Army Of The Dead

What dies in Vegas,
stays in Vegas!

Army Of The Dead
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder

Warning: Very slight spoilers here and there.

Army Of The Dead is the second new Zack Snyder movie I’ve seen this year (after his new version of Justice League, reviewed here) and it’s his second zombie movie after his quite astonishing ‘reimagining’ of Dawn Of The Dead. Now, tempting as it might be to call this a sequel to that movie (rather than just the spiritual sequel it surely is), the two films are set in very different versions of a zombie outbreak so are definitely not taking place in a shared universe... although, of course, all these kinds of post 1968 iterations of zombie movies owe a debt to Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (with a small shout out, of course, to Hammer’s Plague Of The Zombies, 1966).

Actually, the film starts off with more of a shout out to Return Of The Living Dead when a top secret army cargo is compromised, due to a newly married couples in-car blow job (so it’s a military cargo gone wrong kind of zombie movie). An ‘alpha zombie’ called Zeus, presumably discovered or created by the army, escapes and takes out what’s left of the military escort. Then the credits roll where we see Dave Bautista’s character Scott Ward and a team of soldiers killing zombies by the armful (and becoming disillusioned with their job even as they earn more medals or die in the process) and Las Vegas is totally overrun and walled up by the end of those credits. We soon are also shown a back story where Bautista had to kill his wife in front of their daughter when she turns zombie and, this sets up the background where those two characters haven’t been communicating well for a while. Bautista has medals of honour but has now chosen to live his life flipping burgers in a fast food shop.

However, he’s then recruited, a little reluctantly, by a powerful billionaire who wants him to recover 200 million dollars from a safe in a hotel in Vegas. So he puts together a team and in they go, 24 hours before the final military solution of a nuclear bomb being dropped into Vegas is going to go ahead (in another call back to the denouement of Return Of The Living Dead, of course).

When he gets to the wall, his daughter negotiates to go in with them, due to her friend going in to the zombie city 24 hours before and not returning and, yeah, I won’t say too much more about the plot but it does go through some of the clichés you would expect from this and it’s not exactly unpredictable. That being said, though, it’s still pretty spectacular and plays out exactly as you’d want this kind of ‘zombie heist’ movie to go. Snyder’s direction is great, it looks very glossy and the violence is very gory (they go for that whole, ‘blood on the camera lens’ aesthetic at one point but, that’s okay, it works here). This film also has the two levels of zombie menace which seems to have become almost a convention in recent years. So you have the standard, easy to kill ‘shamblers’, which are basically the Romero type of zombies... and then you have the more ‘alpha zombies’, which are kind of agile, reasoning versions of the undead (the army of the title), who are more like the versions seen in Romero’s Land Of The Dead more than anything else... although they’re much faster.

There are some nice elements about the film too... such as a zombie tiger who is mentioned to have been one of Siegfried and Roy’s creatures. And speaking of a Siegfried, a different one this time, the safe in the film is called Götterdämmerung (at which point I would have been more tempted to title the movie Twilight Of The Zombies). The nice thing is, whenever the safecracker ‘has a moment’ with either the safe or a blue print of it, Siegfried’s Funeral March from the Götterdämmerung section of Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen plays in the background, which is a nice touch. And I don’t know who the idiot who filled in the IMDB trivia for Army Of The Dead is but... for your information, that music is not called ‘the theme from Excalibur’, right? I dunno, the IMDB seems to have been written by three year olds lately... I’m finding more and more wrong or idiotic information on there the more I use it. So much for an internationally respected database. There’s also a nice shout out to the Headpiece of the Staff of Ra near the beginning, for fans of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

All in all though, apart form what I consider to be a not too good cover version of the excellent song The End (originally by The Doors), the film is a sure fire winner. Having Bautista in this really helps. He’s a hell of an actor and, while he does this ‘thinking man’s action man’ stuff really well, I’m still waiting for Hollywood to start giving him some roles less focused on his physique and more on his incredible acting talents. He’s one of the true ‘stars’ with a capital S that Hollywoodland has these days and I think more producers need to realise this. He’s supported here by a fine cast including stand out performances by Ella Purnell as Scott’s daughter and Tig Notaro, who wasn’t even on set with the actors but CGI ‘added in’ later (to replace an actor whose reputation has been ‘compromised’), as the gang’s helicopter pilot. Not that I would have noticed the replacement, to be honest.

The film is glossy and very easy on the eye but also, I’d have to say, quite grim and dark. There aren’t many characters who walk away from this one unscathed (or at all) but, even so, I’d certainly have to recommend Army Of The Dead to anyone who likes zombie movies. I mean, yes it’s not particularly scary and it becomes, in some ways, a bit of a body count movie but, you know, those two elements ('not really scary' and 'count the number of zombie corpses') are pretty much staples of the genre at this point and, like I said, there’s nothing really original about the movie but its nicely done and just works very well. Certainly not a feel good movie but it’s definitely a crowd pleasing one, for sure... depending on what crowd you happen to be in.

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)

Just Ace League

Justice League (The Snyder Cut)
aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League
USA 2021 Directed by Zack Snyder
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I’ve already reviewed Justice League once,  back in 2017 when the theatrical cut, which was mostly reshot and retooled by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder had to drop out for tragic reasons, was released. However, this new version released, due to fan pressure and with a lot of money spent on it, allowing Snyder to reintroduce something approximating his original cut, runs over four hours long and, although the reshoots weren’t extensive, Whedon cut out and reshot so much footage for his ‘rescue version’ (which I reviewed here and didn’t like all that much... it was okay), that there was a lot of original material both left out or existing in alternate forms and that’s why the film deserves both another look and a new, if shorter, review.

So what have we got here? Visually the film looks very different. For starters it’s in a 4:3 classic, old school movie and TV ratio which, frankly, didn’t take long for me to get used to. I suspect the film may even have been shot in this ratio for reducing optically for an original widescreen release as opposed to cropping the footage down here. It looks pretty good, in fact. I don’t know why the director has done this though. I mean, I guess I can see a point for it if he wants to say he was approximating Golden Age comic book panels but, if that was the case, why weren’t his previous two DC Universe films... Man Of Steel (reviewed here)  and Batman VS Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) also in that aspect ratio?

Secondly, the colours in this version are quite dark and muted. Not as muted and dark as they possibly are in Snyder’s alternative black and white version of this movie (which I think is only available on the UHD release) but still pretty near to as greyscale as you can get it and still have colour in it for many of the scenes.

There are pluses and minuses here too. Because of Whedon scenes which have been excised, there’s much more continuity with the previous and following films in the DC Universe. Granted, some of my favourite dialogue exchanges and action moments are gone completely but there’s a much more organic feel to the final product and its connective tissue with the other movies. That being said, a lot of the scenes which have changed are put into a completely different order. Early scenes from the first version might turn up three quarters of the way through the film and vice versa. There’s also a really problematic continuity error in this too which I can only suspect comes from the way the story now plays out. It comes when, near the final set piece of the movie, Alfred The Butler (played once again by Jeremy Irons) is introduced by Ben Affleck’s Batman to Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa)... regardless of the fact that, in the way the film plays out here, he has already met at least two of the team by this point. It felt like a bit of a jarring mis-step, to be honest. When he meets Henry Cavill as Superman, it plays out far more naturally.

The story has been enhanced by not only featuring Steppenwolf but also Darkseid in the film as ‘the big bad super villain’ behind the scenes (much like Thanos was to Phases One and Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe). This all works really well though and, for the most part, the whole storyline involving all the previously unseen elements and the new, enhanced CGI on pretty much everything, is actually a heck of a lot better than the studio cut, I have to say. This version makes a lot more sense and is much more attention grabbing, I thought.

Other things of note are as follows...

Well, it was nice to see more action from one of the Green Lantern Corps but I think the first appearance here of J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter was problematic at best. Why in heck would he be checking out Lois Lane? His appearance at the end of the film is not something which solves this conundrum either and I think his first transformation to show he was posing as Martha Kent really undermined the scene where Martha and Lois Lane are bonding in grief over Superman’s death.

The scene where the newly formed Justice League bring Superman back from the dead is by an entirely different method and makes much more sense, integrated into the Motherbox plot line in a much more believable way... although it has pretty much the same outcome as it did in the theatrical cut, it has to be said.

The replacement music by Junkie XL is interesting. The director jettison’s Danny Elfman’s original score which had recycled John William’s Superman The Movie theme and Elfman’s  own Batman theme from the Tim Burton films and uses the established leitmotif of the current DC Universe, like Zimmer’s Man Of Steel and Wonder Woman themes, in a much more appropriate manner. Again, the music seems more integrated into the DCU movies as a whole. Alas, it’s only been released as a compromised, electronic download rather than as a proper CD so, I guess I won’t get to hear it as a stand alone listen anytime soon. Which is a shame.

All this adds up to a much more dynamic and satisfying version of Justice League, I have to admit... which was a little surprising. Also, although some of my favourite Wonder Woman/Diana Prince scenes have been excised, there are other scenes with her in and even the ones which did make their way into the theatrical cut, such as her rescue of the school kids in the Old Bailey in London, are much more interestingly handled here and seem like light years away from the Whedon cut. And Snyder even manages to restore the London skyline to something more resembling the real London, in that shot where Gal Gadot is standing by the Scales of Justice, as opposed to the more pastiched caricature of a US guess at the London skyline from the theatrical release... which is kind of nice, actually.

The last ten minutes or so are Snyder laying down the threads for what would come in what was to be his proposed continuation of the series. It’s got a lot of stuff going on and seems pretty bleak, it has to be said. It’s also there, I’m sure, just to get the fans ramped up again so he can get to make the next one but, well, it remains to be seen, I think, whether the suits at Warner Brothers are ready to indulge him or not. As it is though, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a much better movie than its predecessor and I certainly found it entertaining. It’s certainly nowhere near the best of the DC superhero movies by a long chalk but it’s pretty good and worth catching up with if superhero movies are your thing. Definitely worth another, augmented glance, for sure.

Justice League

Beleaguered Leaguers

Justice League
2017 USA Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, there will be some spoilers in this one, I think.

Okay, so let me just say up front that Justice League is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination... it’s just not a very good one either. It has its great little moments and a whole bunch of problems but, out of the five films to date making up the story arc of this particular set of interlocking DC superhero movies, this is about halfway up the list in terms of being an effective and entertaining movie.

DC’s track record hasn’t been all that great since the fantastic last part of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night trilogy, it has to be said. Man Of Steel (reviewed here) was just dreadful. Batman Vs Superman - Dawn of Justice (reviewed here) was a fair bit better but ultimately not very well received by critics and audiences alike, it seemed to me. Suicide Squad (reviewed here) was... okayish but really wasn’t making people that happy either. But then we had ‘the movie’. Wonder Woman (reviewed here) isn’t just the greatest superhero movie of all time (and, yeah, I know that’s a brave and bold claim to make but I promise this is not a knee jerk reaction to it)... it’s also one of the best movies in the past few years, period. It’s also flattened all the competition at the box office for the forseeable future (or just maybe until the new Star Wars movie premieres next month) and it more than deserves its success.

The thing is, though, everyone was kinda hoping that Justice League would somehow live up to the almost impossible standard that Patty Jenkins set with Wonder Woman and, frankly, that would be hard to top even by her, when she comes to work on the sequel. So I guess it’s no surprise that this movie comes nowhere near as close to the dizzying heights that Professor William Moulton Marston’s amazonian princess scaled to in her own solo movie adaptation. A shame, though, that Justice League doesn’t come close to the Batman VS Superman movie either.

Now I’m not going to go into the production problems this film had, what with Zack Snyder leaving for very understandable reasons and Joss Whedon reshooting the thing in places... firstly because I would be no good at figuring out which bits were directed by whom and, secondly, because it’s the film we’ve ended up with, for better or worse. Given Snyder’s reasons for leaving, there’s absolutely no point in having an autopsy on why this theatrically released cut doesn't really cut it.

Okay... so lets look at the good stuff first and get that out of the way...

Well, some of the action was okay, especially the Amazon’s fighting the villain of the piece, Steppenwolf, near the start... and also in the bank scene where Gal Gadot’s Diana saves a bunch of people by doing some cool action stuff. That being said, I did miss the sudden glow of orange as the metal on her wrist bands cool down after a bullet hit, which was a nice detail in Patty Jenkins movie during the alley scene in London... itself an homage, presumably, to the alley scene in Superman The Movie. Gadot is just wonderful again here, as she was in her previous two movies with this character because a) she looks just like she could do all this stuff in real life and b) because she performed it in such a way that she doesn’t betray the character as set up in the previous two films.

Similarly, say what you will about Ben Affleck but I think he makes a brilliant Bruce Wayne/Batman and I really hope he doesn’t leave the role after this. I think he could really do well in a solo Batman movie and I would really like to see it.

Henry Cavill... well I hated Superman in Man Of Steel but that’s more because of the script than Cavill’s performance and I certainly warmed to him more in Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice. He’s great here too and you really believe in his character, who he portrays with the same kind of honourable presence as some of the great actors who have played the part before him... and I’m specifically thinking of Kirk Alyn and Christopher Reeve here. Now if they’d only bring back the ‘S’ kiss curl and the red trunks then the illusion would be complete.

Jeremy Irons as Alfred has about as much screen time as he did in the previous movie but I think his character makes a bigger impact here, with various ironic comments thrown at Bruce Wayne which I found fairly entertaining.

 It was also great seeing a Green Lantern in the sequence flashing back to a battle on Earth which took places many hundreds of years ago, too. It’s been suggested that the cloak on him was a reference to the original Golden Age iteration of the character in comics but, the people saying that might do well to remember that the original Green Lantern’s costume was red (yeah, I know that’s ridiculous but don’t blame me... I didn’t write those things).

And that’s mostly the good stuff.

Now we also have three new members on the team...

Ezra Miller does okay as a really bizarre and teenage angsty version of the silver age version of The Flash (aka Barry Allen) and he was getting a good reaction from the audience at my screening. Personally I didn’t find him all that easy to identify with and I could take him or leave him, to be fair. Then we have Cyborg, who was a member of the Teen Titans the last time I read of him (sometime in the early 1980s) so goodness knows what he’s doing in the Justice League of America (as the supergroup was always known in the comics... until maybe recently). He’s played here by a guy called Ray Fisher and, although he turns in a solid performance, I couldn’t help but think that the script wasn’t doing him any favours. He just comes across as a bit dull, to be honest.

Jason Momoa’s version of Aquaman is a more fun character but, honestly, is nothing like the Aquaman I used to enjoy reading about when I was a kid (I even had a little action figure). The clean shaven, blonde version of Superman with the blue eyes, orange suit and green legs and gauntlets has morphed into what is presumably a more contemporary comic book version of the character (well... at least he still has both of his arms here). Again... he was okay but I really would have preferred the version of the character I grew up with here.

Okay... let’s get to the really bad then...

So much of the dialogue between Batman and Diana feels forced and, bearing in mind the amount of times that Steve Trevor’s name is bandied about, it somehow seems disrespectful of the truly marvellous solo Wonder Woman movie what came out earlier in the year.

Another thing which felt out of place was that the background story about the ‘mother boxes’ seemed like it came completely out of the blue and Diana never once goes to Thermyscira to consult with the Amazons. Indeed, she even goes so far as to say that they cannot leave their island... which is a completely redundant and contradictory idea in terms of their purpose on Earth, to be honest. This film so badly needed a scene between Diana and her mother and it similarly needed ‘the amazon horde’ to come galloping in for the somewhat bland (as it is here) action finale too. Especially since their own battle with Steppenwolf near the beginning of the movie was a heck of a lot better.

The way Superman is brought back to life is really stupid Doctor Frankenstein stuff and I couldn’t help but think it all seemed just a little too optimistic and contrived. “Gee whiz... wouldn’t it be great if we could use this mother box technology to bring Superman back to life with?”... well, okay, it wasn’t quite like that but it was pretty close. It felt like the whole thing was written by a small child at this point. What was worse than that though was... Superman and Batman were allies by the end of Batman Vs Superman. In fact, Batman saved Superman’s mother’s life. So why the heck would the newly woken Superman be so aggressively hostile to Batman and the others and try to kill them all? It made no sense. It was like watching that truly dumb scene in Superman III where he splits into two and the evil and good halves fight. It just made no sense.

And then they trot out Amy Adam’s Lois Lane to calm him down? Honestly, it felt like her role was really pushed to the back in this and the scene where she and Diane Lane as Martha Kent were talking in the newspaper offices felt like it was shot quickly in the director’s favourite room in his house one afternoon. The set dressing and feel of the scene seemed to be completely unconvincing.

The music is perplexing too. Danny Elfman has been tapped for this one but I felt like either Hans Zimmer or, especially, Rupert Gregson-Williams (who had provided real emotional depth to the Wonder Woman movie) should have got the gig here. Instead, Elfman uses various themes from films gone by to weave a new musical direction for the franchise and... it just felt wrong. Okay, so he uses Zimmer’s Superman theme from Man Of Steel at one point and he similarly uses Zimmer’s “Is She With You?” theme for Wonder Woman in a less striking arrangement (but without using Gregson-Williams gorgeous thematic material). However, he also uses John WIlliams' Superman music at one point too plus... he even uses his own 1980s Batman theme for some of Ben Affleck’s Batcentric shenanigans. None of that really made sense... what’s he trying to evoke here. It’s a nice enough score, when you can hear it over the noisy sound effects but... it doesn’t knock it out of the park like some of the films in this series do.

Okay, last thing I’ll highlight here is the running time. This is the shortest of the recent DC movies, clocking in at one minute shy of two hours. But you are dealing with six superhero characters, not to mention the big bad guy and the introduction of the mother box on the narrative. How do you cram all that into two hours without losing sight of something? Short answer... you don’t. This film feels like it should be a lot longer and, I dunno, less flippant and somewhat darker in tone considering the events that have birthed it in the previous films. Things felt somewhat rushed... especially when it hurtles to a climax that is less than interesting.

Also... you have continuity errors like the mother box being used to bring Cyborg to life being in the previous film, which makes no sense. Or the fact that the third mother box was found during World War I when, if you check out the epilogue scene included on the home video version of Wonder Woman, you’ll know that Etta Candy and the others were tasked with the mission to find it after the end of the war depicted in that film. Thins like this just seemed a bit like sloppy writing to me, it has to be said.

So, yeah, that’s my review of Justice League. All in all I’m glad I went to see it... if for nothing more than to see Gal Gadot totally slaying it as Wonder Woman. However, the film didn’t blow me away, for sure and it certainly felt a little more anti-climactic than I was expecting. All in all, if you loved Wonder Woman then you’ll probably want to see this one anyway. I can’t really recommend it to anyone on any other basis though so... make of that what you will. Old school DC comics fans, though, would do well to look out for the first of the two post-credits scenes if they want to see a familiar homage and... don’t miss the end if you want to see what happened to another character from a previous movie in the series.

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Diana’ther Day

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice
(aka Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)
2016 USA
Directed by Zack Snyder
UK cinema release print.

I had it all worked out that I’d deliver a scathing critical blow by calling this review The Brave And The Dulled when I came to write up this movie. However, after having seen said movie, I realised that was impossible because, contrary to both my own expectations based on the awful previous movie, Man Of Steel (reviewed here), and the negative reactions by the press... not to mention terrible word of mouth online... it turns out that Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice is actually a pretty good little movie. It has a few problems, for sure, and you can bet I’ll be pointing them out in a minute, but...  ultimately, it’s both a vast improvement over director Snyder’s former Superman movie and it delivers a nice spin, although not an original one, on some of DCs flagship characters. I’ll fess up and say I’ve seen almost all of the director’s previous movies and Man Of Steel is the only one I didn’t like... so I’m happy that this movie sees a certain ‘return to form’ for the director. At least as far as I’m concerned.

So the good stuff here is that the film doesn’t change or in any way pervert the characters like the previous film did... and fans of Batman who are saying it does, really need to look back to both the character’s origins and, also, the history of comic books, for a little enlightenment there. I count myself as an ardent admirer of the character over the years and this certainly does him justice. Also, the problems in the last film of Superman making the decision to kill General Zod and also not being able to stop gazillions of innocent people being killed are used as a motivator on the plot point on this movie’s ‘bout of the century’ and the weight it’s given in the script does make amends, somewhat, for Snyder’s choices on Man Of Steel. Although Superman still doesn’t wear his underpants on the outside here and that’s a detail that definitely needs some correcting.

Okay, so I can guess that some non-comic book fans or, more, people who don’t know the rich legacy of multi-character cross-overs, don’t understand the politics of character ‘team ups’ and I can imagine a lot of the movie going feeling short changed on this movie over what is, frankly, a little punch up towards the end of the story between the two title characters. But it is a greatly misleading title and one which, I’m sure, a lot of comic book fans discounted as being in any way truthful very early on in the marketing of this movie... especially when the subtitle Dawn Of Justice was added. Now, personally, I think they should have stuck to the legacy of the two characters crossing over because, after the first few times they did it in one or other of their comics, back in the 1940s I seem to remember, they were doing it a lot under the title World's Finest... and that was a comic that ran for many decades, if memory serves me correctly. I wish the studio had been more honest and less ‘marketing monded’ with the general public and called it that. Perhaps, then, there’d be a few less disappointed audiences out there on this one.

Either way, this is how a comic book cross-over works in both the DC and Marvel Universes... and you already saw a little bit about how this plays on film in Marvel’s The Avengers (reviewed here). So the characters would meet and they’d basically start fighting each other over a disagreement or because they’ve been duped by one or more villains. This is even how it happened in the famous, first 'cross-company' oversized comic book in the 1970s... Spider-Man Vs Spiderman. The heroes will fight for a short while and then find the error of their ways and spend the rest of the time teamed up against their common villain/s. And that’s pretty much the way this movie works too... except the prelude to the fight takes most of the movie and leads up to a kind of prelude to the final act. But getting their is entertaining enough, even if the showdown is a bit of a damp squib of a battle.

Okay, so no surprises in this film and lots of nicely shot, nicely edited and well acted drama. It’s a cool piece of work with Henry Cavill still being a good fit for Superman... and with a script that helps him do that, this time around. Ben Affleck was always going to be a perfect fit for Bruce Wayne and he decides to play him very cynically here but it still works pretty well. Jeremy Iron’s Alfred is pretty cool too, and I prefer him to Michael Caine’s recent take on the character in some ways... although neither of these versions are in any way faithful to the original Alfred Pennyworth in the comics, it seems to me. Gal Godot as Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman is pretty great in this movie and... yeah, she kind of steals it by the final act, that’s for sure. Looking forward to seeing her in action in cinemas next year which presumably tells the story of her exploits in World War One, referenced in a photograph in this movie. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor is a little off with his ‘madness’ it seems to me.... although he does have an interesting quirk where he invades the space of other characters regularly by touching them, which was interesting. Amy Adams is pretty cool and Holly Hunter is wasted but certainly knocks her role out of the park. All pretty good.

Okay... there are a couple of problems.

Right from the start the writers wisely gets through the whole Batman origin story by cross-cutting the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne with the discovery of the bat-cave, during the credits. Good. This saves time in the rest of the film and the director can hit the ground running. However, there’s a point in that opening which had me growling my head off until I realised that it had been mixed into a dream sequence (for the record, Batman can’t levitate) and this sets up the fact that Bruce Wayne has a lot of ‘dream state’ visions in this movie and it’s a way over-relied on ploy by the film-makers to access some beautiful scenes (at least one of which owes a very strong debt to Frank Miller’s classic Batman tale, The Dark Knight Returns) but it really is a ‘have your cake and eat it’ kind of scenario and the problem is that you can never tell if you’ve suddenly gone into a ‘dream moment’ or not. Which means a scene which seems like a foreshadowing of disaster, and may or may not return in a future movie, is not to be trusted and seems like a nonsense at the moment. So that’s a bit of a shame.

Another problem is the physics of this universe, which seem to have changed since the last movie. In that movie Superman warned Lois to move further back and then further still so he wouldn’t hurt her with the aftermath of him taking off to flight from standing still. Fair enough but in this movie, he can do it standing right next to her on a balcony with no warning and no consequences... doesn’t make sense, does it?

Okay, now four other members of the Justic League of America make appearances in this film, three of them small, and a larger role for Wonder Woman. The problem is that the sequence where the other three are shown means that in a scene set in water, later on in the film, you assume a certain other character will make a return appearance and, when he doesn’t, it leaves you a bit disappointed. Secondly, if the whole thing seems shoehorned in to give the DC cinematic universe something to quickly combat the slowly earned and built up Marvel Avengers movies to rake in the cash... well, yeah, it does seem like it and it does kinda hurt the film, to be honest. The exception being Wonder Woman who is carefully worked into the story right from the start and who appears naturally in a scene which shouldn’t have been used in the trailers because it’s such a great entrance.

Another problem is that there’s another very famous character, and I’m not talking about Wonder Woman, featured in the last trailer for the movie and as soon as comic book fans see that character, they’ll have another pretty good idea of just where the producers are going with this movie. Yes, they do make it a partial adaptation of a very famous Superman comic and yes, we are left with an ending to the film that none of us really believe, and with good reason. There’s no post credits scene in this movie but viewers would be advised not to blink as they get to the end of the very obvious final shot of the film.

Okay, what else? Well, for a two and a half hour movie, the action is flat and minimal. Personally I don’t mind that but I think some audiences are going to be disappointed with that. It’s not great fun, nor probable when you think of the way Batman’s ‘gun’ works, that Superman can be taken down so easily in certain scenes. The physics seems slightly ‘off’ but it’s okay, I guess... just not very interesting. A bit dull. But it serves the story so, what the heck.

Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s score (plus a load of others if you read the fine print at the end of the movie credits) is not terrible in that it at least builds upon the leitmotif that Zimmer used in the previous film and their are definitely some thematic elements for the other characters. Wonder Woman’s one is kinda interesting. I haven’t listened to it as a stand alone score as yet but am hoping to give the CD a spin once I’m done writing this. I need to revisit the original score again too, after it started growing on me when I rewatched Man Of Steel last week in preparation for this movie. It doesn’t hurt the film and seems appropriate, pretty much. So that’s all cool. I’m seeing Zimmer in concert next month so it’ll be interesting to see if he does any of this score then.

Okay, that’s about it. There are some nice references for comic book fans such as the nod to The Mark Of Zorro (augmented here with Excalibur) as the film playing before Bruce Wayne loses his parents and a nice dig to audience members such as myself who prefer the Superman character rooted in the values of his origins in 1938. This kind of thing is always good and doesn’t hurt the film either. Other than that... not much else to say. Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a far better movie than I was expecting and certainly helps fill in the crater left by Man Of Steel. There’s a scene where a character from the first film returns which might annoy some people but I’m trying hard not to put spoilers in here so won't address that now. All in all, though, I think some people will like this a lot more than most of the critics and I reckon its something you just need to take a chance on, truth be told. I’m glad I didn’t get putt off seeing it... although I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Pleasantly surprised, though, so that’s good.

Man of Steel

Zeal Before Nod

Man of Steel
2013 USA/Canada/UK
Directed by Zack Snyder
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Some big Kryptonite nugget sized 
spoilers lurking in here later...

You know, in some ways, I owe Superman a lot.

When I was two or three years old, I was encouraged to read via Superman and Batman comics which my dad or my uncle would pick up from the stand, long gone I imagine, at the Angel, Edmonton in the very early seventies (1970 in fact, I suspect). These comics, along with Green Arrow/Green Lantern, World’s Finest, Shazam!, Justice League Of America, Daredevil and The Amazing Spider-Man and also the annual Christmas time reprints in such tomes as The Batman Bumper Book, The Superman Bumper Book and, wait for it, The Superman and Batman Bumper Book, were pretty much how I learned to read and by the time I got to junior school I was already out-reading all the other kids in the class (and writing epic length tales of imaginary spaceway heroes in some lessons too, from what I can recall). I particularly remember the cover to one specific Superman comic I read which, unfortunately, was the only comic which didn’t survive my childhood because I just read it too much and it finally fell apart. But the cover was so good to a kid my age... Superman VS The Electronic Ghost of Metropolis. It would probably cost an inappropriate amount of money these days if I were to track it down in the chance I could read it again but that cover will always live on in my memory.

So Superman meant a lot to me and I remember how thrilled I was when I used to watch the reruns of the old George Reeves The Adventures Of Superman show when I was a kid... and even the old Superfriends cartoon show. And I still have my Superman reels for my old 3D viewmaster somewhere about, I’m sure. When the first of the Christopher Reeves movies came out at the cinema, many years later, it was an event almost as big as the Star Wars movie of the previous year. All the kids loved both that and the sequel and I even got on well with the third in the series at the time... barring one scene which totally enraged me... but that’s another story.

Years later I discovered the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 40s and was absolutely blown away by the visual sophistication of these which, I believe, are the most expensive cartoon shorts ever made. I remember when a film some years ago called Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow was released into cinemas and I also loved that for being able to so perfectly invoke the spirit and visual feel of those Fleischer animations.

As the years have gone by I’ve rewatched all the old George Reeves shows on DVD and, more importantly for this fan of the last son of Krypton... about seven or eight years ago I now acquired and watched on DVD the very first live action Superman theatrical serials from 1948 and 1950, starring Kirk Alyn in the title role, who will now always be my favourite live action Superman, I think.

Now, as far as the new Man Of Steel movie goes, it has to be acknowledged that I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Two reasons for this, actually... one was the fact that every trailer I’ve seen for this movie was... well... a bit rubbish. Two was the fact that, in their wisdom, the producers decided to get rid of Superman’s red pants. To explain to all my international readers (and thank you all so much for coming on here and reading, you’re all very much appreciated), I am English. In the UK the term pants is not what we call trousers as it is in the US, apparently. Over here it means underpants, or Y-fronts or... um... I dunno... men’s knickers. It’s long been a jokey but undeniable fact that Superman wears his underpants, the wrong way around, over his trousers. Funny or not, though, it’s always been an integral part of his costume and, along with one or two other minor but equally unwelcome tweaks to the uniform, these basic “no brainer, you don’t change these things” elements have been unnecessarily tinkered with in this movie. So even going into the screening I knew this was not going to be a proper Superman movie. No red knickers... no Superman!

But... I trusted Zack Snyder as a director and he’d not let me down in even the most challenging movie properties before this. He took liberties with Watchmen, to be sure, but certainly not as many as with Man Of Steel and I thought, even though it didn’t have the fake alien squid monster (which it really should have) it still kinda worked as a movie. Dawn Of The Dead, a reboot of one of the classic zombie movies, was also really cool (and works better when you realise it’s really not a remake of the original in anything but name and location similarities). I even thought Sucker Punch, a much maligned movie on its initial cinema release (don’t worry, a film that good will be rediscovered and lionised to classic status in approximately 23 years time) was a brilliant and highly cinematic experience (reviewed here). So on the strength of these I went along to see Man Of Steel anyway.

Besides... I wanted to hear what Hans Zimmer was going to do with the score.

Now, I took my folks out to see this and frankly, the cross section family assessment of this movie is as follows...

Dad: That was a terrible, terrible, atrociously bad movie.
Mum: It was a bit long winded and could have done with being a lot shorter. Not very good.
Me: It wasn’t completely terrible. It was way too noisy. There were no red underpants.

So... well there you have it. But let me give you a little more about what I thought of this noble intentioned monstrosity.

Well, firstly, it’s like no Superman movie you’ve seen before, even though it’s practically a remake of the opening half hour of Superman The Movie and most of Superman II. After a spectacularly realised set piece that shows the rebel General Zod and his cohorts defeated and Jor El (Superman’s father) himself becoming a fugitive on his own planet before the baby (Kal El) is finally launched towards Earth and Krypton destroyed... we are propelled immediately into a series of early “adult Superman” adventure sequences with him performing various, low profile, super-powered rescues. It would be fair to say that the director hits the ground running but, frankly, as spectacular and as enjoyable as the early Krypton scenes are on a purely cinematic level, they really are inappropriate to the subject matter, I felt, and would have been much better off in a Flash Gordon movie (for the record, I would love to see Zack Snyder direct a Flash Gordon movie, especially if it’s done in the proper time period). There’s an element of adaptation to this movie, whether you like that or not, and this “interpretation” of Krypton was beautiful but just not what was needed, I feel.

Also, another problem for some will be the eliptical way in which Snyder tells his tale of Superman. It’s, quite appropriately, much more like a comic strip, jumping backwards and forwards in time so we can get to the action as well as seeing his defining years on Earth at the same time without slowing down the high level of energy on the screen (this film is nothing if not pacey). It’s another example of Hollywood wanting to have its cake and eat it at the same time but, for the majority of the film it really kind of works and I was certainly buying into this technique for a while. However, if you’re a complete novice to the legend of Superman and unfamiliar with any of the previous versions (and there are many who are these days, I promise you) then you may have a hard time following the back story is my guess. The crash landing of young Kal El’s space capsule on Earth, for example, is never even shown... we just have to take the implication which, if you don’t know the story, may be a bit of a leap, is my guess.

There are some good things about the movie, though...

Superman could never fly in the early comics... he could leap tall buildings in a single bound though and this later developed in the strip into the kind of high flying ariel stunts we are used to associating with the character post-1930s. This new version pays homage to this in its “first flight” sequence and it’s  a really nice nod to those origins. It reminded me of a similarly successful scene in the much maligned John Carter movie, when the title character in that film (and Edgar Rice Burroughs original source novel) has to learn to cope with extra muscular activity in a gravity a lot lighter than on his home world (review here). So this was all good when it comes to Man Of Steel. Although, he didn’t have red pants on, of course, so... it wasn’t really Superman.

The performances are all superb, although many of the characterisations are quite off. It’s not the fault of the actors, presumably, if they’re being written like that in the script.  Larry Fishburne makes a surprisingly cool version of Perry White and Ma Kent is brilliantly played by Judge Hershey herself, actress Diane Lane. The title character, played by some guy I’d not heard of called Henry Cavill, really looks and acts the part as far as he’s allowed, although he does look extremely worried all through the movie. Also, losing the kiss curl (and that’s been done before many times too) is a big mistake. It’s not just a kiss curl you guys, it’s the "S" symbol. It’s as much a part of the Superman costume as his red underpants... oh, wait.

Hans Zimmer’s percussion heavy score, too, is excellent but quite noisy. Not as memorable as some of the Superman scores in the past but certainly he’s had a good go at it and I look forward to hearing the score CDs when they finally arrive in the post.

Anyway, yeah, there are some nice things about the movie but... the number of bad things happening maybe outweighs all that.

The plotting is atrocious, for example and completely relies on a ridiculous piece of “deus ex machina” towards the end of the picture which really is just a piece of technical sounding mumbo jumbo and which seems to make mockery of physics. I know I’ve bandied the “deus ex machina” term around a lot just lately in my reviews but, honestly, if Hollywood stops doing it then I’ll stop calling them on it. Sheesh! And for your information, I suspect deliberately creating a black hole over a big city on the planet Earth may actually do even more damage to the planet than Superman, Zod and his crew do. Not just disappear and... oh, don’t get me started.

It’s kind of fitting that a modern incarnation (minus red knickers) of a classic character who made his debut in a 1938 issue of Action Comics should be part of a film where the emphasis is solely on action... unfortunately, and this really surprised me from this particular director, the action sequences are edited together really badly. I couldn’t work out what was going on half the time, I have to admit. It was all going by super-fast and mostly super-incomprehensibly and I so won’t be taking my hard earned super-cash to another screening of this movie if I can help it. Although I’ll probably buy a reference copy on DVD when it hits later in the year (or when it goes in the sales). Seriously, all that over zealous energy was pretty much non-stop caving my brain in on a Friday night and making me go all sleepy. It really is a case of “zeal before nod” as far as this film is concerned.

Which reminds me... I was quite disappointed that Snyder didn’t use the famous line “Kneel before Zod” in this film. Unfortunately,he  didn’t succumb to the same kind of post modern referencing temptation that J. J. Abrams did in his latest Star Trek movie, it would seem (Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!).

There are a few more things that I think this movie could have done without changing. The “mild mannered reporter” incarnation of Clark Kent, for example, is saved for a reveal right at the end of the movie... which bothered me quite a lot actually. It’s also kind of annoying that Lois Lane is right in on the identity of Superman pretty much right from the start of the movie, when she accidentally gets embroiled in an incident in this version's equivalent of The Fortress Of Solitude and then uses all her reporter’s know how to track down her alien rescuer to the Kent’s home in Smallville. I suspect that, at DC, this might also be known as “pulling a Mary Jane/Gwen Stacey” in terms of watching what does and does not work at the box office. Although it seemed to fail on them as a ploy in the much panned but quite good Green Lantern movie from a few years ago (and reviewed here).

The one thing which really killed the movie quite a bit for me, though, was the death of gazillions of millions of bystanders. In Superman movies, innocents tend to not get killed, even during the big street battles with Zod and his crew in Superman II from what I can recall. Kal El would simply not tolerate not being able to rescue someone. It’s just not on and would do a lot of psychological damage to him, I think. During this movie there is a reign of destruction against the Earth which sees literally millions of innocent people dying. In the old Superman The Movie version from 1978, the character even breaks the director’s vision of “verisimilitude” (and annoyed us Superman fans no end) by having the man of steel magically take time backwards and heal the world rather than suffer anyone dying.  In this movie the gloves, and the red pants too, apparently, are off. Millions die and quite often due to the last son of Krypton himself  doing as much structural damage as the main “villains” of the piece. Superman loses his innocence and then compounds that by committing an act of murder at the end of the film when he chooses to end Zod’s reign of terror the only way left open to him. Superman makes the decision to kill and loses his “big boy scout” label in the process.

I think this was all very wrong and, frankly, if they wanted to make another Batman movie then they should have done just that. Superman is a different kind of hero to Batman... this is why they always work so well with each other. They possess strengths of character which fill in each other’s weaknesses. It’s a mistake to make one too much like the other... especially over the simple box office knowledge that bleak and vicious plays better than strength of morality in the cinema these days. It’s a shame but... there it is.

Okay, I’ve said a lot of negative stuff here but I don’t want to come down too hard on this movie. Lots of it was throughly entertaining and I don’t think a younger audience is going to be too concerned over the morality issues of the tale (even if there was a direct biblical analogy thrown into the mix in one scene). If you’re a fan of big budget action films then Man Of Steel might be right up your alley but if you, like me, have a big soft spot for the character, then you might want to have another think at whether you want to see this one. If you do though, and you find yourself wondering how Superman got into such a sorry state of affairs, just keep reminding yourself of one thing... “If he’s not wearing red pants, he’s not Superman."