Zack Snyder: Man of Steel Carnage is "Mythological"

[Ninjafire72]

People got the idea from watching the travesty that was Man of Steel. And if anyone is guilty of forgetting about The Watchmen I'd have to say it's Snyder himself. How someone who went to great lengths to stay true to the background material and do no harm with such a difficult property as The Watchmen, could make such a travesty of a character with many more decades of source material to draw from, and with such a clear cut sense of morality, beggars the imagination.

How could someone who conveyed the convoluted gray morality of the anti-hero Rorschach, seem to be completely clueless when depicting someone so simply black and white as Superman? You could have put any character with super powers in that film and no one could have told the difference.

And you say Snyder isn't Michael Bay 2.0? He may not have started that way but when he turns the story of perhaps the most recognizable super hero into a cheap piece of big budget explosion porn, full of violence aggrandizing slug fest battles where no one really cares about the outcome, as no one truly cares about the characters involved, he's certainly well on his way to becoming so.

Ok, I understand you're upset about how MoS turned out. But let's take a step back for a minute and examine who exactly is responsible for this supposed mess. And for the record, I didn't think it was that bad. If you just take it at face value, removing the superman fandom, it's actually a passable action film. Still kinda mediocre, but watchable.

Honestly I think the blame for your issues lies with Goyer, who wrote the actual screenplay (and to a lesser extent Nolan). I've always viewed Snyder as a blank canvas; give the guy some decent material, and he can turn into a visually impressive film. 300, Watchmen, they were both already existing, successful material that Snyder could adapt into film.

(On a side note this is why Sucker Punch was, although still excellently directed, kinda shaky in the narrative department; Snyder wrote an original screenplay for himself, and it wasn't exactly stellar.)

So when you vent at Snyder, in my opinion you should ACTUALLY be venting at Goyer and Nolan; they're the ones who turned Superman all doubtful and broody, tried to ground him in realism and thus inserted bloated violence/destruction, and handled character development in such a one-dimensional manner. Snyder was basically forced to work with what he had, which according to you was a pile of crap. You can only do so much with a pile of crap.

 

[Psychobabble]

People got the idea from watching the travesty that was Man of Steel. And if anyone is guilty of forgetting about The Watchmen I'd have to say it's Snyder himself. How someone who went to great lengths to stay true to the background material and do no harm with such a difficult property as The Watchmen, could make such a travesty of a character with many more decades of source material to draw from, and with such a clear cut sense of morality, beggars the imagination.

How could someone who conveyed the convoluted gray morality of the anti-hero Rorschach, seem to be completely clueless when depicting someone so simply black and white as Superman? You could have put any character with super powers in that film and no one could have told the difference.

And you say Snyder isn't Michael Bay 2.0? He may not have started that way but when he turns the story of perhaps the most recognizable super hero into a cheap piece of big budget explosion porn, full of violence aggrandizing slug fest battles where no one really cares about the outcome, as no one truly cares about the characters involved, he's certainly well on his way to becoming so.

Ok, I understand you're upset about how MoS turned out. But let's take a step back for a minute and examine who exactly is responsible for this supposed mess. And for the record, I didn't think it was that bad. If you just take it at face value, removing the superman fandom, it's actually a passable action film. Still kinda mediocre, but watchable.

Honestly I think the blame for your issues lies with Goyer, who wrote the actual screenplay (and to a lesser extent Nolan). I've always viewed Snyder as a blank canvas; give the guy some decent material, and he can turn into a visually impressive film. 300, Watchmen, they were both already existing, successful material that Snyder could adapt into film.

(On a side note this is why Sucker Punch was, although still excellently directed, kinda shaky in the narrative department; Snyder wrote an original screenplay for himself, and it wasn't exactly stellar.)

So when you vent at Snyder, in my opinion you should ACTUALLY be venting at Goyer and Nolan; they're the ones who turned Superman all doubtful and broody, tried to ground him in realism and thus inserted bloated violence/destruction, and handled character development in such a one-dimensional manner. Snyder was basically forced to work with what he had, which according to you was a pile of crap. You can only do so much with a pile of crap.

Ok first off, I cannot and will not let go of my so called "Superman Fandom". Reason being is that's the entire point of Man of Steel's existence. If anyone wanted this film to be measured on everything other than its depiction of Superman, they they really should have gone and made some other film.

Second off, Sucker Punch ... yeah let's just not go there.

While I don't completely disagree with any of your points, I will point out that everything I felt was poorly done in Man of Steel can be directly linked back to ideas Snyder himself said he wanted to do with the film, Snyder, not Goyer.
Plus I've been quite entrained in the past by a number of Goyer's creations.

And while Nolan was there for pre-production he left as soon as Snyder was attached to Man Of Steel to work on the final Batman film. And I'd like to point out, leaving with what I've always felt was a bit of an ominous message that the film was very much Snyder's baby. And I may be reading too much into this, but that comment really felt a lot like Nolan was saying "This has nothing to do with me, so don't say this film is my fault."

An interesting side note as well, is Ben Affleck was in the running as a choice for director for Man of Steel but passed on it saying "A lesson I've learned is to not look at movies based on budget, how much they'll spend on effects or where they will shoot. Story is what's important." Which again may be me reading more into what is actually being said, but feels like the studio and Snyder went at this film thinking how they could one up the over-the-top action in The Avengers first, and worried less about the actual story or the character the film was supposed to be about than they should have.

 

[Strazdas]

somone makes a gritty movie - everyone complains.
Marvel devcides to try to listen to the fans - make a hopefull enjoyable fun movie - everyone complains.
superman decides to listen to the fans - makes a seriuos movie - everyone complains.

no matter what, everyone complains. always.

I think these "gritty seriuos" movies are awesome and they work great in modern times. And lets not pretend the "happy" superman that while spearheaded the genre was portraying the character as a naive moron.

In fact, I think it was Superman himself who once said, "No one has the right to kill. Not Mxysptlk, not Superman, ESPECIALLY not Superman." Whatever happened to that guy anyway?

He woke up from his naive dream and took of his rose colored glasses?

 

[Ukomba]

When Superman has a higher human casualty body count in 1 movie than Vegeta in all of DBZ, you have an issue.

May I remember you that Vegeta destroyed planet Arlia in episode 11, followed by quite a few death by crashing in East city (which Nappa then proceeded to wipe out), then there is the Namekian village and finally his rampage in Majin form. Add to that all the minion and guy with actual name. And all his kill are intentional except for the crash and the trucker his attack come to kill, after 18 deflected it.

I was careful in saying a human body count , so Arlia doesn't count, the Namekian's don't count, and Vegeta didn't want Nappa to destory to city. The comparison is a bit unfair, Vegeta actually kills less humans than Goku for the majority of DBZ (Not for lack of trying).

The rest are fair game. For all that Death Battle want's to Make Superman orders of magnitude stronger than Goku, Vegeta did his best to destroy the planet at one point and Goku not only stops him, but does so without killing...

 

[theApoc]

He makes a good point, IMO he just went too far.