Good news, facebook fans! We can once again post decapitation videos! Facebook has reversed its policy against users posting video decapitations, instituted last May. That is, so long as users who post beheadings to facebook include a proper amount of condemnation of the practice of beheading people. This is not to be confused with condemnation of the practice of posting beheading videos to facebook; let's not get these confused.
facebook says we also need to make sure we're posting our beheadings and such to an age-appropriate audience, responsibly. I assume this means having no under-aged friends? Is "the internet" an age-appropriate audience? Judging by some of the things I manage to find, I'd say the internet is a pretty worldly bunch.
You also need to have warnings, and I don't know if spoiler tags count.
What I do know is you can't just post a beheading video and be like, "haha no need to lose your head over it" or make some other lame pun. Comments should say, "Disgusting!" or "I am appalled!" or something similar so people know you object to actually watching the video murders you post to facebook. Or maybe you object to the murders themselves, and you feel it's your civic duty to speak out about human rights issues in a forum usually reserved for Grumpy Cat and funny pictures of that Dokes guy from Dexter ("Supplies, motherfucker!"...LOL that gets me every time).
My suggestion: Make sure your follow-up to the video comment has plenty of righteous indignation. Like, "I'm so disgusted that you would post this, self." or "I really didn't need to see this, me!" That'll give it the air of seriousness such issues deserve, and let the censors at facebook know you're serious about beheadings.
By the way, I hear you get more hits if you post a picture of the beheading in the original post, then link to the actual video in the "comments" section.
Don't ask me about the "like" button in these instances, I don't know if it counts for or against beheading. Maybe you clarify by adding a "'Like' if you hate trivialized violence!"
facebook says they figured out the morality of it all during the Boston Marathon bombing, or at least that's what their representative told Gizmodo. Apparently, there was video of a man whose legs were blown off. And what type of news service would facebook be if they denied you video of a guy with his legs blown off? Why, they'd be no news service at all, I reckon. Without up-to-the-minute coverage of beheading and dismemberment to attract real, useful advertisers, they'd probably have to resort to selling ad space hocking pay-to-play games about farming and gambling. People would have to look to other sources to form their opinions on graphic depictions of murder and acts of terrorism.
It begs the question: If not for facebook, how many victims of the Boston bombing would have been left wandering the streets, yearning for some other way to communicate their terror? Twitter would have been my suggestion, but imagine having to express all that shell-shock, arterial spray, abject misery and confusion in 140 characters or less...it just doesn't work out, does it? Unless your fingers are blown off. Then, I'd guess 140 characters (or 3, maybe?) would be fine.
We should, as responsible citizens of the blogosphere/cube, always be on the lookout for dismemberment and beheading news to post to facebook, especially with Halloween right around the corner. Make sure your phone understands gestures if there's any chance you yourself are about to be dismembered: You may only have seconds before you pass out, and you don't want to spend those last moments helplessly hammering your bloody stumps into a touch screen. Remember, there's an entire internet that needs to know.
It really makes you think: What if just one sword-wielding nutbag had seen just how many "likes" an anti-beheading video of a beheading was getting? Could that have stayed his hand? I have a hard time believing a tweet could make the difference, but when you add the embedded video and open-concept facebook floor plan...
Oh, and no nekid boobies during the beheadings. I mean, c'mon folks: That would be offensive.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews: Rush
The Good: The personalities on display here are extreme, almost to the point of caricature, but neither the script nor the direction can be faulted for it. To put it simply, the film does a good job of conveying the truth: To take up this sport required a certain fearlessness not present in your average person. To win, one must have been more than a little insane. The dialogue conveys this, including some word-for-word quotes from interviews and other recorded footage, as if to let the audience know that the personalities on display here are extreme, but aren't "amped up" for cinema. The subjects needed to be that way, or it wouldn't have been their story being told decades later. Hunt did show up for interviews with multiple models on his arm. He did speak as if the world was his playground. He did take chances on the track that resulted in both wins and critical injuries. Lauda did walk onto one of the most storied racing teams of his time, blackmailing them for a spot by first building a faster car and then demonstrating that he could beat their best driver in it. It's one of those situations where narrative truth could have taken a back seat, and personalities could have been toned down to make it seem more real or believable to audiences. That, and events could have been re-arranged or edited for a more pleasing arc...but it wouldn't have been the truth.
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle gives us some of the best work of his career. The 70's muted Kodachrome color palette was perfect, especially where integrating stock racing footage was necessary to tell the story. The camera work both on- and off-track was thrilling, and edited to perfection. I gotta say, this is a contender for "Best Editing", with cuts paced to build intensity during race sequences, and communicating to-the-point personalities outside the track very, very well.
I don't know who to credit with this, but this film needs to win several awards for sound, especially the way the foley work was integrated with the music. Although there were some missteps and hokey-ness off the track when it came to chosen songs for montages, on the race track was perfection: Engine noise overwhelms, then gives way to announcers, whose voices in turn echo seemingly right on beat with the music, and it all blends to a seamless whole. I was thrilled with the race sequences in general, and due in no small part to the craftsmanship evident in what I was hearing.
The bad: The film may cause feelings of inadequacy, especially among middle-aged males.
Oh, and some of the CG wasn't absolutely perfect.
The verdict: Probably the best racing film I've ever seen...but that doesn't say much, as, let's face it: Most racing films are stupid. If you like action and drama, go see it. 9 out of 10.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews: Kick-Ass 2
Kick-Ass 2, as many of you know, is the sequel to 2010's Kick-Ass, a film adapted from the Mark Millar/John Romita Jr. comic of the same name. Both Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass) and Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl) reprise their good-guy/gal lead roles, along with alum Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Red Mist/The Motherfucker) returning as this film's nemesis.
I'm going to keep this one short: Kick-Ass 2 tries really, really hard to be as subversive and entertaining as the original, but frankly, it's a concept that's played out. It's a shame, because screenwriter/Director Jeff Wadlow is under the scrutiny of comics fans everywhere for this effort, as well as for being on tap to produce a screenplay for, and possibly direct, a feature X-force film with a tentative 2016 release. Although the shtick of it (a "normal" kid simply decides one day to be a super hero, but he has no powers, no partners, and no comic-book back story/origin to compel him) was perfect for a 2-hour introduction in 2010, it's simply a re-tread on display here, and a bad one at that.
Chief among the film's failures is saying nothing new. To be honest, I haven't read the second entry in the comic series, so I don't know how much of the blame to lay at Wadlow's feet for it. There's what passes for a super-villain origin story (although as a character he's re-heated from the last film), and the cast of heroes is slightly expanded (but none of the new are fleshed out), but nothing of note along the lines of change.
Looking back to 2010, the allure of the first film wasn't in the quality of the narrative, to be sure: It was the fact you'd never really seen anything like it. It was at once an homage to the genre and a deconstruction of it. These characters live in a mundane world, and with the simple act of stepping into costume and facing the world as super-heroes, you begin to see a sort of magical twist to the rules of reality. It was as if what they were doing was so extreme, the universe had to back off a bit. Things had to get comic-book-y. Situations became more and more twisted, personalities became focused and amplified, lines were drawn, costumes were sewn, chaos ensued. The fun of it wasn't limited to watching the characters grow into some sort of archetype, as in most conventional stories of its ilk: It was in watching the world around them change to fit their weirdness.
In 2, however, with the magic spell cast in the original entering its third year, we must look elsewhere for original concepts. Sadly, Wadlow (and perhaps Millar before him?) wallows in the feel and conceits of the original. The only marked difference is the frequency of toilet humor, really.
I wouldn't have known where to go with the story, either, but then, I'm not asking for a portion of your ticket price. Yeah, I do think Wadlow gets the spirit of it, which does come through on occasion, and I think he does a competent job pulling performances from the actors, and maybe it's just that they're staying true to the original print material. There are a few competent chase and action sequences (as with the first, anything involving Hit-Girl in an action sequence is well done). But for the most part, what was once shiny and new is now...I'll call it boring. Colorful and somewhat random, but boring overall. Pointless would be another word to use.
At least wait for the rental. It's a 4 out of 10 stars for being mildly entertaining on occasion.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews - Elysium
Although I wouldn't call it a "follow-up", Elysium does tread a lot of the same thematic elements as District 9, although the set of metaphors in this movie tread much more familiar-looking territory. The two movies both portray a stark separation between the haves/have-not's, the presence of baseless prejudice in the human collective psyche, and a sort of entrenched nationalism on the part of the elite in our societal structure. In District 9, the prejudices being illustrated were a little more in the abstract, as the object of hatred and mis-understanding was an insectoid alien culture. Elysium, on the other hand, tells a thinly-veiled story of the US/Mexico border, only "Mexico" in this metaphor is the hopelessly polluted and over-populated planet Earth. The United States is represented by Elysium, an orbiting satellite filled with the mansions of the one per-centers looking down on the planet with the same predilections as Ozzy Ozbourne had for fans beneath his hotel balcony way back when. Lest you think there might be some less specific metaphors in play, especially given Blomkamp's South African nationality, the movie is set in Los Angeles, and almost the entire supporting cast (at least where the "hapless denizens" are concerned) is Latino.
Matt Damon plays an Earth-bound worker (Max) given a terminal prognosis after a lethal exposure to radiation at his incredibly unsafe and exploitative workplace, and his only hope for a cure lies (of course) in the advanced medical facilities aboard the satellite...which, besides being in space, are zealously guarded by its citizens. Max must enlist the aid of the 22nd century's equivalent of the coyote, and get his ass to Elysium. Oh, and along the way, fight for equality and bring hope to the masses and all that.
So, yeah, it's really preachy. But does it work as a movie? Short answer: Mostly, "Yes."
The Good: Matt Damon plays a convincing every-man in Max, and the desperation and determination of the character's everyday life as a cog in the machine is convincingly focused and magnified through the lens of the more immediate conflict. Sharlto Copley(The A-team)'s performance was the standout, however, as his intensely violent and determined portrayal of Kruger, revealed as Max's more direct nemesis, was incredibly well done. Although Jodie Foster's portrayal of Delacourt hasn't enjoyed much by way of critical acclaim, I thought she did a fine job with the ballsy, ruthless defense minister of Elysium, charged with keeping the riff-raff off the station. She plays a lion among lambs, and I thought it was a wonderful effort on her part. Overall, the story is competently delivered, and the pacing excellent: This writer/director knows how to pressurize before he lets the steam out in the more violent scenes, which I think is lost on a lot of the current crop in Hollywood. Visually, the movie is very well done, as expected, but there were one or two scenes where the effects became overt. I liked the camera work overall, especially during fight sequences: It's not steady-cam-centric, as one might come to expect in a Matt Damon action vehicle. Rather, it is both experimental and elegant in the way the camera, for example, exactly follows the sweeping arc of a thrown punch, all with the fist at center. It is is focused and on-point without being clinical, and without losing detail in the action. In certain scenes, the view switches between standard and helmet-mounted cameras, giving the audience a less omniscient perch that serves to anchor to the character's experience of combat. The sets are excellent, and the textures used (dust, scabs, tears, decay, or the distinct lack thereof) are consistent visual reminders.
The Bad: I'm all for metaphor in my sci-fi, and I think one of the best aspects of the genre is illustrating the concerns of mankind and how the future addresses them (or ought to address them). However, the best science fiction, in my view, boils the issues down to their essence, and doesn't need such direct and obvious metaphorical links to current events. Such overt metaphor cheapens whatever message is being conveyed. The parallels drawn in this movie are simplistic caricatures, and it nearly ruins the narrative when you can practically hear the author's voice throughout: "SEE how the closed borders inevitably result in human trafficking and exploitation of the huddled masses? SEE how the blind nationalism results in exploitation and the loss of human compassion across borders? SEE how the use of drone aircraft results in a disconnect between the soldier and the consequences of combat? Oh, and Universal Health Care!!!" If you've ever thought to yourself, "You know, George Clooney should teach a class in how to portray the ethics of US foreign policy in a blockbuster movie, I'd sign up right away!", then this is the movie for you. Also, much of the movie's plot depends upon minutiae that doesn't stand up to examination, like the security systems surrounding the government of a space colony being remarkably easy to subvert, and machines capable of DNA coding that can re-build a person atom by atom, but are fooled into dispensing care to non-citizens by a forged brand on the skin. These little things are beside the point, but then, the enjoyable aspects of the movie are ALL beside the point: Everything slaved to "the point" ends up being about as thought-provoking as the PSA at the end of every GI Joe cartoon. If you disregard the "message" of the film, you'll end up looking elsewhere for stuff to think about, and it's an easy leap to start dissecting the film for plot holes (which invariably appear).
The Conclusion: This is a good sci-fi action film, having a skilled director that knows how to construct good drama, and its intentions are in the spirit of the best science fiction. However, it falters where the specific and unabashed metaphor for current US politics is concerned, being altogether transparent and detracting from the film's supposedly future setting.
The Rating: A solid 8 on a 10 scale as a sci-fi action/drama, but only rates a 3 in terms of social commentary. Too transparent, too simplistic, too "now" to provoke anything in terms of conversation on the issues at hand.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews: 2 Guns
When I bought my ticket, I was looking for lite action fare, but with comics personality and panache. The action movie genre as a whole, in my humble opinion, has been taking itself entirely too seriously lately, and the previews seemed to indicate a lighter treatment of the buddy cop motif, which looked to be something I'd enjoy.
The film concerns the exploits of two secretive "good guys", Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington) and Mike Stigman (Mark Wahlberg), each working undercover for a different entity, and each unaware of the other's true disposition. What starts as a bank robbery caper quickly turns into a sort of ground war between various factions, including a number of corrupt government agencies (5, maybe 6?), drug cartels, and those working multiple angles. Both characters begin the movie wholly convinced of the way things ought to work, and only by throwing out the rule book, so to speak, can they succeed.
Let's get straight to it:
The Bad: Personality the film has, in spades, although I hesitate to say what type: It's all over the map. The action is played too straight and certain dramatic moments are too intense to belong in a farce/parody, but the plot is simply too outlandish to belong in either straight-up action drama or even buddy cop territory. The worst part is the way the film switches personality and tone from scene to scene: There are about 6 intense gun battles, for example, that are played completely straight by the camera, the editing, and the direction, but these are predicated by grab-bag action movie plot devices that go to outlandish extremes and dialogue that's anything but serious. Seriously, every government agency mentioned in the movie, from the Border Patrol to the US Navy, the ATF, the DEA, the CIA, etc., is involved in drug smuggling, has its own Snidely Whiplash corrupt official, shadow organization and/or black ops hit-squad that initiates broad-daylight gun battles with impunity. Sometimes, the movie seems to be heading for the dramatic intensity of something like Drive or Dog Day Afternoon, other times it seems to want a more comedic or stylized approach akin to a Troublemaker Studios effort, and yet other times, it feels like a shallow buddy cop flick similar in tone to (insert Eddie Murphy buddy cop movie here). The trouble is, the style elements are so diluted by the schism that it's hard for the film to succeed in any one of its many aspects. In this regard, Washington's Trench character is played a little too straight, and has some elements of plot attached that are a bit too dramatic to fit: There are those moments where you know he's phoning in his typical Washington "seasoned rogue" gig you're likely used to from previous efforts. He does have his moments, but he's out-shined by his counterpart in just about every scene (more on that below), and he is his most successful playing off Whalberg's superior lead.
The Good: There are indeed some well-filmed action scenes in the movie, and there is a good amount of fun to be had if you check your mind at the door. Whalberg seems to know exactly what to do with his character, who goes from doe-eyed believer in the system to "I don't give a shit" rogue during the course of the film. The character arcs are basically the same between the two main draws, in that fundamentally each hero must become their cover, and Whalberg's Stigman is the most apt, delivering one-liners and little personality ticks that get you believing early on that he is polarized along those lines, but could make the leap between wheelhouses easily. He gets the most entertaining of the two main sets of dialogue, and delivers every one-liner and insult to great effect. My only complaint was that he didn't, or maybe wasn't allowed to, go farther with it. If it were my film, I'd have written/directed his character as a straight SNL parody of himself, complete with "Do you like Entourage?" fourth-wall-breaking debasement, but that's just me.
The Conclusion: This film would make a solid rental, good for a weekday night or a slow Saturday. I don't know that the cinematography or action merits the big-screen treatment, and there's little else here to justify a "go buy a ticket" recommendation. Perhaps for this last weekend and the next couple, it could scratch that itch for a movie buff that just has to have a movie to go to.
The Rating: It's a 6 on a 10 scale for theater-viewing, but perhaps an 8 or a 9 as a rental.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews: The Wolverine
So, I just got back from seeing The Wolverine, the latest X-film from Fox.
Truthfully, after the putrid bucket of nonsense that was 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this is a movie I wasn't really excited about...and it's lineage isn't exactly one to knock your socks off, either. If you go over the credits, it stars Hugh Jackman (a great actor, but no guarantor of a decent film) alongside several relative unknowns. Two of three of the female leads (Tao Okamoto and Rila Fukushima) have never been in a full length movie, much less a major studio release. Writer Mark Bomback's credits don't exactly shake the rafters with such dross as Live Free Or Die Hard and the 2012 remake of Total Recall. Director James Mangold, at least, is of note for helming the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma, as well as 2005's Walk The Line, and co-writer Scott Frank did Minority Report, so I guess there's hope to be had there. Oh, and Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) apparently co-wrote the script, but didn't get credit on imdb for whatever reason.
But, low and behold, Rotten Tomatoes' metascore is hovering around 75%, which, in my experience, is a pretty decent place to be for an action film. I heard good things from the comics community, so I bought a ticket for a matinee at Penn Cinema Riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware (the 2D version).
Getting to the point: This is a half-decent movie. It should satisfy fans left with a sour taste in their mouths after the '09 failure, especially those left hopeful after the far superior (but not perfect) X-Men: First Class. This is a movie that doesn't get everything right, but manages to engage enough to make it the "Wolverine movie fans have been waiting for" as it was billed...well, at least for die-hard fans.
First, the negatives: Although the movie has an interesting setup and an engaging second act, the third act doesn't manage to bring all the plot threads to a close without some considerable stutter to the pacing. To be honest, there are simply too many competing motivations at play, and the tone of the movie up until that point called for a more personalized, one-on-one showdown between our hero and those who vex him. I think a minor re-write, and perhaps the consolidation/elimination of a character or two, could have relieved the film of some cumbersome baggage. Motivations early in the film seemed consistent and well thought-out, but in the end, several character arcs simply derailed in a completely unnecessary, "Wait, what??" fashion. That, and the last nemesis, hinted at early in the film, is over-wrought and kinda clumsy...this is one place I wouldn't have minded the writers going off the comic book script. The film suffers an ending that's either too long or it simply "ends" two or three times too often. I can forgive even this, but I'll understand if some, especially the casual, non-comics-fan viewers, come away with a negative reaction. Oh, and the infrequent use of steadycam, although it does enhance the frenetic quality of some of the action, gets a little heavy-handed...but not enough to spoil the fun.
As for the positives...well, the first and second act give us a Wolverine with soul. Mangold pulls performance from his lead, and the feeling you've walked a mile in Logan's shoes really hits home. The backdrop of Logan's lost love is portrayed in flashbacks and dream sequences at tonally appropriate moments without straying from the path. The Wolverine's healing factor plays a prominent role in the film, and each sequence involving our hero being wounded is used to maximum effect (truthfully, one of the most engaging things about Jackman's performance throughout all the films is his believable reactions to pain). The feeling of mystery surrounding the various players in Yashida Corporation is expertly delivered in the second act as well, although in this case the take-down doesn't have the luster of the setup. For comics fans, the movie doesn't stray far at all from the Claremont/Miller stories it was based on.
All in all, I think the film ends up in C to B- territory. A 6, maybe a 6.5 on a 10 scale. It's good enough to be worth a matinee ticket, but the problems in the third act render my recommendation a little shaky. This film is not for the overt film critic, and I doubt it will win any awards, but franchise fans will want to check it out: It's the best Wolverine since X2...but that isn't saying much, now, is it?
Monday, June 17, 2013
Jim's Movie Reviews: Man Of Steel
Director Zack Snyder is probably best known for the visually lavish, if not historically accurate, 300, as well as the controversial comic-to-film effort Watchmen. So he has a certain pedigree when it comes to making films based on comics characters. It should be noted that in both cases, Snyder had a visual palette from which to work...in the case of Watchmen, he filmed a cut of the movie that was almost a shot-for-shot remake of the books (heavily edited for the cinematic release, however). This time around, Snyder had David S. Goyer's script to work from, a script whose story architecture was reportedly penned by none other than Christopher Nolan, father of the recent Batman trilogy.
Man Of Steel takes the same path as many recent re-boots of popular franchises, and unlike 2004's Superman Returns is a departure from the mythos first envisioned by Richard Donner in 1978. It's yet another origin story for the character that re-tells the events surrounding his birth, but adds back-story and plot elements to the last days of Krypton that have far-reaching effects throughout the film. The first act concerns the destruction of Krypton and the infant Kal El's flight to Earth. The second mostly concerns the young Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) wrestling with his power and abilities, and the third concerns his revelation to the world, and his conflict with General Zod (Michael Shannon) and the denizens of Krypton that hope to re-make Earth in its image.
Visually, the film is what you would expect, given its lineage: Flat, cool color tones, stark and imposing landscapes, and more often than not, strange alien architecture. The film spends a surprising amount of time both on Superman's home world of Krypton, as well as inside various Kryptonian vehicles come to Earth. Gone are the towering spires of lighted crystal from Donner's '78 effort: This Krypton is an imposing brown cut with alien architecture right out of a Geiger painting. The second act, changing settings between the American mid-west and Alaska territories, fares no better with the somber tones set forth in the first, and finally the washed-out greys that dominate the third act's city-scapes and alien spacecraft are occasionally punctuated by Superman's grey...er...red and blue costume.
The chief problems with the screenplay start to crop up in the first act: It seems a compulsion for this movie to wish to one-up past efforts in the superhero genre in the action and visuals. For example, one of the opening scenes concerns Jor El (Russel Crowe) witnessing an assassination by the rogue General Zod then fleeing home to secure his son's launch in the rocket destined for earth. Instead of making his way across a war-torn capital city on foot, or even in a mechanical personal conveyance of some kind, he mounts a dragon, then flies home from work looping and wheeling through an epic aerial battle right out of a Star Wars prequel. These types of excesses dominate the first and third acts of the film, to a degree that would make Michael Bay blush. The needless pageantry is exposed for what it is when Jor arrives home (well, the dragon-landing pad outside his home), dismounts his mortally-wounded steed, and discovers that the General has all but beaten him there, Tortoise and The Hare style. Once the plot pieces are in place to begin the second act, the battle conveniently and abruptly halts, tipping the writers' hand to the utility of the device.
The second act calms a little but nevertheless favors a different type of excess. The narrative jumps back and forth from Clark's childhood to young adulthood, and the story suffers a little here for a lack of rhythm and clear buildup of the character arc. All the material is there for a significant look at the character, including the most poignant dialogue between his foster father Jonathan (Kevin Costner), but there are few, if any, scenes of Clark or the Kent family just being people. In the same way that the pageantry of the first act is spoiled by excess, so is the gravitas of the second act diluted by repetitive story beats and dialogue of a singular theme. Every word out of Jonathan's mouth is a bit of grandfatherly sage advice, to the point where you half expect a ray of sunshine to punctuate his every utterance. I don't think he has one line of dialogue in the whole film that sounds like something Dad would say, no "can you cut the grass" or "pass me the potatoes", just a constant stream of prophetic wisdom. Every scene centered on Clark involves his actively using or not using his powers, and although the choices are explained, you're robbed of a chance to see the moral center of the character and his love for humanity develop in the rich way portrayed in Superman. Jonathan gives Clark reasons to jealously guard his secret, and those reasons compel him to the point where he must, eventually, be forced to step out of the shadows. I don't have a problem with this change in the character's arc, except to say that it robs the Superman character of a certain moral center to suggest that all his life he was counselled to avoid revealing himself even at the cost of human lives. Snyder tries to play up the iconography of the character in a scene in a church, but it's so heavy-handed and club-you-over-the-head subtle that it evokes laughter. The 1978 Superman had a far superior second act when it came to the development of the character, and it was done with half the screen time spent on Clark's upbringing.
For some audience members, the third act is the part they paid to see, and for others, it's where the thing disintegrates completely. It is for this that I am most hesitant to recommend either one way or another on this film: The third act of Man Of Steel is an hour-long pitched battle, pure and simple. And what a battle it is: Skyscrapers fall, the earth is torn, the army attacks, city blocks are picked up and slammed down, alien space ships fire bolts of energy, trains are de-railed, satellites are hurled out of orbit, etc. For an hour. The third act doesn't build, it simply arrives, and it's not over until its over, so to speak. Any one of Snyder's action scenes, when taken on its own, can be regarded as wonderful for its powerful imagery and beautifully moving pieces. But for all their thunder and calamity, you never get the sense that either combatant is against the ropes for more than a second or so between landing blows. There's no lull, and therefore no rhythm to speak of, just spectacular yet inconsequential violence. Superman on occasion stops to aid a human soldier, but he evinces almost no concern whatever for the workaday human populace. In real-world terms, the off-screen death toll from his fight with Zod would have been staggering, yet no concern is evident until the very end, when Superman is forced(?) to make a decision that runs counter to what many fans expect of the character.
So, is it a good movie? Partially. See, Snyder gets the imagery and iconography right, and there is a compelling arc and poignant story notes scattered throughout the second act....I just don't think Snyder gets the music of it. Some story notes are shouted too loudly, others drowned by the thunderous drums of action set-pieces destroyed, and some are too brief or too out of sync to be of consequence. Yes, it's a clearly recognizable three-act play, but it could have benefited from some choice editing of the third act, the inclusion of some humanizing script for the second act, and a minor re-write of the first to tone the narrative down a little. Yes, some of the character choices in the script are interesting when evaluated out of context, but I don't know if the writers realize what was lost when they made Jonathan a jealous guardian rather than a guiding hand. It's strange how, with as many glimpses of greatness as this film gives us, and all the talk about changing the world, it simply doesn't end up feeling like anything special...and the reasons for this are so plainly evident and easily fixable.
Lemme see...how to rate this...I know, I'll use a sliding scale! Find the byte below that best describes you, and you'll find your rating for Man Of Steel right after.
The Blockbuster: You know who Superman is, but you don't read comics and you're not a fan of the '78 film (that wishy-washy rom-com with Margot Kidder that is, like, ancient) due to its slow pacing and obvious 70's special effects. You think that modern CGI is a chance to show some really cool battle scenes. You loved the Transformers movies, and think Iron Man 3 was the obvious best in the series. Your rating: 9 out of 10.
The Andy Warhol: You know the Superman character, and what he stands for, but you're more into the visuals than anything else. You want to see Superman holding up a building, standing in front of a stained glass window, flying through space, on fire, in an H.R. Geiger painting, etc. You thought Sucker Punch was one of that year's best films. Your rating: 8 out of 10
The Fanboy: You're dying to see this film. You've waited 35 years for Superman to be done right again, and the previews are looking good. You're very familiar with the Donner films, and happen to enjoy several comics and animated takes on the character throughout the years. You think Waid's Birthright was really cool. Your rating: 6 out of 10
The Keeper Of The Flame: You are familiar with Superman's comic history, and can debate for hours on why silver age Superman is superior to any other published work in the last 30 years. You think the Donner films were "interesting", but can't stomach the liberties they took with the character and the obvious non-canon approach to the character's back story. Your Rating: 3 out of 10
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