WARNING !!!
Here There Be Spoilers!
Let me start off by saying that Man Of
Steel is a very good movie.
What seems to be causing it to catch
flak from a significant number of Film Critics is that too many of
them were demanding a perfect movie. The problem with making this
demand is that perfection can be a very subjective thing, especially
when it comes to getting professional critics to agree on something.
If you manage to please Smith, you're likely to piss off Patel. And
if you somehow make both Smith and Patel happy, Krueger will probably
accuse you of being a no talent hack.
Having taken the critics to task,
please allow me to point out the three fixes that I believe could
have turned this good movie into a great one.
- A -
At 143 minutes, the story is about 25
too long.
At least 15 minutes of this is due to
the “Destruction Of Krypton” chapter that began the story.
Huge Mistake!
When Paramount produced Raiders Of The
Lost Arc … Did Lucas and Spielberg feel it necessary to spend 20
minutes showing the audience how the Arc was stolen from the
Israelites, by the Babylonians, and then accidentally misplaced for
something like five thousand years?
Absolutely not!
The production team clearly understood
that starting the story on that note would cause a significant
distraction from the main storyline. So they wisely began the movie
by introducing Indiana Jones and demonstrating what he does best.
Then they allowed the back story concerning the Arc to gradually
creep in along the way.
Man Of Steel should have used the same
type of beginning. It could easily have started with Clark Kent
working on an oil rig that was being torn apart by tidal waves and
explosions. Then flash back to a part of his childhood before
leading him up to his discovery of the Kryptonian scout ship. As the
story progressed, General Zod and the Ghost of Jor-EL would have had
plenty of opportunities to fill in the missing pieces. Everything
would have run much more tightly and smoothly and the production
budget would have been a few million lower.
- B -
Another 10 minutes could easily have
been shaved off by being just a tad stingy about the time allowed for
the Action scenes. The cold hard truth is that Action is never more
than a dance partner for Plot. While a judicious use of Action can
greatly enhance a Plot, the first should never be used as a
replacement for the other. During the final third of the movie,
there were too many instances where I felt like I was watching
someone else play a video game. There reached a certain point where
I wanted all the bombing and the fist fights to stop for a little
while. I wanted to get back to the actual plot. But this other guy
… the guy who was working the video game … He just kept playing
Hack & Slash for another ten minutes till he finally had to drop
the control pad and rush off to the Men's Room.
- C -
The biggest mistake the story tellers
made was that they did not respect the character of General Zod.
More to the point, they betrayed the man at almost the exact same
spot where they started letting the action sequences get out of hand.
Having proceeded in the same basic direction for the first two
thirds of the story ... Zod suddenly took a left turn, that was
completely unjustified, based on how he had behaved up till that
point.
Is Zod a fanatic?
Hell Yes!
But the man is compassionate fanatic …
genetically bred, and judiciously trained. The preservation of life
(especially Kryptonian life) is of the utmost importance to him. Zod
did not try to seize power on Krypton until it became crystal clear
that the Grand Council was completely incapable of dealing with the
imminent destruction that was facing the planet.
In his attempted coup, Zod was working
towards the same basic goal as Jor-EL. Each man wanted to protect
the genetic information Codex and eventually use it to rebirth the
Kryptonian race on a new world.
If life is this important to the man,
why does he suddenly try to use the terraforming power of the World
Ship to transform Earth into a replication of Krypton. There are
thousands of lifeless planets out there that would be perfectly
suitable for his purpose. Why take a tool of resurrection and turn
it into a weapon of cataclysmic destruction by unleashing its power
on a world where a lesser (but quite promising) civilization already
exists?
The man is understandably miffed when
he learns that Jor-EL had transferred the genetic information of the
Codex into the cellular structure of Kal-EL. But miffed isn't enough
to drive a compassionate dictator to commit genocide. Before taking
an action that extreme, he needs to perceive Earth and its people as
a threat.
The Humans need to have shown that they
are to be feared. And Man Of Steel always left the forces of Earth
stopping a few steps shy of that mark.
What if the military had succeeded in
killing one or two of Zod's gladiators? Not an easy task, but one
that could be accomplished by tapping into the R&D resources of a
major conglomerate like Lex Corp.
Think about it. The name kept popping
up here and there during the course of the story. A sign on this
chemical tanker. A banner hanging over that construction site.
Lex Corp
A multinational organization which
would conceivably be working on the development of a number of
devices that might be of use to the military, if the planet were
facing a threat from beyond our solar system. Something like a
variable wavelength LASER projector. A machine that could be
programmed to mimic the energy that would be produced by a red sun.
Most likely, there would be only two
prototypes. Each would need to be cranked up way above the safety
limit if it were going to be effective against a Kryptonian. Which
means that each device would most likely burn out after only one
shot.
The weapons are deployed. We succeed
in killing one warrior and severely wounding another. Zod doesn't
need to know that these are our only two guns. We've got his
attention now. He understands that we're a credible threat. We're
sure he'll do the logical thing and decide to back off.
Which is exactly when General Zod makes
the decision to double down and go for broke. His reasoning is quite
sound. If the Humans are this much of a threat now, what will they
be capable of doing in a thousand years?
That's when Zod unleashes the power of
the World Ship. The Human's did something completely unexpected.
Now its his turn.
In spite of the fact that the movie's
producers were foolish enough to not seek out my scripting advice, I
find myself eagerly looking forward to watching a sequel. And I'm
especially curious as to what part Lex Corp and its founder will
play.
Only time will tell.
Travis Clemmons
No comments:
Post a Comment