what if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended?
I actually really liked Man of Steel and it and Superman Returns would vie for the top place in my heart for Superman movies.
But, I dunno. I guess Smallville has ruined me for a lot of things mostly because MoS covered a lot of topics that SV did - and the big one being Clark coming to terms with his alien heritage and powers as a preteen. And, there’s just no way to cover that in three hours with the depth of a ten-year TV show - no matter how badly written at times. With a TV show, there’s just gonna be so much more of Clark struggling to fit in, Martha and Jonathan struggling with OMG alien!son. One minute of Whitney Fordman will never compare to the one year SV gave him.
Speaking of, I think Whitney and Jonathan and Lana and Pete came off as very one-dimensional. Lana and Pete weren’t even friends of Clark, they were just random bystanders who happened to be witnesses. Pete does fare better than Lana as a random guy who’s there when Whitney is about to beat up Clark but still. As for Whitney, all we got of him was him being a bully with no motivation. But that was prolly even better than Jonathan who I thought came off as hyper-idealized because the beauty of SV’s Jonathan was that he was a very idealistic man but also a very flawed man and it’s to Clark’s character that he turned out the way he did despite Jonathan’s flaws which also passed down onto Clark.
And the shame about one-dimensional characters is that it didn’t have to be that way. This movie has my favorite Perry White ever. In that one-on-one with Lois Lane, Laurence Fishburne played Perry with just the right amount of “tired of your crap Lois Lane” and gravitas and seriousness because, what Laurence gets about Perry is that 1) The Daily Planet is a newspaper of reputation and record and 2) if what Lois wrote is true, then this has grave consequences for not just Lois but all of humanity and that as the editor of such a highly esteemed news organization, that is a lot of weight on Perry’s shoulders.
Which brings me last to character who I think got cheated: Zod.
I think Zod, had he lived, should always be a ruthless general who prioritizes the future of the Kryptonian race above everyone else, even fellow Kryptonians. And, I don’t think he, like Lex Luthor, should ever be saved. But how much more interested would Zod be if he got questioned his reason for existence even if only for a split of a split of a moment? Even if he went back to his genocidal ways. Because, there should be at least that potential there and that potential has to be because of Superman.
I think that he had the most potential to be developed if not in this movie then in sequels because of his origins - created and raised to be a soldier who puts his race above others. And I hate that Superman kills Zod because Superman is supposed to be about hope. And what is supposed to make Superman’s hope remarkable is how anti-essentialist and anti-determinist it is. Superman above all does not believe that one’s origins, one’s biology, one’s upbringing, determine and dictate one’s future. That Clark had to kill Zod gave me very essentialist and determinist messages to me and well, what hope could or should one have when one’s origins deems them irredeemable?
Superman is about hope, but where does that hope come from and what does it mean? And these are questions I thought the movie failed to answer.
