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Hoping for the best from ‘Man of Steel’

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man of steel flying upward

Superman is a test that many movie- and TV-makers don’t quite pass.

Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and continually published and re-printed since Action Comics No. 1 hit the stands in early 1938 – 75 years ago – Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent, make up one of the most recognizable characters in all of popular culture.

So it’s not a surprise that DC Comics and Warner Brothers – frustrated in their efforts to create a big-screen presence since “Superman Returns” missed the mark several years ago – are trying again with “Man of Steel,” due in theaters June 14.

I’m still not sold that director Zack Snyder has the character right. But I was a little more convinced after the trailer for “Man of Steel” released a few days ago.

man of steel vista

That’s mostly because the trailer, at least, emphasizes the “outsider” status of the character.

Make no mistake, and I’ve said it here before: Superman is not a brooding character like Batman. He’s not driven by nightmares. He’s not wracked by guilt. If Snyder’s “Man of Steel” is marked by those characteristics, the movie will fail.

But he is, for all his optimism and courage and innate knowledge of right and wrong, an outsider.

The trailer seems to acknowledge this, portraying a Kal-El/Clark/Superman who, as a young man, is uncertain about what he should do with his life and afraid of how he will seem to the world around him.

As he grows up, he appears to wander far away from Smallville, even though he continues to use his powers for good, rescuing men in a fiery accident.

The trailer shows us a Lois Lane (Amy Adams) who has been seeking this man of mystery (Henry Cavill), and it is in Lois’ words that the movie might find the best definition of the character.

“How do you find someone who has spent a lifetime covering his tracks?” Lois asks. “For some, he was a guardian angel. For others, a ghost. He never quite fit in.”

Yes.

Superman is, even while he is the champion of his adopted world, an outsider. He’s the last of his kind – well, for the most part – and the first of a new kind on Earth. He feels an obligation to his new home even as he mourns the home he never knew.

Tellingly, Lois asks Superman – still unnamed to the world at large – about the “S” on his chest, and Superman tells her that the symbol stands for “hope” on his world.

Playfully, Lois notes that on this planet, it’s an “S” and begins to suggest it should stand for Superman before she is interrupted.

The trailer seems to capture the world of Superman. We can hope so, at least.

(I still don’t get the kid in the backyard with a makeshift cape on his shoulders. If that’s young Clark, it doesn’t make sense. Who is he imitating? I’m more convinced now than earlier that the boy isn’t Clark, but is a young boy play-acting as Superman after the character becomes known to the world. If so, it will be a lump-in-your-throat moment.)

Looking forward, with hope, to June 14.

‘Man of Steel’ trailer still a quandary

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man of steel poster

I want to believe a man can fly.

I want to believe in Superman.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I do.

It’s “Man of Steel” I’m not sure about.

man of steel trailer

The latest trailer for “Man of Steel,” producer Christopher Nolan and director Zack Snyder’s reboot of the Superman movies, hit the Interwebz yesterday. I’ve watched it a few times and I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it.

Ambivalent, maybe. Here’s why:

We don’t need another origin story, even though we’re getting one. Yes, it’s been more than three decades since the last big-screen Superman origin. Yes, the lure of Krypton’s explosion and Jor-El and all that is too great to pass up. But I just feel like we don’t need another introduction to Superman the character, any more than I feel like we needed another introduction to Spider-Man last summer. Between the various and quite good animated versions and “Smallville,” I can’t imagine what another origin story will bring.

Superman is lonely but he isn’t brooding. He’s an alien, more or less the last surviving Kryptonian. Well, that’s proven false time and time again in the comics and movies. But you get the idea. So while I don’t want to see a happy, sunny Superman necessarily, I don’t feel like we need a Superman who’s just as likely to lie on his bed and eat Doritos all weekend as … well, must of his fans are.

On the other hand … Superman isn’t boring. He’s a complex, multi-faceted character, not a Boy Scout. So maybe some stark loneliness will play well.

If Pa Kent isn’t Clark’s dependable mentor and conscience and adviser, I’m not sure I want to see that movie. In the trailer, young Clark wonders if he should have let a school bus full of kids drown in a river rather than save them – especially if it means revealing his powers. Pa says, “Maybe.” No. Pa Kent would never say that. Wrong. Wrong.

We need some action. It kinda sorta looks like Brooding Boy pulls on his scaly blue tights and engages in some fisticuffs with Zod at some point. At least I hope so. “Superman Returns” was so slow.

The imagery is … problematic. The early poster (above), featuring Superman in handcuffs. Why would Warners want that image, curiosity-inspiring as it might be, to be the first image most people connect with the movie?

Did I say we don’t need another origin story? Oh yes, I guess I did.

 

 

New ‘Man of Steel’ trailer: Huh?

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My first reaction when I saw this weekend’s “Man of Steel” trailer for Zack Snyder’s revisiting of the Superman franchise was that it didn’t look like a trailer for a “Superman” film.

What is this, Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan’s big-screen version of “The Deadliest Catch?”

If you haven’t seen the trailer, the preview is filled with shots of foggy landscapes, a kid running around in the yard outside his house and a bearded guy hitchhiking and working on a fishing boat. (The bearded guy, of course, is Henry Cavill, the star.)

Only at the end, after the “Man of Steel” title, do we get a “Chronicle”-like glimpse of Superman streaking through the sky, breaking the sound barrier.

The trailer raises a lot of questions, most of them about the choices Warner Bros., Nolan and Snyder have made about the movie and how they’re going to market it.

Why, why, why another retelling of the story from the beginning? Are filmmakers unable to resist the mythology of the death of Krypton and Clark’s Smallville years? Haven’t we seen this already, more than enough times?

Are they playing the “Amazing Spider-Man” game? The makers of that recent movie tried hard to convince us there was an untold story to Peter Parker’s parents and his origin. There really wasn’t one. Is the point of this movie (and trailer) to create the impression that the few early scenes in which Clark struggles with the decision about what to do with his powers are as important as what he does later? Isn’t that a dangerous game considering we all KNOW what he does later? Wouldn’t that be like devoting half of a movie to Sherlock Holmes’ dithering about whether to become a detective or a blacksmith?

Who is Clark imitating? When Clark is running around his yard using a red towel for a cape, who is he imitating? Really? In Nolan’s one-superhero world, why would young Clark possibly be wearing a cape before he becomes Superman? And are we supposed to believe that the down-home Kansas Kents would have red bath towels?

Wait, Superman can fly? Really, the build-up in the trailer is to a shot of Superman flying? Is that considered the most impact-full image of Superman they can present? Or a feeble attempt to reassure us that, yes, all that pretty but meandering footage we’ve already shown you is from a Superman movie.

I’ll go see this next May, despite this seriously bungled early marketing attempt and my misgivings, previously noted, about the “edgy” tack they’re apparently taking.

But so far I don’t have a good feeling about “Man of Steel.”