It seems to be the Time of the Reboot. Or the retelling. In the case of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, it’s once again the Superman story, from Day One.
The story in Man of Steel relates how the infant Kal-El is saved from the destruction of Krypton, his home world, by being shot off into apace by his parents, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) in the midst of a coup attempt by General Zod (Michael Shannon). The coup fails and Zod and his henchmen are consigned to the Phantom Zone, but escape when Krypton is, inevitably, destroyed. Zod is determined to recreate Krypton, but needs the Codex, the index of all future Kryptonians, which Jor-El and Lara shot off into space with their son. (Who, by the way, is the first natural child born on Krypton in centuries — it seems the Kryptonians had taken genetic engineering to new levels, so that all children were not only artificially gestated, but were designed to fit particular roles in society.) It takes Zod thirty-three years to find Kal-El and the Codex, but he does.
In the meantime, Kal-El has grown up as Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), the son of Kansas farmers, Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane), who have taught him some very important lessons while striving to keep his special abilities — and he has those in plenty — secret.
Let’s start with the bones: the script is a good one, tight and focused, for the most part. We see Clark as a young man moving from job to job and town to town as circumstances force him to reveal that he’s not like other people. His childhood is related in a series of flashbacks that flow organically from the present action without interrupting the flow of the narrative. The story comes fully into the now when reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) arrives at an arctic outpost to investigate the discovery of an anomaly — a ship of some sort, sheathed in 20,000-year-old ice. Young Clark Kent, under an assumed name, is working there. And he knows something about the anomaly that no one else does.
One question I’ve been asked over and over again: yes, Henry Cavill is beautiful, but can he act? (There seems to be an assumption that the more attractive a film star, the less capable. Don’t ask me to explain that.) Yes, he can, and he displays a level of comfort in the role that’s remarkable only in retrospect — he’s so natural that you don’t notice the art. It’s the details, the small gestures, the quirky facial expressions, that build depth in the character. That’s true for the cast as a whole, and it’s a level of acting as craft and art that should be a given, but too often isn’t.
The core of the film is something that I only realized on a second viewing, even though both Jor-El and Zod make the point, albeit in different ways: They are the old Krypton, they can only be what they were designed to be, and that didn’t work. That also explains something that had bothered me about the performances by Crowe and Shannon, which seemed constrained in comparison to the other characters: these are men who have definite limits, and who can only be what they are. Kal-El/Clark is the new possibility, the one with the chance to move independently of the history and limitations of Kryptonian society as it has been. That’s really the impulse that starts the whole thing.
The design concept for the Kryptonian elements in Man of Steel is — well, I can’t call it “new” exactly, but it’s a departure from the cool, crystalline world we’ve been given in the past. It’s highly organic — think plant forms, seed pods, vines and tendrils, winged seeds, and the like. The contrast with the homespun quality of Smallville, and even more, the high-rise glass and steel angles of Metropolis, makes it a little sinister.
Strangely enough, my one beef with this film, given that I love movies where everything blows up, is the action/fight sequences. They’re just a tad too long, and manage to bleed off a lot of the tension in the desperate rescue sequences that are happening simultaneously. By the time they are happening, the film has developed a certain momentum, and all that happens while Superman and Zod are busily using each other to knock down skyscrapers is that the momentum stalls. (I won’t even go into the stock stupidity that seems to infect some of these things: “Look, our bullets have no effect on this woman. Let’s shoot some more.”)
Fortunately, that is a minor part of the film, but unfortunately, it occurs at a key moment. However, the damage is minimal — to the film at least. Metropolis, on the other hand. . . .
Man of Steel is certainly one of the better superhero films I’ve seen, and Snyder and the cast have brought it out of the realm of comic books and very close to real life. Not bad.
(Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures, Syncopy, DC Entertainment, Third Act Productions, 2013) 143 minutes, rated PG. For full credits, see the entry at IMDb.
