New Superman good

The first half anyway. As is usual in these superhero movies, it gets worse the longer you think about it. 3/5.

Sorry folks, this review is lower quality than you might be used to getting from this blog, it's been a long day. 

The film lacks thematic unity; its first half sets up really interesting, incisive questions, and then the back half ignores them in favor of yet another "destroy a cgi city with little or no actual human cost" drearily familiar from Marvel. (Yeah there's also the invasion sequence in not-Palestine/Ukraine by not-Russia/Israel, but that's very clearly not the actual climax of the movie, just a bit of added stakes. Plenty of brown people die in that fight scene, off-screen.)

Superman's interview with Lois was the height of the movie. I keep trying to remember the character's name, I know it's not Peter Parker. Clark Kent. Fuck. Great chemistry. Big fan of Rachel Brosnahan going back to House of Cards. This whole line of questioning, "Is Superman accountable to human government?" is familiar to me from the Justice League cartoon from the early 2000s. That cartoon raised great questions and then immediately backed away from them in favor of a brawl with Lex Luthor/Brainiac, who gives a shit.

I don't go to the movies to see a long fight unless I can root for both sides, and really, who gives a shit, why am I spending so much time watching Clark punch his clone (obvious setup for Bizarro coming back trhough the black hole) the last 30 minutes would be tighter if there were no clone, if he were just fighting the engineer and the fight ended when he crashed them into the earth.

Ok so very quickly the movie raises a couple problems for Clark:

  • What is the cost of saving a life?
  • Is Superman beholden to mortal authority?
  • Is Superman a big dummy?
  • Is Clark a human, and what is he here on Earth to do?

But it does jack shit with them. Except the last question, which gets answered by Uncle Ben (is that his name? I know the mom is Martha because of the Batman v Superman thing, I didn't even watch that movie and I know about "Martha!".) It's a touching scene, well acted by all parties, but it doesn't have a place in this movie, the vast majority of scenes in this movie have nothing to do with the tension that scene seeks to resolves. We get two callbacks to that scene, first when Clark lectures Luthor about being human, and second (and this was as good as it was cheesy) when Clark watches videos of his childhood.

Ok the international affairs thing. I have to hope they develop that in future movies because that's the stuff, man, that's the interesting tension in superheroes. One of em anyway. I want to know about the relationship between justice, community norms, institutions, and individual power, and a Superman who can meddle in global politics with personal impunity probes that sore spot so perfectly. 

 Ok I was wrong the superman's a dummy comes up throughout, everybody is always asking if Superman is a big dummy, too cheesy, too trusting, and that gets resolved, no he's not, people are inspired by him, people help him and help others, selflessly, because of him. Also the people of not-Pakistan/Ukraine are inspired to chant his name. I didn't care for that, I think they'd be pretty fucking intent on asserting their national identity in the face of invasion. I've heard of some people outside the US who use the US flag as a generic symbol for freedom, which is the best case comparison for this scene. Still it turns the Jharnapurnians (is that what they are called? its a mishmash orientalist name) into props, I mean they already were props, but damn did they gild the lily on that one.

I guess if I were writing the movie, trying to retain key elements or scenes, I'd either focus on hope/big dummy problem, or the thorny question of Superman's authority. I wouldn't touch the alien stuff because really who cares.

I liked that superman got really, really angry when he found out that his dog was missing, and knowingly walked into a trap, with no plan whatsoever, just to get the dog back.

I really like that the guy who played the president of Boravia actually looks like that in real life. They didn't make him do anything strange to his hair for the role, that's just how he wears his hair.


 

 

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