up and move on.

This film, 15 years after the original, is interesting in that it has aged and grown and speaks to different audiences in very different ways. I imagine a fifteen-year-old who saw the original Toy Story in 1995. That person is thirty now and is starting to wrestle with the passing of their youth and their journey into maturity. For me, at age 35 (and forty looming closer than I'd like) it illustrates very clearly issues I've been wrestling with in my own life with the gradual realization that I may be past my prime physically, but fighting it every step of the way and not wanting to give in to the realization that I am getting older. and for an older generation who may be watching this movie with their grandkids, I imagine that the theme for them is the gradual loss of friends and family and the realization that the end is nearing, yet struggling with the nagging feeling that they still have life and usefulness in them yet, if only they could tap into it.

Death and obsolescence is certainly a big part of this film. But it's treated in a very subtle way that, thankfully, little kids probably won't pick up on. But it's there in spades. [spoiler alert] And even though our heroes survive to the end of the film, we're forced to deal with their destruction. And in that moment, a very important life lesson is taught. At the end, when everything else is done, what matters most is your friends and family and the ones you love. Those people around you will give you strength and peace and comfort.

Toy Story 3 is a great film, but I have to be honest: I'm not in an incredible hurry to go back to the theater to see it anytime soon. 

Question of the Day

From /Film:

Has the world had their fill of Michael Cera?

Yes.

The Smurfs Are Gonna Suck.

From /Film:

USA Today reveals how the film begins: The opening starts off in the Middle Ages, Gargamel discovers the Smurfs’ magical village and scatters them into the woods. Clumsy goes the wrong way into a forbidden grotto where a few other Smurfs follow, and because it’s a blue moon, there’s a magical portal that transports them to Central Park. Yeah, doesn’t make much sense… And instead of trying to eat the Smurfs, the movie Gargamel “simply wants to capture the Smurfs to serve as charms, whose mystical essence will make his inept magic more powerful — and dangerous.”

Why is it that every magical, mystical portal travels only to New York? I get the "fish out of water" scenario, but they're little blue creatures time traveling for crying out loud. The fish out of water angle would have worked anywhere in today's world - modern Europe, San Dimas, you name it.

This is like Enchanted redux. And to be honest, the whole "let's set them in the middle of New York City and let the hilarity ensue" angle is the one major thing I can't stand about that movie. And here we have The Smurfs, who are interesting in their own right, being thrown into a contrived plot device just because there are a lot of lazy writers out there.

The Smurfs should stay in the forest in the middle ages where they belong. The magic of the Smurfs draws directly from their quaint natural surroundings. Imagine them as tiny blue Ewoks. Take the Ewoks and put them in downtown Cleveland send you have the same stupid anachronism that limits the plot and forces them into the same kind of contrived situations that we've seen time after time.

I guess filmmakers today don't think that audiences can relate or be captivated by stories set in medieval times anymore or that there isn't the potential for good stories and action there. They're wrong.

Beyond the Lighted Stage

Don't bother looking for me on June 10. I'll be at the Studio Movie Grill in Houston for a one-night-only showing.