My Thoughts on “Man of Steel”
Man of Steel. I wonder if any Russians 🇷🇺, Georgians 🇬🇪, or Eastern Europeans over the age of 50 (maybe even 60) saw that title and immediately thought (before seeing that iconic S logo or any of the posters or trailers) that it was a biopic about Joseph Stalin since his nickname was the “Man of Steel.” I also wonder if that confusion over the nickname was one of the main inspirations for the comic book limited series, Superman: Red Son, where Superman (or Kal-El/Clark) lands in Soviet Russia ☭ instead of Kansas, and not just becomes a proud Soviet ☭ and government lackey and propaganda symbol for the Soviet government ☭, but also becomes a close friend or protégé of Stalin himself. He even kills Stalin at one point during the story. Also, Batman’s Russian too for some reason? I don’t know what’s that about. So, even back in 2003 when Superman: Red Son came out, people were already making the connection between Superman and Stalin and how they both have the same nickname. And I wonder if anyone did when this movie came out or before it came out and they saw the title.
For a time, I used to really dislike this movie, but now I really like it. It’s probably my favorite Superman movie, and it’s the one that doesn’t even have his name in the title. To be fair though, a lot of people like The Dark Knight and think it’s the best Batman movie ever made, and even one of the best movies ever made, and that movie of course doesn’t have Batman’s name in the title. It’s one of the only two Batman movies that doesn’t have the Caped Crusader’s name in the title, along with The Dark Knight Rises, which was also directed by Christopher Nolan and is a direct follow up to The Dark Knight. Not within Nolan’s filmography of course since he made Inception before making The Dark Knight Rises, but it terms of the Dark Knight trilogy itself, which is what Nolan’s Batman trilogy came to be known as. It is the third film in that trilogy.
But indeed, Man of Steel is still the most controversial Superman movie ever made, and one of the most controversial superhero movies ever made. The only other Superman or superhero movie that comes close to being as divisive and controversial is its own direct follow up, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was also directed by Zack Snyder and is the second film ever in the entire DCEU, which is now defunct thanks to James Gunn killing it to make way for his own DC cinematic universe, the DCU 😒.
I’ll put it another way, it’s the most controversial Superman movie to not feature Batman or any other DC superhero, and is just a solo Superman movie (it’s a Superman origin story) only featuring characters within Superman’s mythos and immediate vicinity, and not from the wider DC universe. Yeah, I know, a Wayne Enterprises satellite 🛰️ appears during the final fight between Superman and General Zod, but that is sort of a background thing that most people probably wouldn’t even notice unless they were a Batman or DC fan or they didn’t have a Batman or DC fan point that out to them.
It’s not like Batman/Bruce Wayne himself appears in the movie itself. All the DC cameos and worldbuilding happens in the next movie, Batman v Superman. Oh, and there’s also General Swanwick, who’s later revealed to be Martian Manhunter in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but again, that isn’t revealed until later on in the movies after Man of Steel. So, as far as we knew at this point with just this movie, Man of Steel, to go off without having the added context and revelations of the films that would follow, General Swanwick is just a normal human general, dealing with an alien invasion 👽. We didn’t know that he a man ♂︎ from Mars, that he was a Martian.
Not even the controversy surrounding the upcoming Superman movie by James Gunn from fans of this movie and Zack Snyder’s other work in the DCEU matches the controversy that surrounded this film when it came out. It split critics and audiences alike down the middle, you either loved it or you hated it, or at least it seemed like that, and if you lived within nerdy comic book movie fan spaces, you weren’t really allowed to be a fence sitter. You had to pick a side, of whether you were for Man of Steel or against it. And it was used by both sides of the argument to determine whether you were a real Superman fan or not. If you liked the movie, you weren’t seen as a real fan by the people who hated it, and the people who loved it saw themselves as the real fans and the people who hated it as the “fake fans.” The discourse surrounding this movie really has not changed much since it originally came out in 2013.
The only difference now is that people are slightly less angry 😡 about the movie and are less hostile towards each other for liking or disliking it. Though some of that same hostility reignited when the trailer for Superman (2025) came out, and fans of this movie and the wider Snyderverse voiced their disdain for James Gunn’s take. Oh, and there are more people now who like the movie rather than hate it, like every new person who sees Man of Steel for the first time nowadays usually tends to like it rather than hate it, and it’s slowly but surely growing a following and becoming a genuine cult classic. The fact that this movie managed to elicit such strong emotions from people one way or the other, whether they loved it or hated it, is impressive in and of itself.
Like I said before, I used to be on the side of people who hated this movie and thought Zack Snyder was one of the worst directors in history. I saw it in theaters, and watched with the mindset of wanting to hate it. I didn’t allow myself to enjoy it even if it had a lot of cool stuff that I would’ve enjoyed otherwise if it wasn’t attached to this movie. But, after rewatching clips from the movie and talking to a guy ♂︎ that I know on DeviantART, Bry-Guy, I did a complete 180 on this movie and I became not just a fan of it but also a defender of it. I now defend this movie whenever I feel like doing so.
I usually don’t try to defend this movie too vocally against a channel that’s so openly hostile towards the movie and even people who like it 🤬, because I don’t want to get into a pointless argument. But, if I see a video where the creator says the movie’s bad and they aren’t too confrontational and aren’t afraid of having their opinions challenged, I’ll post a comment on that video defending the movie. I realized how wrong I was about the movie and how I was only hating on it to fit in with the crowd, to jump on a bandwagon and conform to what the popular opinion within movie and comic book movie circle was.
This also extends to Snyder’s DC movies like Batman v Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which I now think are both great films and very underrated and fundamentally misunderstood by those detractors. Even Watchmen (2009), which isn’t really tied to the wider DC universe and is a stand alone film set in its own universe, and isn’t really as hated or divisive as any of Snyder’s DCEU movies. And now, I’m going to explain why I still like Man of Steel even after rewatching it for this review. As well as address the main complaints that were levied at this movie when it originally came out and still continue to be levied at it even to this day.
Now, like I said, this is a Superman origin story. It shows Superman’s life from when he was born, when he landed on Earth 🌎, when he was raised by the Kents, right up until he was an adult and we see his journey to becoming Superman. All of this backstory, with the exception of the scenes on Krypton, are all told in flashback right as the present day narrator is taking place. This movie basically is to Superman what Batman Begins was to Batman. In fact, they actually contemplated calling it Superman Begins before settling on the title, Man of Steel.
But, speaking of Batman Begins, did you know that Warner Bros. and DC actually thought about crossing over the Nolan Batman universe (which I guess you could call the Dark Knight universe, or just the Nolanverse) with the Brandon Routh Superman Returns universe? Even though, Superman Returns is supposed to be in the same universe as the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner Superman movies, like it branded itself and sold itself as the true sequel to Superman (1978) and Superman II, ignoring the events of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, which were not directed by Richard Donner, and are usually seen as the worst of the series, killing the Superman brand on film up until Superman Returns. And also, ignoring the events of Supergirl (1984), which was a spinoff movie to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and was not even really canon to any of those anyway.
There was an attempt at a Superman movie without Christopher Reeve in the 1990s called Superman Lives, which was going to be directed by Tim Burton (the director of Batman (1989) and Batman Returns) and star Nicolas Cage as the Big Blue Boy Scout (which is another one of Superman’s nicknames) himself, but that attempt failed for a variety of reasons. They made a documentary about it called The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?, go watch it. I’ve never watched it, so I’m not even following my own advice, but it’s there.
I’m glad that this didn’t happen, the Nolanverse does not fit the tone or aesthetic of the Donnerverse (I guess you call it), and it works perfectly fine as its own stand alone universe and not connected to a wider universe. This is the complete opposite of the Reevesverse, the Matt Reeves Batman movie, simply called The Batman (2022) and the Penguin series, simply called The Penguin, should have been the start of the DCU. After all, people love Robert Pattinson as Batman/Bruce Wayne 🤩 and love Colin Farrell as the Penguin/Oz Cobb even more 🤩. But it wasn’t.
Instead, James Gunn is starting completely fresh with his own version of Batman and the Batman mythos and Batman rogues gallery, which means we’ve have to be re-introduced to Batman once again, and possibly even see the Batman origin story all over again 😒. And people complained about Batman v Superman re-introducing Batman and doing the Batman origin again 🙄. They hated it when Zack Snyder does it 🤬, but love it when James Gunn does it 🤩. Such goddamn hypocrites 😤. More on that later.
Warner Bros. and DC have wanted to do a Batman and Superman movie for a while, even going as far as doing a complete stand alone Batman vs. Superman movie not connected to any larger universe. They even went to the embarrassing length of teasing it by including a poster of it in the Will Smith post-apocalyptic vampire movie, I Am Legend. And when they finally got it in 2016 with Batman v Superman by Zack Snyder, people hated it, or at least the people on the Internet 🛜 hated it, which is not the same thing as everyone hating it. Not everyone hated it, in fact, most people in real life and most people not plugged into the comic book movie discourse on the Internet 🛜 actually liked it 👍.
Even though Nolan probably didn’t create this method of storytelling, he certainly popularized it with his movies, Memento and of course, Batman Begins. In fact, his influence can be felt all over this movie. This probably explains why it doesn’t feel a typical Zack Snyder movie, because it wasn’t 100% Zack Snyder. Snyder was guided along the way by Nolan, who probably reined him in a bit in certain places. Probably told him not to go too overboard with his style (as in slow motion and speed ramping) in service of making this movie at least feel more realistic.
Snyder wouldn’t get full creative control (or almost full creative control) until Batman v Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, those are much more Zack Snyder than this is. If this is 70% Zack Snyder, then BVS and ZSJL is 80%, maybe even 90% with ZSJL since he got to re-edit and finish that movie the way he wanted after the fact, make it closer to his original vision than it would’ve been had just been released theatrically in 2017 as planned. This was supposed to be a more gritty and realistic take on Superman, just as Batman Begins was on Batman. And Nolan chose Snyder for the job.
That’s another thing too, as much as some people hate Snyder and everything he’s ever done in the DC universe, Nolan chose him to direct this. He hand selected him to helm this Superman reboot because he saw something in him. He clearly liked his work on Dawn of the Dead 🧟♂️ (2004), 300, and Watchmen (2009), and maybe even Sucker Punch, and thought that he’d be the perfect fit for Superman, to take Superman in a much needed new direction. After all, Snyder was a self-proclaimed Superman fan and DC fan in general. He was such a fan that he didn’t really want to make the big sweeping changes to Superman’s lore or design as he wanted to keep the John Williams theme and keep the suit largely the same while making some tweaks here and there.
It was WB that wanted to make all these changes to the Superman lore and aesthetic, because they wanted it to be somewhat in line with the New 52, the new continuity in the DC comics universe following the Flashpoint storyline. So, if you want anyone to blame for why Snyder was brought into the DC fold and why he was forced to make so many changes to Superman’s lore and design, blame Nolan and WB. As much as I don’t like WB as company and don’t like what they’ve become under David Zaslav, I gotta say I am with them on that one. I do think there needed to be some changes made to Superman for it to truly be a new iteration and move past the Christopher Reeve era and move past the mistakes of both that era and the failed attempt at a legacy sequel/soft reboot with Superman Returns. I mean, this was pre-David Zaslav WB, so of course they still have some decent ideas left and still made decisions you could actually agree with.
It definitely needed more action (and better action) that’s for sure, and Snyder delivered that in spades. Man of Steel is truly the most action-packed Superman movie ever made (that doesn’t feature any other DC superheroes), and probably the most action-packed Superman movie we’re ever going to get (that doesn’t feature any other DC superheroes). And don’t let people rewrite history and tell you that they didn’t demand that a Superman movie to have more action in it or that they thought Superman Returns was dull and boring and lacking in imagination, they did.
This was a common complaint at the time about Superman Returns, among the myriad of other problems with that movie, was that didn’t have enough action. And this movie addressed that, it was in many ways meant to be the anti-Superman Returns, and comic books fan online still didn’t like it. It’s like nothing pleases them, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Or it simply because it has Zack Snyder’s name on it and comic book fans and movie critics for some reason just have a hate boner 🤬 for him, one even bigger than the one they have for Michael Bay. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
And even if this movie doesn’t have John Williams’s original score or theme for Superman, I do like the theme Hans Zimmer came up with for Superman in this movie. Hans Zimmer never disappoints, and his score for this movie is amazing. He only came back for one more movie after this, Batman v Superman, and even then, he didn’t do it all himself since he also had help from Junkie XL on that score. And after that movie, Junkie XL completely took over and did the entire score for Zack Snyder’s Justice League all by himself.
Although, if I was writing this movie, I probably would’ve gone with a more linear approach, with all the backstory at the beginning, making up the first half, and the present day stuff making up the second half, I do think this sort of nonlinear approach with the flashbacks interspersed works pretty well for this film. There were actually some things that I noticed that I didn’t notice before when I rewatched the movie for this review. Like, the scene in the bar where Clark notices these two these soldiers in uniform and he hears them talking about the ancient scout ship in the North Pole, and that’s he knows to go there to find the ship and find out where he came from.
And Clark is able to get there, despite it being somewhere on Canadian soil 🇨🇦 because he was in Alaska. That’s where that bar was located, so all he had to do was cross the border from Alaska into Canada 🇨🇦, change his identity, apply for a job on the expedition where he can be inconspicuous, and bam, he’s in the right position to go intercept the ancient scout ship. Oh, and the reason why Lois Lane is there despite it being a top secret military operation is that the appellate court foiled the Pentagon’s attempts at keeping her from joining the expedition, and said they had to allow her on since she’s a journalist and has the right to be there under the constitution and the Freedom of Information Act.
So, it’s the military’s discovery of the ancient Kryptonian scout ship that is the main instigator of the plot. It’s the reason why everything happens in the movie, since had it not been for the military discovering the ancient scout ship, Clark would’ve never gone there and triggered the distress beacon that lured Zod and his men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎) over to the Earth 🌎 and made them decide to invade it and use it as the site to recreate Krypton. I also noticed that the fishing boat captain from the beginning (the one that keeps referring to Clark as “greenhorn”) appears later on in the movie where he’s being interviewed by Lois Lane asked about Clark. It’s always cool when you go back and watch a movie that you’ve already watched before again and notice things that you never noticed before. That’s one of the things that gives a movie rewatch value, and this movie definitely has a lot of rewatch value.
I think a lot of people’s problems with this movie mostly boil down to people not being used to a different take on Superman besides the Christopher Reeve and Richard Donner versions. For example, people complained about the look of Krypton in this movie, and how it wasn’t a crystalline planet and it had actual flora and fauna on it. But, that’s how Krypton is in the comics. I watched a review of this movie by a defenders of this movie, you can watch it by clicking this link, but in that video, they showed various panels from some the old comics, and proved that Krypton did actually have different flora and fauna and was a much more rich and vibrant world.
The DCEU/Snyderverse Krypton is actually much more comic book accurate than the Richard Donner Krypton. It really was the Donner movies that introduced the idea of Krypton being a crystalline planet, and almost every iteration of Superman before Man of Steel (and even a few afterwards) portrayed Krypton and Kryptonian technology like that, because most of them took from the Richard Donner movies and nothing else. But, Man of Steel dared to be different and not have Krypton be a crystal planet, mandated by WB. And then after Man of Steel, we got more different versions of Krypton that weren’t just the crystal planet from the Donner movies, like in Injustice 2 and My Adventures with Superman.
I really do like this version of Krypton, it really does look like a living breathing world that people would actually live on, even if the Krypton that we see is on its last legs and on the verge of collapse. But, you get the sense that this version of Krypton was a truly beautiful place when it was still in its prime. I also really like the Krypton tech, I think it looks really cool. Like, the design of the armor and the suits, including the Superman suit, the Superman “S” symbol actually looks like an alien symbol as do all of the symbols that the Kryptonians have on their chests.
All of the armor that we see the Kryptonians wear throughout this film was done in CG, and you honestly can’t even tell. The CGI in this movie overall still holds up 12 years later, and the CGI on the armor specifically still holds up. It looks totally photorealistic. In fact, it looks so good in fact, that when they brought back Zod in The Flash ⚡️ (2023) (which some fans refer to as The Flush 🚽 because of how bad it is) and had him wear the same armor, it didn’t look as good (in fact it looked way worse) and this still looked way better. CGI in a movie from 2013 somehow looked way better than CGI in a movie from 2023.
I do wonder though, and this is a thought that came into my mind recently while watching Just Trust Ash’s reaction video to The Prince of Egypt 🇪🇬, and that is, how did the Kents feed Clark/Kal-El without being able to feed him actual breast milk 🥛? Because Kal-El is a newborn when Jor-El and Lara sent him away to Earth 🌎, and babies can’t eat food or drink any other kind of milk 🥛 before they get to a certain age, so what did the Kents feed him? Did they just feed him baby formula? Can a baby live entirely off of baby formula until they’re able to eat baby food? I’m asking because I’m not a parent and I’ve never had any kids of my own and I don’t know what it’s like to take care of a baby. This applies to Moses as well, how Moses’s new parents feed him when they floating down the river to them, since the Superman story is heavily influenced by the Moses story, Exodus.
Then of course, there’s no liquid geo displays that the Kryptonians use, which some critics at the time made fun of and said looked like pin art. I thought those were really cool, and were more unique than having them using holograms or touch screens like aliens in every other sci-fi movies. It made them seem truly alien, like they were nothing like us in terms of our technology. And Snyder continued this sort of design process for the other alien races represented in his DCEU movies since the New Gods on Apokolips also have a unique display that isn’t just a hologram or touch screen. It’s also sort of that same liquid metal type display that the Kryptonians use, but it does look a bit different. It looks a bit more statue esque and almost sinister looking since whenever Steppenwolf talked to Desaad and Darkseid with that liquid metal display in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, they have glowing red eyes and glowing red mouths, like the mouths emit red light when they talk through that display.
I liked the command keys, I thought they were pretty cool. They actually sold keychains of those when the movie came out on home media, I wanted one of those, but I never got the chance to buy one when they were still available. Someone’s probably selling them on eBay, I can always check. But, I did at least get those G.I. Joe dog tags that they were selling when G.I. Joe: Retaliation came out on home media. It was available to order on that piece of paper they included in the Blu-Ray case 💿, and I actually got one. It’s one of my most prized possessions. Or it was. I actually don’t know if I still own those or not. I’ll have to check.
Speaking of which, I especially like their spaceships, I love the design of the Kryptonian ships in this. There’s that beetle looking one 🪲 that Zod’s men ♂︎ use as their main attack craft, and then there’s those other ships that also look cool, but my favorite ship by far is the Black Zero. I love the design of the Black Zero 🤩, it’s one of my favorite alien spaceship designs in science fiction. It genuinely looks alien and like nothing humans would have ever created or would create. That circular head with the three legs 👌, instantly iconic. I remember after seeing this movie and after developing a better appreciation for it, I started drawing spaceships that looked pretty much exactly like it. That’s how much I liked it. It’s cool how it starts out as prison ship to transport people into the Phantom Zone, but then after Krypton implodes, Zod and his men are freed from the Phantom Zone and turn into a proper spaceship that they use as it as a warship for their invasion of Earth 🌎.
Which leads me to the other big complaint of this movie, probably the biggest complaint of them all and probably the main reason why some people hated this movie when it came out and still hate it to this day and cite it as the reason why this isn’t a “real” Superman movie: Superman kills/doesn’t save anybody and causes too much destruction and doesn’t take the fight to an unpopulated area. I used to buy into this complaint back when I was still a hater of this movie, but now it kind of infuriates me because it’s entirely based on lies and people not paying attention to what was happening on screen.
Like, what are these people talking about Superman doesn’t save anybody in this movie? He saves a bunch of people. He saves the men on that oil rig, he saved the kids on the bus 🚌 when he was kid, he saved Lois Lane a bunch of times, and he saved that one soldier who fell out of the helicopter during the Smallville battle. He saves the entire planet 🌎 for crying out loud! Is that not enough for these people who have this complaint? Or are they just lying 🤥 for the sake of making up a reason to hate this movie?
Since I mentioned the bus 🚌, I guess I should address another scene that a lot of comic book fans and critics had a problem with, the scene where Jonathan Kent talks to Clark about saving the kids on the bus 🚌, and Clark says, “What was I supposed to do? Just let them die?” and Jonathan Kent’s response is “Maybe.” A lot of people took issue with that scene and that specific line and took it as to mean that Jonathan Kent wanted Clark to just let those kids die, but like with a lot of things in this movie, a lot of those same people completely missed the point of that entire scene. Jonathan Kent wasn’t saying that Clark should’ve just let those kids die, he’s saying that the situation is complicated because if Clark uses his powers to save people like those kids on the bus 🚌, then his secret will be exposed and either the government will take him away or he’ll start a mass panic 😱.
Pete Ross’s mom’s reaction to Clark saving him and the other kids on the bus 🚌 was evidence of this, evidence of how people would react if they knew Clark was an alien 👽 from another world who had godlike powers. It’s a moral dilemma, and Jonathan Kent doesn’t know what to do or what’s right. So, all he can say in response to Clark’s question is “Maybe.” And you can tell by his body language that Jonathan Kent doesn’t feel good about saying that, and feel good about that whole situation. He’s conflicted and very uncomfortable about the whole thing. He wants to protect his son, but also doesn’t want innocent people, especially kids, to die from an easily preventable death caused by a freak accident. How so many people could miss and see the nuances of what this scene was trying to communicate is kind of astounding.
People also didn’t like the destruction and how Superman didn’t do enough to limit civilian casualties and take the fight outside of population centers. Part of that argument is also why did Superman go to stop the World Engine in the Indian Ocean instead of going to Metropolis to destroy the Black Zero? Again, this is one of those BS arguments that I sort of bought into when I was a hater of this movie, but now that I’m a lover, I sort of find ridiculous and overblown. I don’t mind the destruction, this is kind part of my point about the action, I think the destruction raises the stakes and makes the situation more dire and makes Zod and his men more of a threat. Like, if we didn’t see Smallville or Metropolis get destroyed, two places that our main characters, Lois and Clark are from, then we wouldn’t see the situation as dire, like most people would think, “Oh, well, it’ll all be fine. One’s going to get hurt or killed.”
This is supposed to be a more realistic and grounded take on Superman, and these are super-powered godlike beings duking it out there’s simply no way that there wouldn’t be any destruction or any deaths. As for why Superman chose to prioritize the World Engine in the Indian Ocean over the Black Zero in Metropolis, just as that video I linked to above said, he was the only one who could reach the World Engine in a timely enough manner for the plan to work. He can fly faster than the speed of sound, of course he’d be the one able to fly halfway across the world in a matter of minutes or hours. The whole world was at stake, and the clock ⏰ was ticking, if they didn’t destroy the World Engine first, the plan to suck Zod and his men ♂︎ back into the Phantom Zone would not have worked since there would still be an impenetrable gravity field that would pull down every missile or weapon thrown at it and would keep expanding until it engulfed the whole planet and all of humanity was destroyed.
Plus, I like disaster movies, I like kaiju movies, I like seeing city destruction in movies, there’s just something neat about city destruction in movies. Getting the chance to see something that you could never see happen or would never want to see happen in real life, in a safe way. And Zack Snyder did create some interesting looking destruction in this movie. It almost makes kind of wish that he’d make an actual disaster movie. Because that’s essentially what this movie becomes in the second half after Lois and Clark escape from the Black Zero and Zod and his forces attack Smallville, it becomes a disaster movie.
It becomes even more of a disaster movie once the Black Zero descends on Metropolis, syncs up with the World Engine in the Indian Ocean, and starts leveling the city with its gravity beam. It’s very dubstep sounding gravity beam. I like the sound of the gravity beam BTW, I think it’s a really cool sound effect. I just like the concept of the gravity beam in general. The idea of using gravity as a weapon to destroy a city is a really cool concept. It makes you wonder why no other sci-fi movie, show, video game, or book came up with that or used a gravity weapon like that again.
The closest thing is that Evangelion and Shin Godzilla crossover ride at Universal Studios Japan 🇯🇵, Godzilla vs. Evangelion: The Real 4-D, where King Ghidorah shows up and fires gravity beams (which are actually what King Ghidorah’s electricity breath attack ⚡️is actually called) that actually alter the gravity of the things they hit and cause them to float in the air. I
also like big status quo changes, or things that create a new status
quo for the fictional universe in question, and Smallville and
Metropolis both getting massively destroyed is one of those huge status
quo changes that I like. It’s just like when New York and all those
other major cities got destroyed at the end of Watchmen (2009), and were rebuilt in that film’s epilogue, though we only see New York get rebuilt.
This isn’t even the most destructive Hollywood blockbuster ever, like when this movie came out, detractors made it out to the most destructive and most needlessly destructive movie they had ever seen, but compared to other blockbusters with city destruction in them, this movie is kind of tame. Like, The Avengers (the first one) has about as much destruction as Man of Steel and even depicts a similar scenario, The Incredible Hulk (2008) had plenty of destruction especially during the final fight in Harlem between the Hulk and the Abomination, Gotham City just straight up got flooded 🌊 in The Batman (2022), London got completely obliterated by a kinetic bombardment weapon (Project Zeus) in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the Michael Bay Transformers movies have a ton of destruction in them, especially Transformers: Dark of the Moon 🌕, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Transformers: The Last Knight. In fact, Dark of the Moon 🌕 shows a lot of more civilians killed directly and personally by the enemy (the Decepticons), just getting shot and turned into ash and bones 🦴💀.
This movies doesn’t even really show any civilian deaths, not directly. The MonsterVerse movies have lots of destruction in them, in fact, those movies are even more destructive than Man of Steel, like Boston just got completely wiped off the map in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), just completely reduced to rubble, and Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and Rio de Janeiro both got equally fucked up in both Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire respectively. I actually think Hong Kong 🇭🇰 may have had it the worst out of the two of them, because you didn’t just have Godzilla and Kong fighting each other, you also had Mechagodzilla, who literally bursts out of a mountain ⛰️ and starts immediately wrecking shit before beating the crap out of Godzilla, until Kong shows up to help him after being revived.
Plus, Hong Kong 🇭🇰 just has a giant hole 🕳️ in the ground that just leads directly to Hollow Earth 🌏 that Godzilla drilled with his atomic breath ☢️. I can’t imagine they’d be able to plug that up in a timely manner, might just have to turn it into a tourist attraction 🤷♂️. And those movies are arguably more careless and have more of a disregard for civilian casualties than this movie does. They don’t even really address the civilian casualties in most of them. The only instance where civilian casualties are considered and are consequential to the plot is San Francisco. The destruction of San Francisco in Godzilla (2014) is made such a big deal out of within the MonsterVerse that they even have name for it, G-Day, which wasn’t even mentioned until Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
There’s also Pacific Rim and its sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, those have plenty of destruction in them since they’re both kaiju and mecha movies. I haven’t seen the Pacific Rim anime, Pacific Rim: The Black, I didn’t even know it actually came out, but I assume that it has a lot of destruction too since like the movie, it’s about giant robots fighting giant monsters in major cities. But, I’m not talking about shows, I’m talking about movies here, so the point is moot. Oh, and Rampage (2018), can’t forget about Rampage (2018), although the destruction in that is a little bit more on par with the destruction in this movie since the monsters in that are much smaller than the monsters in both the MonsterVerse and the Pacific Rim movies. And for what it’s worth, it happens in Chicago, the same city that the final battle in Dark of the Moon 🌕 takes place.
And that’s just superhero movies, toy movies (G.I. Joe and Transformers are both based on toy lines), and kaiju movies, I haven’t mentioned any actual disaster movies. Like, Roland Emmerich just straight up destroyed the entire world in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 (2009), Independence Day: Resurgence, and Moonfall 🌕, like we’re talking a death toll in the billions. Same thing Emmerich’s friend and filmmaking partner, Dean Devlin’s directorial debut, Geostorm, that movie had a death toll in the millions, with entire cities getting wiped out by devastating heat waves 🥵 that cause everything to melt 🫠, burst in flame 🔥, or explode 💥, hail storms with hail as big as SUVs, ice storms ❄️ that freeze everything instantly 🥶, tornadoes 🌪️, lightning storms 🌩️, and a huge storm surge 🌊 big enough to flood an entire city and knock buildings down. The entire Eastern Seaboard as well as huge parts of Europe and Africa got flooded by a huge megatsunami 🌊 caused by a comet impact ☄️ in Deep Impact. All of California pretty much got destroyed by one massive earthquake and sunk into the ocean in San Andreas (2015). And New York City, Shanghai, and Paris all got destroyed by meteor showers and asteroid impacts ☄️ in Armageddon ☄️, Paris just got straight up reduced to rubble in that movie.
As for Superman not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties or take the fight outside population centers, Zod and his men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎) don’t allow him to. Zod and his forces intentionally attack population centers, and never give Superman a chance to take the fight elsewhere to where no human civilians will get hurt or killed. The closest that Superman gets to doing that is when he tries taking Zod into space during their final fight, or rather Zod take him up there, only Zod to bring him back down to Metropolis along with a Wayne Enterprises satellite 🛰️ which burns and breaks apart upon reentry. Plus, he did tell all those people in Smallville to get inside and stay inside because it wasn’t safe, and was going to get ugly, and it did. Granted, some of those people probably died when that A-10 crashed. It’d be a miracle if that plane managed to not hit any of the buildings when it crashed. But, whose fault is that? Certainly not Superman’s.
This is an inexperienced Superman, who’s just barely starting out, I mean he just barely got his suit and learned how to fly by the time Zod and his crew show up and start attacking. Of course, he’s not going to be perfect, and do all the things that comic book fans (or rather, certain comic book fans) expect him to do. Even Faora-Ul, Zod’s second-in-command, points out how inexperienced Clark is at being Superman, when they’re in the IHOP and she tells him that he’s “weak and unsure of himself.” We see in Batman v Superman that he learned his lesson as he not only flies Doomsday into space, but even when he falls back down to Earth 🌎, Batman and Superman still try to fight him in an area with no civilians around (except for Lois, but she’s helping out in the fight, trying to get the spear and everything). That whole movie is about addressing the destruction and the consequences of what Zod and even Superman did, even though Superman was in the right and did ultimately save the world.
Detractors of this movie act like Superman personally caused all the destruction in this movie and make it seem like he’s the real villain of the movie, when that’s just objectively not true. Most of the destruction in this movie is either caused by Zod and his men ♂︎, or by the military. More often times, both. The military destroyed more of Smallville and Metropolis than Superman did. They’re the ones who fired the first shot in the Smallville battle and caused most of the destruction there what with those A-10s firing their famous machine gun that military and aviation enthusiasts go crazy for 🤩 in the streets where Superman, Faora, and unnamed Kryptonian warrior were, not to mention that unnamed Kryptonian downs one of them and it crashes right in the center of town. And yet, they didn’t get blamed or ridiculed for it by any of the critics, it’s all blamed on Superman. It’s the complete opposite of how critics and even some fans reacted to the military destroying more of the city than Godzilla in Godzilla (1998).
But, all of the destruction in this movie is instigated by Zod and his forces, like they’re the ones coming in, wrecking shit, disturbing the peace, killing thousands of people. None of this would have happens if Zod didn’t decide to use violence to try to reestablish Krypton on Earth 🌎, which I guess would’ve been called “New Krypton” if he had actually succeeded. And make no mistake, General Zod is the bad guy, in pretty much every sense of the word, he is a villain. I can’t believe this has to be spelled out to people, but here we are.
Zod was the one advocating for eugenics with that “degenerative bloodlines 🩸” line in the prologue set on Krypton, and was the one trying to commit genocide against all of humanity in the second half of the movie, not Superman. Zod and his forces literally attacked a small town in Kansas, just try to reclaim the codex (which they didn’t know was actually inside of Superman the whole time), and then immediately after, they attack a major city as part of their plan to terraform the planet and wipe out the human race, and kill thousands. Superman didn’t do that, Zod did. Not only that, but he also threatened to kill every single human being after Superman and the military foiled his plan and he was left with nothing. He also threatened to kill an innocent family in that subway station 🚉 that looks like Grand Center Station but isn’t since this isn’t New York, it’s Metropolis. I don’t know what it’s actually called in the DC universe, using his laser vision which he barely learned how to use during his big one-on-one fight with Superman.
And yet, Superman is the one who gets called a villain and killer for trying to stop this monster and his minions. It’s just like people call Optimus Prime a bloodthirsty war criminal and call him evil for killing the Decepticons in the Michael Bay Transformers movies when the Decepticons are just as guilty of committing those same type of atrocities except way worse (like we literally see them murder several unarmed human civilians in Chicago in Dark of the Moon 🌕, which is a war crime, it’s the textbook example of a war crime), and Optimus Prime is more than in the right for killing them.
There is an argument sort of related to this whole thing of “why didn’t Zod just try to terraform and colonize Mars?” The answer to that question is quite simple actually, it’s because the distress beacon on the ancient scout ship was set off on Earth 🌎, the genesis chamber inside the scout ship is on Earth 🌎, why even go to Mars? Nothing that Zod wants is on that planet. Plus, it’s seemingly a cold and desolate world, while Earth 🌎 is a lush and fertile planet.
Zod would have less work to do terraforming Earth 🌎 and turning it into Krypton than trying to terraform Mars and turn it into Krypton. They had a huge point in the movie about how all the Kryptonian colonial outposts withered and died because of the lack of support from the homeworld, but also because the planets they chose to colonize were not suitable for life. Earth 🌎 is, it’s the perfect candidate to colonize and turn into a copy of Krypton. Plus, if he did try to colonize Mars and create New Krypton, he’d have to deal with the Martians.
With the revelation of General Swanwick being Martian Manhunter in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, people question why Superman didn’t know or didn’t say anything despite him having x-ray vision and being able to see if someone’s human or not? Well, it’s pretty simple actually, he did see it, he did know that he wasn’t human and that he was a Martian. He didn’t say anything because he chose to protect his identity. Martian Manhunter was staying hidden from the world just like Superman was, and Superman didn’t want to out without him consenting to it first. It was a common courtesy.
It’s like choosing not to out an LGBT person 🏳️🌈 (particularly a homosexual person ⚣⚢, or bisexual person, or pansexual person, or genderfluid crossdressing person) if they don’t want to be outed. After, before Zod showed up, Clark told Lois not to publish the story about his existence because he didn’t want his story told. He didn’t want his existence to be known to the rest of the world. Why would he do that same thing to Martian Manhunter? It would just make him a hypocrite if he were to point him 👉 and say, “this guy ♂︎’s a Martian.”
But, him being Martian Manhunter all along would go a long way in explaining why Superman is so quick to trust General Swanwick when he has very little reason to especially he first meets him. He felt comfortable around him because he was an alien 👽 too, and probably saw kindred spirits with him. They’re both aliens 👽 living amongst humans. It would also explain why Swanwick knows the name of Krypton without anyone telling him beforehand. Zod didn’t say their planet was called Krypton in hijacked distorted message he sent to Earth 🌎. So, the only way Swanwick would know that if he was an alien 👽 himself. He’s Martian Manhunter.
And it’s clear watching this movie with what we know now that Martian Manhunter felt the same way about Superman, but still didn’t fully trust him and wanted to see him in action first before trusting him and throwing his support towards him. And after Superman proves himself and proves how heroic he truly is, Martian Manhunter lets his guard down and becomes his ally a bit, while trying to keep up the appearance of a serious Army general who is loyal to the US constitution 🇺🇸 and not to the planet of Mars or to all alien kind 👽. He didn’t want anyone to think he was protecting Superman, and therefore make people suspicious about who or what he truly was. And then it’s Superman’s sacrifice in BVS that inspires him to truly come out of the shadows and reveal him, as does it all of the Metahumans.
Some might complain that all of the Metahumans in this universe have the same backstory, where they were reclusive and hid themselves from the rest of the world until Superman’s sacrifice convinced them to come out of the shadows. It’s same complaint some people have about the characters in Rebel Moon, how they all have the same backstory of losing a loved one to the Motherworld or being screwed over by the Motherworld. And while there is some merit to that critique, I do think it works here, in the Snyderverse, the DCEU. It makes sense that every Metahumans would want to lay low and keep their existence hidden from the human population, and that it would be something as monumental as the emergence and death of Superman that causes them to come out of the woodwork and make their existence known to the world.
But going back to General Zod for a little bit, he is a pretty awesome bad guy. Michael Shannon absolutely killed it in the role, and Zod was perfectly written. That hijacked message he projected to the entire world threatening to annihilate humanity unless they turn over Clark/Kal-El proves how good of a bad guy he is. He’s an understandable villain, without being sympathetic, without you having to agree with his viewpoints or his actions, and that’s okay. His viewpoints and actions are horrible and you shouldn’t agree with them.
But you understand why Zod is like this and why he feels like this. He is supposed to be the complete polar opposite of Superman, of Clark Kent/Kal-El, despite being the same species, and he totally works as that. Having General Zod be the first villain that Superman ever faces makes all the sense in the world. It makes way more sense than having Lex Luthor be the first bad guy Superman faces, which what Superman (2025) seems to be doing. He’s a Kryptonian, and Superman should face someone who is of his own kind before facing off against a narcissistic and sociopathic (or possibly psychopathic) human billionaire.
Does this sort of fall into that superhero movie trope of the hero facing against a villain with similar powers as him? Maybe, but not exactly because while General Zod does have the same powers as Superman and is the same species as him, he’s otherwise completely different. Like in terms of look and personality, Superman and General Zod are nothing alike. General Zod is a military figure, whereas Superman is not. Superman was raised as a farmer in Kansas. You can’t get as further away from a military background as that.
And Zod himself says, he was bred to be a warrior, he was born in a genesis chamber and given a predetermined role in Kryptonian society. Being a military leader is all he knows. His only purpose in life is to protect Krypton and its people by any means necessary including violence and cruelty. Whereas Superman (Kal-El) was born naturally, being Krypton’s first natural birth in centuries, and was free to forge his own destiny. In same ways, Zod is at an advantage and other ways, he’s at a disadvantage because he was born artificially like the rest of the Kryptonian race prior to Kal-El’s birth. Also, side note, this was the movie that showed me that Superman/Clark’s other name, his Kryptonian name, was Kal-El. I didn’t know that until this movie.
Zod is such a good villain in this that they literally brought him back in The Flash ⚡️ (2023) and made him the main villain instead of using an actual Flash ⚡️ villain, even though the Flash ⚡️ has one of the most extensive and unique rogue’s galley in the entire DC universe. They didn’t do him justice in that movie either, but that’s only because the writing was bad. Just completely butchered the character, look how they massacred my boy ♂︎. They didn’t even do the distorted hijacked message right as it looked way worse in that than it did here. Oh, and Faora’s pretty cool too. She’s the one thing even detractors of this movie liked and praised when it came out. Some even said that she was more badass than Zod was, and yeah, she kind of was 😊. She was also in The Flash ⚡️ (2023), since she’s Zod’s second-in-command, and just like with Zod himself, they really didn’t do her justice at all. It’s shameful they even included her in a trash fire 🗑️🔥 such as that movie.
It’s also been said by some fans of this movie and Snyder’s other DCEU films as well as viewers in general that had Zod succeeded in his plan, Steppenwolf and Darkseid would’ve had to have an entire army of Kryptonians under Zod’s command, and with godlike powers and invulnerability granted to them by the Sun ☀️. Well, if Zod actually succeeded in his plan and wiped out the entire human race and repopulated the Earth 🌎 with Kryptonians using the codex and the genesis chamber, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Steppenwolf and Darkseid wouldn’t have dared step foot on the planet. The only reason they attacked was because Superman was dead, and therefore unguarded by anyone powerful enough to stop them.
Steppenwolf said it himself, “No Lanterns here, no Kryptonian,” probably could’ve added Martians to that list since the Martians every bit as powerful as the Lanterns and the Kryptonians (when they’re powered by a yellow sun ☀️), but you get the idea. But, with an entire population of Kryptonians on the planet, there’s no way Steppenwolf would risk going to Earth 🌎 to get the Mother Boxes, and therefore he would never discover that the Anti-Life Equation was on the planet, giving Darkseid a reason to go back to Earth 🌎 after his failed invasion thousands of years ago. It wouldn’t matter at that point if Martian Manhunter was still alive or not by the time Zod and his forces were finished terraforming the planet and turning it into New Krypton, the Earth 🌎, or rather New Krypton, would be plenty guarded by the Kryptonians led by General Zod.
I guess I should address the Superman killing thing now since I mentioned Optimus Prime killing Decepticons in the Bayverse Transformers movies. Superman only kills one person in this entire movie directly by his own hands, and it’s Zod. The genesis chamber inside the scout ship doesn’t count since there were no babies inside of there. That genesis chamber was empty and required the codex to activate it and start producing babies since it all the Kryptonian DNA 🧬 and necessarily building block to start making babies. It’s pretty much a blank slate and without the codex it’s just a water tank with empty pods in it.
It’s only with the codex that it can turn on and turn into a baby factory, and Zod didn’t have the codex since it was still inside Superman’s blood 🩸 (and in pretty much all of his cells) and Zod and his chief scientist Jax-Ur didn’t get the chance to extract it from him. So no, Superman didn’t kill any babies despite what some detractors of this movie might claim. And it’s clear when you watch the scene where he does it that he takes no pleasure in it because he’s begging Zod to stop, to stop threatening this family his laser vision, because he doesn’t want to have to kill him, and when Zod refuses, he’s forced to do the unthinkable. He snaps his neck and ends his life, putting an end to his reign of terror.
And when he does, he feels really bad about it, so much so that he lets out a really loud sad yell, and then cries into Lois’s shoulder 😭 when she shows up. He’s not so much sad that he killed Zod specifically (he fully knew that Zod was a dangerous man ♂︎ that needed to be stopped and that the world be a better place without him), but more sad that he had to take a life and had to take the life one of the last remaining members of his species. Now that he’s killed Zod, he’s the only living Kryptonian left as far as he knows.
He doesn’t know about his cousin, Kara Zor-El, who doesn’t show up until The Flash ⚡️ (2023), and doesn’t know that any of Zod’s men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎) are probably still alive inside the Phantom Zone. This is clearly meant to be the scene where Superman’s “no kill” rule is firmly established, but even then the “no kill” rule has always been kind of flimsy and characters like Superman and Batman have found loopholes to get around it. I mean, how much times has Batman indirectly killed someone or purposefully let someone die in one of his movies, he even straight up killed people directly by his own hands in the Tim Burton movies, and that was before Batman v Superman. So, even superheroes with “no kill” rules have killed people plenty of times despite insisting they don’t kill people, and no body really complained about it until Zack Snyder came along, and only complained about it when Zack Snyder did it. Even if Zack Snyder had actual legitimate story and character development reasons for doing it.
I say that it was a pretty abrupt tonal shift to go from a sad and emotional moment where Superman deals with the emotional weight of not just killing a man ♂︎ but killing a man ♂︎ who was one of his own kind, to a jokey lighthearted scene where Superman downs a US Air Force drone 🇺🇸, tells Swanwick (really Martian Manhunter) to keep Washington off his back, and that one servicewoman ♀︎ who hangs around Swanwick all the time finds Superman attractive 😍. That is the one negative thing about the movie, the one nitpick I have about it. I wish that they hadn’t put that scene there where they put it. It just throws the whole thing off, even I think the scene itself is great.
I don’t know where else you would put it though, would you put it after the scene in cemetery with Clark and Martha Kent visiting Jonathan Kent’s grave 🪦, to sort of ease into it, and then have the final scene in Metropolis at the Daily Planet, but the beginning part of the Metropolis scene is edited into the cemetery scene, so if you were to switch the placement of the scenes, I don’t know if there was some extra footage of that cemetery scene that they could edit the part that Metropolis footage went over, or how you transition from the drone scene to the Metropolis scene, but I’m sure there is a way to do it. I mean, I just look at how the Daily Bugle scene where Peter Parker exposes Eddie Brock and the James Brown street dancing scene were rearranged in the Editor’s Cut of Spider-Man 3.
Besides that, this movie was awesome, and it’s still awesome even today. I’d rather watch this several times over than watch Superman (2025) or any of the movies and streaming shows in the DCU. I refuse to support it because I hate how the haters of this movie and Batman v Superman (and to a lesser extent, Zack Snyder’s Justice League) are being rewarded for their shitty behavior and for their hypocrisy. They raked Zack Snyder over the coals for his take on Superman and for doing a Superman and Batman team up movie right after doing a solo Superman movie. They said he and WB were rushing it and playing catch up to Marvel. Which they were to be fair.
And yet, James Gunn is pretty much doing the same thing, following up his Superman movie with a Batman and Superman team up right after, and people love it 🤩. The same people who criticized Snyder for doing this exact thing are now praising Gunn doing it. What the hell 😑? James Gunn just seems to be straight up copying with Zack Snyder was doing with the DCEU in his own DC universe. He should be making a Superman sequel, not another Superman and Batman team up movie that looks to be a loose adaptation of World’s Finest (just as Batman v Superman was a loose adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns with elements from The Death of Superman 🤔). It seems Hollywood really doesn’t know what to do with Superman. They know how to do his origin story, how to tell the story of how he got here and he became Superman, but they don’t know what do with him afterwards. Where do they go from there? And it seems their answer is to just have him fight and/or team up with Batman.
Just like how no one in Hollywood seems to know how to or is interested in doing a Flash ⚡️ movie that isn’t just Flashpoint. They always default to Flashpoint and don’t have any other Flash ⚡️ storylines from the comics or any original ones that they themselves came up with to tell. Flashpoint should not have been the first solo outing for the Flash ⚡️ in the DCEU. That’s something you save for a sequel, not the first movie. There is no reason at all that the first solo Flash ⚡️ movie should’ve included Batman (two different versions of Batman played by two different actors actually), Wonder Woman, General Zod, Faora-Ul, and Supergirl, and should’ve been about time travel ⏱️ and the multiverse.
And the worst part about this is that Snyder didn’t even want to do a Batman and Superman movie right after Man of Steel. He wanted to do a Man of Steel sequel, but WB forced him to do a Batman and Superman team up movie. So, he made do with the cards he was dealt and made the best movie he could based on that studio mandate, and ultimately he wasn’t rewarded it for since not only did people hate it (not everyone but some people), but WB stabbed him in the back when he was making a Justice League movie, another thing the studio pressured him into doing for the sake of catching up to Marvel. And now Gunn is pretty much just copying his homework and no one bats an eye. None of these same people are complaining and saying that he’s rushing it like they did with Zack Snyder. This proves that it wasn’t the films themselves or the approach to a cinematic universe that WB was taking, but the names attached. They hated it because it had Zack Snyder’s name attached and they hate Snyder…with a passion 😤 in fact.
But, they love James Gunn 🤩 and think that everything Gunn touches is gold, even if it’s not. Gunn’s movies are incredibly flawed, more flawed than a lot of people like to admit. I rewatched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after it came out on Blu-Ray 💿 and it did not hold up as well as I would’ve hoped on my second viewing. The cracks definitely started to show. That’s not to say Snyder is perfect, he’s not, but he is far from the incompetent moron people make him out to be. At least Snyder seems more genuine and honest than Gunn, Gunn just seems kind of slimy and untrustworthy. Like, he’s the kind of guy who’d stab you in the back when given the chance, when he sees you as no longer useful to him.
I mentioned before that this doesn’t really look or feel like a typical Zack Snyder movie and what I meant by that was that there is no slow motion or speed ramping in this movie. It’s one of his only movies without slow motion or speed ramping of any kind besides Dawn of the Dead 🧟♂️ (2004). Instead, what takes it place after steadycam shots and quick zooms. The camera is almost ways moving in this movie, there are very few still shots in this entire movie, and there are plenty of moments where the camera will just quickly zoom in on something to put emphasis on it or just to show us what it is if it’s something in the distance.
And again, I think this was done mostly to make the movie feel more realistic and give a semi-documentary feel to it, and it works. It really works, it makes you wish that Snyder stuck with this same style for his other two DC outings. Even though, I didn’t have a problem with him re-introducing more slow motion and speed ramping in Batman v Superman and Justice League (2021), when he had a lot more creative control and didn’t have Nolan looking over his shoulder telling him what to do and what not to do.
One of the common complaints people have about Zack Snyder’s work overall is that he overuses slow motion and speed ramping. People joke about how Snyder’s movies are so long because he uses so much slow motion. Well, if you don’t like that Snyder uses slow motion in his movies, then you shouldn’t have a problem with this movie since there’s pretty much no slow motion whatsoever. But, you should probably avoid BVS and ZSJL because they have a lot of slow motion.
It’s also the only other movie that he’s made that doesn’t have an alternate cut. Almost all of the movies that Snyder has made over his career as a director have at least one alternate cut that people say is the definitive version of that movie (Zack Snyder’s Justice League being the prime example of that), but not this movie. The only Snyder movie that doesn’t have an alternate cut besides this one is Army of the Dead 🧟♂️🎰, which I have seen and have written a review for and do plan on reposting at some point. I guess this means that Snyder is proud of this movie and it’s exactly the way he wanted it and doesn’t want to make any changes to it and feels no need to release a longer version of it.
This movie did have an awesome marketing campaign too. The trailers were amazing, some of the best trailers for any movie I have ever seen. I’ll put one of them down below so you can see it. There was the fast food tie-in with Carl’s Jr. which was cool, the commercial that Carl’s Jr. did for this movie was pretty cool even if I don’t like Carl’s Jr., and that whole Gillette ad campaign of “how does the Man of Steel shave 🪒” was brilliant. People were genuinely hyped for this movie. They pretend now that they weren’t, but they were. Even if you didn’t like the movie, it’s okay to admit you were excited for it or were interested in seeing it.
A lot has been said about the product placement in this movie, especially around the time the movie came out, but it didn’t really bother me on this most recent viewing. It isn’t as in your face as the product placement in other movies, I mean for God’s sake, Transformers: Age of Extinction literally has a scene where a character says “Do you like music? The Pill,” and has this piece of Transformer metal (called “Transformium”) turn into a Beats Pill. You can’t get more shameless than that. There’s nothing like that in this movie.
Most of the product placement is in the background and is placed in a way that you won’t notice it or register it in your mind. The most in your face product placement moment is when one of Zod’s men ♂︎ (a character that goes unnamed as far as I know) throws a U-Haul truck at the helicopter that Colonel Hardy was on or when Superman and Faora crash into the local IHOP and start fighting in there, but those were cool and funny moments. It’s not like there was a scene where a character said something like, “Man, I’m really hankering for some pancakes 🥞, let’s go to IHOP.” I mean, yeah, there’s that scene during the Lois investigating montage, where she’s asking around Smallville for Pete Ross, and that one guy ♂︎ at the gas station ⛽️ says, “Yeah he’s over there, he works at the IHOP,” but that’s not exactly a blatant advertisement, telling people to go eat at IHOP. No, it’s just a normal line where a character asks for directions and another character tells them. Simply as that. Snyder definitely tried to have fun with the product placement in this movie in a way that wasn’t just blatantly advertising the product, that didn’t just turn the movie into a commercial.
This is the kind of Superman movie that we had never seen before and will never see again, and it largely didn’t get the praise or recognition that it deserved until years later. It had a $225 million-$258 million budget 💵, and every bit of that money 💵 was on screen, not a single dollar 💵 or penny wasted. It looked every bit as expensive as it was, which is more than you can say about a lot blockbusters nowadays. Henry Cavill was perfectly cast as Superman, he was our Superman, and will always be our Superman. He’ll be my Superman at least. People did genuinely like him in this role, even if they didn’t like the movies themselves. It’s shame that he’s no longer in the role.
It is as one comment said, he deserved better 😔. WB had something with the DCEU that Zack Snyder was crafting, and they just screwed it all up, for very little reason. Everything Snyder was building up to with Justice League and beyond was completely thrown away, and the DCEU lost any and all direction it had. And it got rebooted as a result. Good job fellas, I hope you’re proud of yourselves 👏😒. It’s just like that quote that Clark said about him revealing his existence to the world, the world was not simply not ready for this movie. A lot of people rejected it. Snyder and the other people who made it as well as the people who love it had to wait for the rest of the world to catch up and accept it for what it is. What do you think?
—
Comments
Post a Comment