Pacific Rim vs. Man of Steel
I still haven't seen the new Superman movie and I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'd be better off saving my $12 for another movie. Maybe Pacific Rim? From everything I've heard, the director of Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro, has put a LOT of thought into what could easily be a mindless action movie about robots fighting aliens. Instead, one of the lead characters is a woman of colour who actually has a character arc of her own. Plus, Idris Elba. :D
Based on ponygirl2000's comments and this scathing review of Man of Steel, I would probably regret seeing the new Superman movie. I mean, I'm reeeeally tempted to watch just for Amy Adam's Lois Lane and Laurence Fishburne's Perry White, but I've never enjoyed Zod and the whole plot sounds pretty awful. ALSO. I'm so done with large scale destruction of property. Seriously, seriously done. The whole "plowing into tall buildings until they all fall down" trend in action movies is incredibly disturbing. The Avengers got away with it because we could see all the office workers in the buildings, we saw the Avengers turning back the space turtles to the best of their ability, we got the NYPD leading people safely down into subway stations and away from the fighting, etc. Joss was careful to humanize the action, and even gave us a POV character in Beth the Waitress, rather than pretend that nothing was destroyed but big blocks of concrete and steel and glass.
But then we had Star Trek Into Darkness, in which a starship plowed into San Francisco all willy-nilly, without any hint of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who were probably crushed to death. It was completely gratuitous, and then JJ Abrams had the gall to dedicate the movie to the 9/11 first responders?? Also, are we really supposed to believe that Earth planetary defences/Starfleet didn't have proximity sensors that could alert them to starships suddenly showing up in their orbit and falling from the sky? I have difficulty believing that major Earth cities can't just throw up a force-field to stop a projectile from landing on their heads.
It's like Hollywood is too enamoured on the FX of collapsing buildings to worry about actually telling the story of a hero. A real hero would be more concerned with making sure people didn't die from falling buildings than with punching out the bad guy lots of times. Sometimes saving lives = punching villains, but I'm getting the feeling that most action heroes these days aren't using good judgment about when and where and how to punch villains so as to stop people dying. Which indicates to me that these so-called heroes should probably go back to hero school or maybe even hang up their capes.
(From what I can tell from the Pacific Rim trailers, the good guys go out into the ocean to try to face the aliens before the aliens can make it to land.)
Tonight I'm going to re-watch Superman Returns, which I actually enjoyed even though Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane isn't really my favourite.
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Based on ponygirl2000's comments and this scathing review of Man of Steel, I would probably regret seeing the new Superman movie. I mean, I'm reeeeally tempted to watch just for Amy Adam's Lois Lane and Laurence Fishburne's Perry White, but I've never enjoyed Zod and the whole plot sounds pretty awful. ALSO. I'm so done with large scale destruction of property. Seriously, seriously done. The whole "plowing into tall buildings until they all fall down" trend in action movies is incredibly disturbing. The Avengers got away with it because we could see all the office workers in the buildings, we saw the Avengers turning back the space turtles to the best of their ability, we got the NYPD leading people safely down into subway stations and away from the fighting, etc. Joss was careful to humanize the action, and even gave us a POV character in Beth the Waitress, rather than pretend that nothing was destroyed but big blocks of concrete and steel and glass.
But then we had Star Trek Into Darkness, in which a starship plowed into San Francisco all willy-nilly, without any hint of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who were probably crushed to death. It was completely gratuitous, and then JJ Abrams had the gall to dedicate the movie to the 9/11 first responders?? Also, are we really supposed to believe that Earth planetary defences/Starfleet didn't have proximity sensors that could alert them to starships suddenly showing up in their orbit and falling from the sky? I have difficulty believing that major Earth cities can't just throw up a force-field to stop a projectile from landing on their heads.
It's like Hollywood is too enamoured on the FX of collapsing buildings to worry about actually telling the story of a hero. A real hero would be more concerned with making sure people didn't die from falling buildings than with punching out the bad guy lots of times. Sometimes saving lives = punching villains, but I'm getting the feeling that most action heroes these days aren't using good judgment about when and where and how to punch villains so as to stop people dying. Which indicates to me that these so-called heroes should probably go back to hero school or maybe even hang up their capes.
(From what I can tell from the Pacific Rim trailers, the good guys go out into the ocean to try to face the aliens before the aliens can make it to land.)
Tonight I'm going to re-watch Superman Returns, which I actually enjoyed even though Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane isn't really my favourite.
I prefer comments on Dreamwidth |
comment(s)