Snyder’s Superman

Understand this. Superman is a goody-two-shoes. Always has been. Boy Scout with all the badges that could be offered by any organisation ever. Even in darker interpretations of the Man of Steel like that in the Kingdom Come graphic novel for example, Supes comes back with a strong resounding sense of morality. Just of the top of the head, here is everything that is just wrong with Snyder’s Superman:

Collateral Damage, Schollateral Damage: It wouldn’t be uncommon to see Superman sacrifice getting a baddy to save the life of some bystander paralysed by fear. And to be fair Snyder’s Superman does all that. But when there is collateral damage ( and there is a whole lot in Man Of Steel), Superman doesn’t feel much in the way of empathy. He has time to make out with Lois at General Zod terraforming-gizmo levelled Metropolis into a plain of dead people and 9/11-type gravel.  Fantastic. Making out in the middle of ground zero.

No Loyalty: What a lot of people seem to forget is Superman is not human. His moral code isn’t even human. Last I checked human beings sucked. War-mongering, evil bags of carbon-based lifeforms. And with the previous scene setups in Man Of Steel, Snyder shows a young (and somewhat angry) Clark having a hard time adjusting to human life, desperate to find out about his history, his true father and self. And when Zod offers him a chance to bring back the whole Kryptonian race, it took Kal-El all of three seconds to think about it and decline Zod’s offer by killing the remainder of his entire true race. Wow. So it’s obvious genocide isn’t above the Superman. And it would be fine if he showed some emotion, or inner-conflict. The only time he does this (noticeably) is when he kills Zod, but by then we still remember the passionate kiss on the graves of the recently dead humans and the Kryptonian Codex / future Krypton babies.

Smiling and Corny: Smiling and being corny when the world is near cataclysm doesn’t sit well with me. Times where Superman should have the indiction and resonance of Leonardo DiCaprio speaking at the UN summit, he’s all smiley and cheesy. All inevitable it seems. Key ‘Clark surrender / interview’ scene. ‘On my world it means hope’. Yeah, ok tough guy. We get it. This is the kind of thing we’d expect from ‘The Big Cheese’. Not you Superman.

I think its time we had a Superman more like Christopher Reeves, but with conflict, obviously. So yeah, people will die. Superman will kill people too. But the act should weigh heavy on him. He should feel every death. But never to the point it paralyses his next move or causes inaction. And any death by Superman’s hands should be a last resort. And I mean last resort. Example of a last resort? Using the herded artists pooled together from Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions movies to animate your ‘fight or flight’ scenes. You have more options. Se what I did there? Ah, it’s lost on you.

In the end, the Superman we have now will perhaps save you if you’re in his basic vicinity, but don’t expect a Kryptonian tear if you get sucked into a blackhole or get crushed by a collapsed skyscraper. Nevertheless, we await Dawn Of Justice in eager anticipation.