After seeing the new version of Superman
movie, I feel quite disappointed, and I got tired of those long fighting
scenes. Before going, I felt it might be
good simply judging from the movie trailer.
Well, it is not that good as comparing the previous one, done by Bryan
Singer, and the reasons are illustrated in the following paragraphs.
First of all, The movie titled as
Superman: The Man of Steel, featuring the famous director of Batman series － Christopher Nolan as the story writer and producer, is said to
have realism throughout the film. This
has motivated people to pay for the movie tickets. Unquestionably, people are expecting a better
super hero movie and hope to see something deeper. However, after watching the movie, having
realistic style and providing deeper exploration or thinking of the film are
totally two different things. In the movie
－ Superman: The Man of
Steel, it indeed provided the audience with a more complete story of the background
of Clark Kent, known as superman. Also,
it was good to see that by using flashing back of events happened in his young
age, the audience’s emotion toward the film is piling up as the Clark background
was explored gradually. Of course, with Kevin Costner (as Clark’s
father on earth), Cooper Timberline (as 9-year-old Clark) and Dylan Sprayberry’s
(as 13-year-old Clark) extraordinary performances (especially those two kids),
Superman’s background turned to be vivid in front of the audience. Their performances in this film were
considered to be the best of all since they acted so spontaneous and amazing
that their every word touched my heart, and they shared the same heartbeats
with mine. The struggling of
self-identity between father and son has deepened the film and presented the
idea of realism. But, I am afraid that
those are all the things that match the idea of using realism to deepen the
film.
In
the movie, Russell Crowe, acted
as Jor-El and the father of Superman in Krypton, always spoke serious lines with amazing moral
meanings to Superman, which makes me feel awkward for two reasons. For one thing, changes between scenes were
fast, and it seemed that there were no bridges to link between fighting scenes
and those lightening words scenes. For
the other, there was an inconsistency between what Clark has been taught by two
different fathers, and how the Superman would struggle between them. What’s more, the struggling of the superman’s
doubts of who to trust were not deep into the superman's personality as well because they simply said it and
negotiated it. I think those
negotiations were more like a young man living in the modern society and saying
whatever they want, and then, everything is cool after that, which almost makes
me laugh my head off. Backing to the
main point, it is somehow the realistic style, but I don’t really think it has
deepened the film, and of course, I don’t believe that problems would be that
easy to solve either.
Finally, the long fighting scenes with General Zod showed
that this movie still wanted to fulfill most of the audience’s desire of seeing
an action movie. Merely looking at the
box office, it succeeded somehow but another problem came out. Originally, superman is hoped to be people’s
protector, then in the scenes, he fought like a young lad and smashed all the
way he’s been to, which I sometimes really wondered what happened to those
citizens. In the end, he destroyed a
remote controlled jet which was used to discover who is superman, showing that
he was somewhat thoughtless as well. Probably,
for the first day of the new job, he’s doing just fine, and he has a lot to learn
in the future. And, back to the point of
using realism to deepen the film, for those
fighting actions, they were purely realistic, but to the whole picture, it
looked like too exaggerated. However, comparing
the film － Superman Returns (2006),
it has partial realistic only, which was put onto superman’s love.
In that one, the director － Bryan Singer, is said to be good at dealing with characters’
relationships, which can be seen it the film.
Throughout the whole movie, even though the setting seemed to be
old-fashioned, the charming atmosphere simply makes the audience feel
enjoyable. Besides, a gesture, an eye
contact, or even a pause all makes the scenes intensely interesting, especially
the interaction between Louis and Clark or Superman. Besides, superman is more mature that he
considered he had the responsibility to protect people on earth, which presented
a kind of transcendence of love. In
other words, as a god of human races, I believe it would be more reasonable for
superman to be mature. In this film, I
saw the realism that is the love behavior of superman, and the struggling between
his role as a hero and Clark, a normal journalist, who loved Louis deeply. In this way, the realistic feature indeed
enhances the quality of the film and deepens the idea of the film.
In
conclusion, the realism used in the both superman films created two different
effects. Obviously, the degree of using
realistic feature should be reconsidered because sometimes it is hard to
explain everything, and very possible, the more the story wants to explain, the
more obscured things there would be.
