What Was Wrong With Man Of Steel, And How I Would Make It Not Suck

Here we go again with a disappointing Christopher Nolan feature, this time his production of Man Of Steel. By now, I’m starting to think that his successes, fantabulous as they may be (The Prestige, parts of the The Dark Knight trilogy), are actually the outliers, and his spectacular failures are the norm. However, I’ll reserve final judgement at least until Interstellar comes out.

For now, we’re going to focus on Man Of Steel, directed by Zach Snyder and produced by Christopher Nolan.

I have not met one person who liked the movie. Everyone was disappointed, especially after what was pretty universally regarded as an extremely kick-ass trailer. We did not get the movie promised by the previews. We didn’t even get a Superman movie, really. What we got was a Roland Emmerich movie thinly disguised as a superhero film.

Here are the problems, along with the easy fixes:

Millions of people die True, we don’t actually see millions of people die, but half of Metropolis is leveled, not to mention much of Smallville. It is unfeasible to think everyone could have been evacuated, and if that’s what they wanted us to believe, they should have explicitly said that everyone was. Superman shows a callous disregard for all the death and destruction. This is not at ALL how Superman would act. It is, for the lack of a better way of putting it, stupid.

The Easy Fix Not have so much destruction, and what destruction there is, make sure it’s clear how much it weighs on Superman. As has been pointed out in many places, watching the action sequences was like watching a video game. They had very little tension and suspense. There was just a lot of buildings exploding and falling over. Do better.

The tone is overly serious Superman often comes off as a prudish dick, though the Christopher Reeve Superman had an appealing light-heartedness to him. But this movie takes itself way to seriously. From the opening scene with the very dour Russell Crowe, all the way to the climax, there was little to smile about. Lois Lane is serious, Perry White is serious. I’m not sure Superman smiled the whole movie. There is nothing light about this movie. Even The Dark Knight had more glee than this Russian novel of a filmpacalypse.

The Easy Fix Learn from Marvel. I’m not going to say that The Avengers was a masterpiece in filmmaking, but there was a reason it earned over a BILLION dollars. The characters were fun. Watching them bicker and fight with each other was fun. Watching how scared Black Widow was of the Hulk was fun. Watching the Hulk body slam Loki was extremely fun. The Marvel tone started with Iron Man, and it has infused all the movies. It seems like in between viewings of Independence Day, Snyder was watching documentaries about the Holocaust. Lighten things up a little!

General Zod was kind of lame We were all expecting Michael Shannon to do a great job in the role, but in the end, he didn’t really pull it off. Like most of the characters, he just came off as a huge prick with a stick up his ass. This wasn’t Shannon’s fault. It was totally a product of the script and directing. Are you going to remember Zod as a character a year from now? Certainly not. On top of that, he had too many followers. Why have so many? To up the stakes from Superman II? All the extra characters did was clutter the film.

The Easy Fix Rewrite the script, and make sure their is more chemistry and tension between Superman and Zod. Here’s one possible take that would have been worlds better. Have only two villains, Zod, and his female sidekick. They are intent on recreating Krypton on Earth, and so are Adam and Eve figures (which will parallel nicely with the Superman as Jesus metaphor as well). They approach Superman and tell him they want to save Krypton. They are surrogate parents, representing everything that Clark has lost. They can teach him about who he is, where he came from. And since we know that Clark had a difficult relationship with his adopted father, he is tempted. He’s not sure what to do. So now you’ve created tension and suspense. And Clark slowly learns how awful they are, and eventually choses to protect Earth and let Krypton die. And with only two villains, each equal to Superman, you’ve got good opportunities for making Clark have to choose where to be, who to protect. Instead, Clark goes to meet them, realizes immediately they are super evil, and then it turns into a lot of video game action. (And maybe a cool twist would have been that at first, Zod claims to be Superman’s father. Wouldn’t that have been interesting!)

Kevin Costner is kind of a dick And I’m not just talking about when he says that maybe Clark should have let the kids on the bus die. That, by itself, makes for an interesting moral dilemma. No, the problem is that he is basically a huge tool bag, who for some reason thinks the most important thing for Clark is to keep his secret. As Ralph Garman pointed out on the Fatman On Batman podcast Jonathan Kent served one primary role in the Superman mythos, to impart on his super son everything that is good and decent about America. I’m not saying I dislike the fact they dealt with the theme of how the world might react negatively to Superman in real life. That’s a great theme. But you don’t have to have Pa Kent be a total douche bag to realize that vision. I think we can all agree that the best parts of the movie were the scenes with Clark and his parents, especially his mom. Kevin Costner was great. But the way they wrote his character was sad because it could have been so much better.

The Easy Fix Less of Pa Kent being a dick, more of him being the dad from Field Of Dreams. Fix the scene of him being killed by the Tornado. No one’s buying Superman wouldn’t have saved his father’s life. Instead, what if we find out that everyone in Smallville knows about his secret. And they’ve learned not only to accept him, but they will go out of their way to protect his secret. When Lois comes snooping around, everyone tells her to get the hell out. The whole town has adopted him. And then maybe one person ends up telling Lois, whether because he thinks it’s for the best, or because he’s jealous. There would be lots of ways to play it, and it would make the movie much more dramatic and compelling. You get to stay true to the essence of the Superman story, while dealing with a modern Superman in our modern world.

Well, those are the major problems. I think that you’ll see that what I’m asking for is a smarter, more tightly focused and dramatic story that still has plenty of action, but it’s compelling action based on character conflict, not a video game aesthetic.

Check out Decater's novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don't forget his other books: They Both Love Vonnegut, Ahab's Adventures in Wonderland, and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.