Thursday, January 2, 2014

You are my son.

Man of Steel - 2/10.
The thing about 'getting it right' is that everything's already there. It's not necessarily about fulfilling one person's interpretation so much as – Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, Superman – all the elements of making a great story are right fucking there. Drama, fantasticism. Almost 100 years of character-building and story elements up for the grab.  Of course I understand the divide between what's on the page and the construction of a multi-million dollar blockbuster that's been poked and prodded by dozens of people behind the scenes actually becoming a good movie in the end, but I also understand that, like the small number of scenes in Zach Snyder's 'Watchmen' prove, that if you just use what's there, then you can't really fuck it up. Of course, Zach Snyder proved through three-quarters of 'Watchmen' and the entirety of 'Man of Steel' that yes, yes you really can. Honestly: the trailer for this movie is the best Superhero movie I've seen. It's beautiful, it's well-constructed, it's 'Tree Of Life' by way of capes, and it almost perfectly encapsulates the core idea of any hero's journey: deciding what kind of person you want to be. And this version of Clark Kent almost never decides for himself. His father decides for him. His other father decides for him. Lois Lane decides for him. The US government decides for him. And, in the end, the villain decides how the play ends. In the course of deciding what kind of person Clark Kent want to be, this movie, simply put, is not the story of someone deciding to be a hero. 

No comments: