I took Littleflow, age 9. There was some junior high asswipe talk in the flashback scenes, but aside from that I didn't notice any profanity. As for the violence, it might be a bit more than you're used to seeing in a Supes movie, but pretty normal for thus day and age. People dieto in thusthe movie. As for the ending, don't fuck with the cape, you get the snap. Another thing, we met my folks when they came out of the movie to transfer Littleflow Too over for safe keeping. My mom made some grandmotherly comments about the violence but my old man gave me the thumbs up as we went in to catch the next showing.
[?=As for the second point . . .]Superman is mostly focused on fighting. And there's a lot of collateral damage -- hence my comment about Superman needing to learn to aim. It does get to the point where I was wondering how much was Hollywood wanting explosions, how much was the script trying to convince us of how badly the baddies were being hurt/how much punishment they could take, and how much was Superman deliberately throwing them at something good and splodey.[/?] AFAIR there's only one on-screen neck-breaking and it isn't particularly graphic. A lot of the violence is explosions and being thrown through buildings -- not particularly grisly. There are also a few rather intense scenes of individuals in danger, and of individuals dying, not to mention the planet-destroying-itself thing that you get to see first-hand. As for the obscenities, I think they dump a couple on you near the beginning for no good reason, and that's about . . . no, wait, there's a brat on the bus who uses a couple of less-than-civilized terms . . . there might be a few later in the movie too, but I don't recall them off-hand.
I think I'll probably just go check it out on my own, then decide about the kids. If it's as good as people are saying, I won't mind seeing it twice. It does kind of annoy me, though, when things like that are thrown in for no reason. I decided not to take my ten year old to STID because of the Kirk threesome scene, which was absolutely not necessary.
No problem, methinks. The profanity is very mild... The mayhem is bloodless and the neck-breaking is more implied than actually shown. In the neck-breaking scene, a family is threatened with being burned alive and that would probably be the most intense scene to a child. I would be very, very surprised if even a sheltered 9- or 10-year-old in today's world doesn't hear much worse every day.
Oh, I'm well aware that they hear far worse, but I like to maintain the situational wall, and try to minimize opportunities for them to see it as something outside of the school yard experience. The goal is to understand it exists but not see it as normalized. It sounds from what you and NAHTMMM have said that the wall is intact as far as the movie goes, so I'm inclined to see it as okay. Thanks.
I kinda like Doomsday for the third installment. I rather like 'flows train of thought regarding Cadmus not only because you get to establish people like Amanda Waller (Gina Torres?) but also because you can use that as a foundation for the eventual need for heroes to team up... I'm wondering how it would work, when they get around to the JL movie, if they essentially rip-off the JL animated premiere. A Cadmus/Army project holding Jonn, and eventually inadvertently triggering the White martian attack (with some clever scripting to explain life on (under?) Mars of course. If you were going to go anywhere near such a thing, then you want to establish Cadmus in the next film BUT I'm not sure if Doomsday ought to be the main battle this soon.
I heard that a single-platform video game grossed more than Man of Steel did in their shared opening weekend.
Newsflash: the video game industry is actually larger than the film industry. Films sell more tickets, but new games are around $60.
Yet Hollywood sneezes at the game industry, has yet to make a decent game-based movie, and the idea of an Oscars for games causes eruptions of champagne spit-takes, and snooty laughter.
Maybe but i hope they build up a stronger foundation. It's been implied that they want to try to get another Superman film out in 2015, and they NEED to re-establish Batman in a non-Nolan incarnation before they do JL. In fact, I'd kinda favor a straight team-up before you get the full JL but they won't do it that way. Still, unless you do both in the same year, that puts Batman in 2016 (too late to make 2014 now, IMO) and if they follow the Marvel pattern, they will need to get a WW movie in along that time frame too. In any case, again following the Marvel pattern, the JL movie won't mark the end of the Superman films. (See Cap and IM and Thor all with new movies after Avengers) So you can still do something like this: 2013: Superman - Zod 2015: Superman - Cadmus some such 2016: Batman - ??* 2016: WW - something similar to the first Thor movie 2017: JL - Darksied 2018: Superman - Doomsday 2019: Batman - Joker? (can't go more than two movies without him) 2019: GL - (seems the most promising of the non-Big3 for a franchise, and enough time passed to forget about the last unfortunate attempt) 2020: JL - ??? 2021: Batman - Ras again, IMO 2022: Superman - Who's left? If Luthor is behind Doomsday...maybe some take on Brainiac? Of course, that would involve something similar to Disney's commitment to Star Wars. Basically, Warner would have to create a whole internal division that did nothing but work on DC films for a decade. so that the production crew could be flipped from one to the other immediately in order to stay on schedule. i'm thinking they probably don't have the executive stones to do that. *What I'd like to see in a Batfilm would be the establishment of the idea that, despite the overall impression that Superman touches off the "Age of Heroes" that, in fact, Bruce has been crime-fighting as Batman for most of a decade, but as an "urban myth" that no one really believes in (I know, in this day and age it's hard to keep that low a profile but SoD)...maybe even that Gordon knows he's real but keeps his mouth shut and serves as a contact point with the PD. In this context, the movie would need to tie together the "city-crime" career into something which "outs" him as a superhero to be reckoned with, worthy of inclusion in the JL. I'm thinking that a good writer could do that with Two-Face, who's never really gotten a fair shake on film anyway. In many ways he, other than Ras, makes the most sense out of Batman's Rogue's Gallery as a credible first "freak villain" and the connection between them would provide the drama. It makes more sense that people like The Joker would take inspiration from Hervey's notorious effort.
Doesn't matter what makes logical sense, it's going to go MOS, MOS2, JL, then retroactive spinoffs (perhaps as interquels) of Bats, WW, GL, etc.
Maybe, maybe not... http://io9.com/i-dont-want-to-see-zack-snyders-take-on-wonder-woman-514100966 On the theme of the linked article, I won't dispute the argument that Snyder doesn't have the chops to prperly develop WW, but it occurs to me that if you want to give her motivation to participate - that's simple. Construct your plot so that the thing which Darksied (or whatever villain it is) seeks is ON Thermescara (sp) - her mom knows when the Black Hat appears what he likely wants and that the amazons have been charged to protect it, and WW is dispatched to assist in repelling the villain WITHOUT revealing the existence of her home to the outside world. You start her off as a cold-hearted bad-ass bitch who for the most part looks down on all these male heroes and then develop the script such that the course of shared battle and interaction warms her up to the idea that not all these guys are worthy of her contempt, culminating in some deep-level interaction between her and Batman (ostensibly the least "get to know you" guy in the group). I still say you take a page from "Thor" and own the idea that she's a part of Greek mythology rather than ignore or handwave that part of her background
As I was saying earlier, could open up for something of a prequel teaming up Jor-El and Zod to take down Doomsday in Krypton of yore. Crowe's a big enough sell I figure... Have that between the second and third MoS. Won;t happen, but I can dream. As for Luthor, I'd still love to see Malkovich have a run at the character, but he's probably too old now, but could still make a good Lionel. I'd also dislike seeing Criminal Mastermind Luthor - have him develop a real paranoia over Supes after being caught up in the events at the end of MoS.
Saw it tonight. The main contrast between this one and S:TM is that the older one was a "warmer" movie. Not remotely as serious. They make an interesting contrast of movie-making styles, for the most part they simply don't practice the art the same way now that they did then. That said, I like this one much better. The villain was not a ridiculous caricature, the solution was not some moronic "flying around the earth to turn back time" nonsense, they didn't feel the need to indulge the "bumbling Clark" myth. To the extent that you could ever tell a Superman story as "realistic" that's what they did. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was that there were hardly any "light" moments. It wasn't the kind of story that opened itself up for many but surely they could have done a few more. My favorite aspect of the film was the "look" of it. Cavill "fills the suit" FAR better than any live actor has before, they didn't challenge his range as an actor much but otherwise, I felt like I was seeing the guy in to comics come to life which DC films hardly ever pull off completely. The flight scenes were magnificent, the battles made good use of the super-abilities. It's hard to top a flying flaming locomotive. My only quibble with the look of things was, as others have noted, I don't think you really need to collapse a skyscraper a dozen different times.
Well, given the speed in which they rebuilt the Daily Planet, they've obviously better skyscraper building tech than us
I'm going against the grain here, I really didn't like it at all. It took itself too seriously, has none of the humour and charm of the Donner movies. Yes it's not supposed to as light-hearted as the originals and is supposed to be more 'realistic' but it didn't work for me. Some spoilers, do not read much further if you don't want to be spoiled.... The beginning was fine, seeing Krypton and some of the folks inhabiting it. But makes you think why these super advanced aliens who once had a galactic empire didn't do more to save themselves. Apparently the Kryptonians just can't survive outside of Krypton but Kal didn't have any problems doing so. Just a minor quibble though, Krypton was always doomed. The last hour or so was pretty absurd, just littered with non-stop explosions. I actually found myself getting bored at the monotonous stream of destruction. And this Kent/Supes was just not very compelling, to put it mildly. I liked his struggle with adapting to earth and to his powers when he was growing up, but he was pretty uninteresting once he reached adulthood. Both as Kent and Superman, he lacks any charisma whatsoever. Just like the plank who played Supes in Superman Returns. Yes Cavill has enormous shoes to fill and it's going to be impossible to replicate the aura Reeves had, but for me he lacked personality and I felt nothing for him. Really, he's the protagonist and I could not have cared less had Zod killed him. At least Zod had something about him. Passion, cruelty, determination, patriotism... Supes was a cold fish in comparison and was not someone I was rooting for. And I found his refusal to save his dad absurd, totally absurd. Yes I understand why he didn't rescue Jonathan it but it's totally unbelievable that he would stand and watch his dad die. Practically everyone in his hometown knew of Clark's powers but when it came to using them to save his dad, he refused so the worst kept secret in Kansas wouldn't come out. Stupid. Speaking of dead dads, Jor-El showed up a bit too much for my liking, even if he was some sort of computer program. Controlling the ship was too much. And maybe it's me but Crowe just seemed bored throughout. Perry and the rest of the press gang were totally pointless. Would not have made any difference to the movie had they not been involved at all. As for Lois...she was okay. Much better than the one in Superman Returns at least. Although there really wasn't any chemistry between her and Supes, I found their budding romance forced and not believable. And making out just after possibly thousands of people were killed by the tide of destruction caused by Superman and the Kryptonians? That was in bad taste and terrible timing. They were practically standing over the dead whilst snogging. Jeez. I didn't mind the neck breaking. That was understandable and I don't think it makes Supes a savage killer. Even as a mindless, popcorn action flick I wouldn't say this was enormously enjoyable as so much of the action was ott. It was nice to see Superman doing his thing but the main character itself was uninteresting and instead of developing his character, they threw in tons of SFX and CGI. Nowhere near as good as STiD, and ranks below Thor, TDK, and the Avengers in terms of recent comic book superhero movies. Positives: Portryal of Kal-El's early struggles were nicely done Costner's portrayal of Jonathan Kent was good Krypton was pretty cool Special effects were good Zod was a decent villain as was Faora
forgot to refer to this. I don't dispute anything you just said, but it took me out of the scene even before that because Clark could have made the dog-rescue that put Jonathan in danger in the first place. Then his ankle wouldn't have been vulnerable, and if the tornado caught up with hm he could have "miraculously" survived in similar fashion to the other "odd" events of his life in Kansas t that point. Jonathan had no real reason to be in danger in the first place. I understand why "I let my dad die to stay hidden" point was key to the script as written, but HOW he died was REALLY poorly done. By far the weakest part of the script. One of the reasons I hope the dial back the next villain a bit is because they DO need to give his personality more range. The only time we get to see the PERSON here is the first interview with Lois, the "I let my father die" discussion (VERY brief), in the church (ditto) and in the "I was raised in Kansas" exchange. All too short, none with a lot of range. Oh, and the regret over killing Zod. That was a brief bit of character building, which I hope the next script references in some way as being an important part of his "moral code" going forward. It's definitely a notch below Avengers and the first two NolanBat films...about even with the third, IMO. Not as good as Iron Man either, about even with IM2 and 3 IMO I'd add to that list that the military guys were written and played well.
an exercise in the ease with which one can identify and mock plot holes. http://io9.com/the-most-important-scenes-from-man-of-steel-as-i-remem-516405346 Some funny stuff there.
They were in Kansas they know to lay down in ditches not get under an over pass. You want to die you get under an overpass in a tornado.
Just got back from seeing this. I thought overall it was a less successful take on Superman than the Reeve films (especially the first two) but it was better in some ways. FX aside, of course, this version never descends into camp, treats its villains as actual villains and not comic relief, and Cavill really does look the part once he gets going. That said, this version is dark. Both cinematically and conceptually, this is a dark picture. And Superman is not dark. So it fails on that level. Definitely a fun ride and the thing holds together fairly well, but the suit is just plain wrong and the color pallette too bleak and limited. Zod is an excellent villain. Completely different from Terrence Stamp's version, but ruthlessly evil and fun to watch. Solid B+.
Man of Steel appears to be the first movie in a while where the critics' opinions are way off with the public's.
I haven't seen MoS yet, but some things I hear about it can't help but remind me of the nuTrek movies. WFers who've seen MoS, did you find this to be the case at all? Also, interesting wiki-article all about the Zod character(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Zod
The Warhammer 40,000 references were a bit much, I was halfway expecting for Zod to shout "Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!" Speaking of Zod, all that Zod and not once did he try to make anyone kneel. Shamefull.
Geez, no "kneel before Zod!", no Superman camera wink, did Ursa/Faora at least throw a manhole cover Frisbee, and go "Soopamaaahn!!"?
