The Superhero Movie Masterpiece
Describing almost anything as a “masterpiece” can come off as overly bold, so by extension the term “superhero movie masterpiece” probably comes off to some as an impossible contradiction. Superhero movies are generally thought of as heavy in surface level aesthetics like CGI and fight choreography, while shallow in character depth and story substance. Even though this is true for a percentage of superhero movies, there are some outliers that even the most harsh of movie critics would have to admit can be defined as a genuine masterpiece.
The example that immediately comes to mind when I think superhero movie masterpiece is Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Released in theaters in 2008, The Dark Knight was the sequel to Batman Begins and the second movie in Nolan’s Batman trilogy. The movie pit Christian Bale’s Batman against Heath Ledger’s Joker, with the added bonus of Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face and gave us the most memorable and iconic theatrical adaption of the character to date. The movie won two Oscars and the movie is seen as a holy grail in the comic book and superhero movie realm. The movie works on two fronts: it is an incredibly well done adaption of the Batman and Joker characters, and the movie stands by itself with or without Batman attached as a piece of top quality cinema. If that story were with any other IP but written and acted the same way it would have been almost a good – the fact that it was a Batman movie was just icing on the cake.
Not many movies can be considered a masterpiece, let alone superhero movies. In terms of overall cinema, I can’t actually think of another movie I can confidently call a masterpiece besides The Dark Knight. The are movies that are very good and could be called a masterpiece compared to other movies of similar genres, but to find a movie like The Dark Knight that you could put up against some of the highest regarded movies in history is a rare trait.
When I think of superhero movies that had the most potential to go down in cinematic history, one film comes to mind that had all the right ideas but with missteps in its delivery: Man of Steel. As a result, audiences had very vocal and overly critical reactions that I believe threw things off. Zack Snyder’s Superman adaption took obvious inspiration Nolan’s Batman trilogy, while also being its own thing (for better or for worse).
The Man of Steel
The Man of Steel came out in 2013 and was Zack Snyder’s modern adaption of the world’s most recognized icon, Superman. Snyder took some obvious pages out of Nolan’s Dark Knight book and used many of the same tropes that the infamous Batman trilogy used to reinvent the character for the modern age. The Superman reboot wasn’t just presented as a superhero movie, but you could tell Snyder was going for a different level of cinema much in the same way The Dark Knight elevated Batman. The cinematography, the acting, the writing, the music, and the CGI were all over the top and like I mentioned earlier, all the pieces were there and for all intents and purposes the movie set up a sequel perfectly. But where did it go wrong and why didn’t we ever get a Man of Steel 2?
Unfortunately, the movie ended up drowning in controversy. There is a scene at the end of the movie where Superman defeats the villain, General Zod, by snapping his neck. Zod has an innocent family cornered, and right before obliterating them with his laser vision Superman snaps his neck to save their lives. It happens so quickly in the movie that you don’t even feel the real impact as a viewer until you see Henry Cavill’s Superman literally screaming in agony because of what he had just been forced to do. The scene had a massive impact, so much so that it was easily the most talked about part of the movie for quite a while after. The problem, however, was that I believe that scene was meant to have an impact on the origin of the character (and if it didn’t than it should have). The vocal majority kept falling back on one detail: Superman killed someone when Superman isn’t supposed to kill. Okay. Fair enough. There are a couple issues with this criticism though…
a) Superman did it to save an innocent family. Zod had the family pushed into a corner and was about to melt them all. If Superman would not have done anything, Zod would have killed all of them and then audiences would have been asking, “well why didn’t Superman do anything?”. It was a catch-22.
b) The second most common criticism of the movie was that it was filled with destruction and not enough hope and saving of people. But as a counterpoint, he did this exact act on Zod to save innocent people. None of this criticism matched up with what actually happened in the movie. There was a lot of restriction in earlier scenes, but I mean, did we not see The Avengers? Superheroes causing damage in a city is not a unique concept – although this movie did take it to a much larger scale.
c) This was an origin movie. Superman, as a character, should be allowed to go through character development even if the audiences are familiar with the character. That’s the point of telling a story. You could see the amount of agony Cavill put into his delivery at the end of the movie which made it obvious how much killing Zod tore up Clark Kent. That moment, had they done a sequel, most likely would have been the inspiration for Superman’s no killing rule. He killed Zod because he had to, but he saw and felt the aftermath of killing someone – even someone that evil – and by the sequel he would have come to terms with what he did while motivating him to create his “no kill” rule. I am almost sure they would have explored this idea in a sequel as I don’t believe there is any other reason they would have emphasized Clark’s agony as heavily as they did if they weren’t going to eventually call back to it. This was setting up Cavill’s Superman to align more closely with the classic big blue boy scout, we just never got to see it play out. Instead of a light, hopeful sequel that took the tone of the very end of Man of Steel and ran with it, they gave us an even darker follow up with Batman vs Superman and it took Superman into a completely different direction essentially killing that version of what he could have been.
d) By the end of Man of Steel, you could feel a massive shift in tone from the rest of the movie that I think was done on purpose to bookend the over the top origin story that would have rolled smoothly into a sequel quite well. I think the franchise could have worked perfectly with a version of Clark that was so remorseful he had to kill Zod that he would vow to never kill again. I can see that version of Cavill’s Clark Kent as clear as day thanks to the last few minutes of Man of Steel and a couple moments in Batman v Superman. I remember leaving the theater after watching the premier on opening night back in 2013 just hoping we would get a sequel that carried that feeling of Clark’s development into another movie. The majority of the movie felt like a massive CGI space epic, but the last ten or so minutes brought everything right back to the grounded (as grounded as you can get for Superman) Daily Planet that gave us vibes of the original Christopher Reeves version. Those last ten minutes felt less like Man of Steel and more like the original movies, Smallville, or even the more modern Superman and Lois. I wanted more of that with Cavill’s Clark Kent back in 2013, but unfortunately the audiences never got to see where that could have went.
Other Issues With the Man of Steel
Aside from the controversial ending, Man of Steel was not free of justifiably earned criticism. The production value was high, but the cinematography was often rushed and choppy from scene to scene. The movie had many sudden scene cuts with minimal exposition, moving things long at an uncomfortably rapid pace at times. That paired with the over the top CGI and there were points where it became downright confusing. Although it was an origin, a lot of critics of the movie think that there should have been a little less destruction and a little more saving of people and I can’t help but agree. This was my first thought leaving the theater: I loved the idea of what the movie wanted to be, and I loved what they set up for the future, but I personally did not think the movie was paced well enough for anyone to truly enjoy it the way someone should be able to enjoy a true masterpiece like The Dark Knight.
Every scene in the movie was visually stunning in some way, the story was epic, and the use of characters and DC properties was just what the company needed to build a strong foundation for their movie universe. But unfortunately, the overall structure and pacing of the movie did not lend itself to be something you could visually savor. By the time you took in one scene, it was already midway through the next scene and rarely had points where you could slow down and mentally catch up. I don’t know if this was how Snyder originally intended the movie to be delivered, because there were some scenes that did slow down and deliver themselves masterfully so there is proof that they had an idea of what the pacing should have been. However the balance between scenes taken at a reasonable pace to those rushed felt much more uneven than they should have for a property as massive as Superman.
The Sequel We Never Got
When I think of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) I think of two distinct possibilities: what could have been, and what we got. What we got started strong, then instead of maintaining quality and consistency things slowly started to go downhill then picked up to a rapid pace as we got closer and closer to the end of the DCEU. Man of Steel had its weaknesses, I maintain one of its greatest strengths was what it did to set up the character for the future. I mention above that most of the scene felt rushed and choppy in terms of scene pacing, but one area where that did not seem to be an issue was the last few minutes where the characters were back at the daily planet and things seemed to be getting back to normal after Zod’s invasion.
When I think of Superman, this is what I think of: Clark Kent and Lois Lane in the daily planet, the superhero in a more grounded form as his alter ego. I am a big fan on Superman and Lois on the CW, and one thing that Tyler Hoechlin does better than I think any other Superman iteration is his Clark Kent. I think it is probably the best delivery of the character on screen to date, and I think that Henry Cavill had the potential to also be one of the best had that utilized that aspect of the Superman lore more. I also believe the movie positioned itself to do just that in a sequel but since there was so much mixed reception to the first one they decided they had to put Batman in the second movie to redeem themselves. I don’t have any scientific evidence of this but I can’t think of any other reason they would not have done a Man of Steel sequel.
For now, we will have to look back on Henry Cavill as Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman fondly as he gave us a fantastic delivery of the material he was given, even if it was misguided and did not do the actor nor the character justice. James Gunn now has firm control over the DC Universe, and with Superman being the first real A list entry into his narrative there is a very strong possibility (after seeing what he has already done for both DC and Marvel) that he will not only deliver a critically acclaimed movie but an entry that will serve as a solid foundation for the rest of the eventual DC Cinematic Universe.