Warning: the following post contains spoilers to Batman vs Superman. If you haven't seen it, do so then come back to this post and tell me I suck & I didn't understand the movie.
Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with some more Superhero talk! Several weeks ago, Man of Steel, the 2013 Superman reboot starring Henry Cavill was confirmed to have a sequel in the works and upon hearing the news, I couldn't have been more indifferent.
Before talking about this indifference, I should discuss my feelings in regards to Man of Steel. I first saw the film a couple of years ago when it came to Blu-Ray and when the huge controversy surrounding it died down a little. I had a bit of mixed feelings in regards to the film: I thought Cavill himself had the perfect look for Superman and his journey of self discovery in the first half of the movie, while flawed in some places, did the job it needed to. Amy Adams when she was doing Lois Lane-esque things and not being where the plot tells her to be was great and the action itself was the best ever done in anything live action Superman. In regards to all the destruction and the world ending chaos in the climax to the end of the movie, my biggest problem is that it was too much for a first movie in a series of new movies which was a part of a cinematic universe...if that makes sense. If everything with Zod was saved for the sequel, then it would've been fine to me. I understand that Superman deals with planet ending situations on a daily basis, but there are smaller scale Superman villains that would've served in providing a challenging fight for him such as Parasite, or Metallo, which could serve in getting the Man of Steel out there to the world and still
But upon finishing MOS, I was more curious than anything else in regards to where this new series of Superman movies was going next. Then came Batman vs Superman this year and in it came what I thought was the most disservice you could do to the character of Superman by essentially having him be a background character in a movie that was the follow up to his own; and after the end of BVS, I felt that a Superman sequel in the DC Extended Universe COULDN'T be done. The biggest reason being that Superman and mostly everything connected to him in the DCEU is fundamentally broken with a lack of development and can't be salvaged.
Batman vs Superman set up something interesting from the fallout of Man of Steel and it tries to ask whether or not the world needs a Superman, and wonders can we really trust him or is he our enemy. Some fans of MOS have argued that people shouldn't be so paranoid of Superman, that the destruction in the previous movie was Zod's fault and Superman was protecting them. I'll argue that point with this classic Men in Black Gif.
Of course people are paranoid of Superman, because he's something otherworldly, something that can't be explained; and if Zod, someone from Superman's world can do what he did in MOS, imagine what Supes would do on a bad day. This sets up something very interesting with Superman. This could be his time to finally explain himself to the world and win some of the people who doubted him over. And in there lies one of the biggest problems of BVS: Superman in BVS never grows as a character. I'd argue he actually regresses as he's constantly vilified in the movie by Lex Luthor, Batman, and that one woman in the movie who drunk piss and died and throughout it all, Superman never speaks up for himself. Instead, he spends the majority of his time in the movie frowning and on the rare occasion scowling.
And on top of that, it seems as though everything MOS was setting up for a follow up for Superman's development in future movies seems to be butchered here. After MOS, I figured that Superman in the next movie would start becoming the hero that we the audience expects him to be. Instead, he's still the same brooding guy questioning his existence that he was before. I thought we would see the moment where he finally wins the people over, but that wasn't the case for reasons I'll explain near the end; and the reason I accepted Supes killing Zod was because I saw that scene as the movie giving a reason as to why he won't kill an enemy and why he has such a moral compass, but in BVS he's unmercifully punching human people through walls. He's practically a stagnant character.
I've talked enough about Superman for now. Let's talk about the supporting characters on the Superman half of BVS and how they also fall flat. Superman is an alien from another world but, to me, one of the biggest things that humanizes him is his relationship with those closest to him. They're a huge part of the reason he does what he does, and without them, Superman would not be the hero he is. Not so much in this movie. The best example of this would be with Lois Lane and her rushed relationship with Clark. Admittedly, Man of Steel is partly to blame for this considering that near the end of the movie, near ruined buildings in a destroyed city Supes and Lois decided that was a good time to swap spit. BVS however takes it another step with Clark and Lois living together and almost being engaged; and I am not convinced that these two are in a relationship at all, not helped by the complete lack of chemistry between Cavill and Adams. Clark and Lois are more than just a couple, they're partners and sometimes rivals at the Daily Planet. BVS could've spent more time with them working together on the Batman case or that stupid bullet subplot, take time to explore their relationship: why they're together, what attracted them to one another, question if they just rushed into a relationship after MOS. there were some interesting ways you could've played it. Instead, they just mope at each other as the most unconvincing couple I've seen in a movie; and before anyone asks: yes, I've seen the Twilight series and 50 shades of Grey...
Another much smaller example is Perry White. Now as I knew him, Perry was a guy very dedicated to printing the truth in the Daily Planet Newspaper. He could be tough on both Lois and Clark, but you could tell that he cared a lot for the two and that they were all pretty close. Heck, a little while back in the comics, a version of Superman died (Don't question, it's comics) and Perry, who knew Clark and Superman were the same person, hung his cape at the planet as a memento to someone he thought of like a son to him.
While some of that was displayed in Man of Steel, the Perry White in BVS changed for the worse. Instead of being a hard working journalist who cared about writing the truth, he's more or less a tabloid journalist, and he comes off as mean spirited and unlikable, although that's only in his interactions with Clark. I've read that Perry in the film was struggling to keep the planet current with their more genuine articles which is why they had to switch to sports stories and other eye popping heads, but like most things connected to Superman in the movie, there was so little focus on it, it seemed rather pointless and uninteresting in comparison.
The last two movies with Superman brought a lot of focus on the fact that he's alone in the world with no one that could really understand him. And while that is a factor to the character, something I feel that these new movies don't get is that the human characters are just as important to the Lore of Superman as the otherworldly alien stuff revolving around him. Once again, to me, they represent Superman's connection to humanity, So for this movie to take Jimmy Olsen, one of the biggest Superman supporting characters, and kills him off just to "have fun with him." It's huge disrespect to the Man of Steel.
But the biggest reason to me why I think Man of Steel 2 is pointless to do now is a reason I'm sure many of you could guess. That reason being...
The Death of Superman in Batman vs Superman
This scene...this scene greatly upsets me the more and more I think about it. Those who have seen the movie can probably guess where I'm going with this, but bear with it. The scene where Superman dies by the hand of Doomsday is a supposed adaptation of the 1992 storyline "The Death of Superman" where Superman fights Doomsday, and the battle ending with the death of him and the monster. The fact that they chose to do this in what is only the second movie in the entire DC Extended Universe completely just boggles my mind.
I've seen people say that The Death of Superman was a cheap stunt to sell comics and to make Superman interesting again to which, yes you're partially right. But one: I'll counter that by saying it took 50+ years of Superman comics to get to that point vs. 3 years and 2 movies. Two: that story made the news for more than just its sales (News segments which are on YouTube for those curious). This was a character that people got to become attached to not just from the comics but from the Adventures of Superman series and the Christopher Reeves movies. This was a character at least two generations of people got to experience this character; which is why if you go and watch some of those old news segments, some people got teary-eyed because of Superman's death.
Fast forward a little over a decade later, little middle schooler Shaman read this story himself and upon finishing it, I was floored for a good ten minutes. Because Superman was someone I watched from the old Superman and Justice League animated series and watching this character who overcame every obstacle put in front of him fight harder than he ever had before in a battle that he wasn't going to come back from was something that always stuck with me; not to mention the ripple effect it had on the DC Universe as a whole. Zack Snyder and the folks that worked on BVS took such an iconic moment and just wasted it.
To bring it back to the Superman winning the people over point I made earlier in this post, after Supes's death in BVS, the movie tries to display the people of Metropolis upset and mourning the loss of their hero, but it just fails because the movie put more emphasis on people hating or distrusting Superman. Again, Death of Superman works so well as a story because the people of Metropolis, and the people of the world respected and adored Superman for years. They saw this God-like hero go out of his way to help every person he could and do it with a smile on his face, and a good word or two. He was a giant shield for the world. So when he died, it hit those people as much as it did those that knew and/or worked with him.
And finally, the very last few seconds of Batman v. Superman shows dirt rising up from Clark's coffin, implying that he was in fact still alive. These last few seconds also play into why adapting The Death of Superman two movies in this universe was a bad idea. To the best of my understanding, for those who haven't read it, the best way to describe what happened to Clark after the story wasn't that he died but rather he was put in a death-like coma and all those fatal wounds he had eventually healed over time. Of course, the movie being as accurate as possible to that story, does the same with Clark.
The big problem with it this early is that now that tension that maybe this is the one fight that Supes can't come back from is gone; and it can't be replicated because now we know he can't die, even when having a giant blade-like bone stuck through his chest. And I don't know about you all reading this, but tension between hero and villain and worrying for the hero's life is kind of the reason I like watching Superhero and action movies. Even when it's obvious the hero's going to be fine by the end of it, you can still suspend your disbelief and think maybe something will happen. Now, with Superman, that's thrown out the window.
Folks, I don't know what the future holds for Superman in the DCEU, but I'm not positive about the road ahead. BVS took so many steps backward with Superman that it's hard to believe that anyone would actually want a Man of Steel sequel. Maybe something happens in Justicce League that renders this entire essay of a post moot and I'll be begging for Man of Steel 2 to happen. I hope that's the case. But in a universe where Batman, the guy that prefers working alone (save for his butler and plethora of sidekicks) is the one that's building the Justice League and the Last Son of Krypton has no input in it, I wouldn't have my hopes up for a good Superman movie to happen in a while.
Thank you all for taking time to read this essay of a post. Til next Time, I'm the Shaman of Animation.
Take Care...
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