Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Superman Related Post-Viewing Discussion: Man of Steel movie (SPOILERS)

I really enjoyed "Man of Steel" a lot. It was easily better than the last three Superman movies that have been released, though it'll take me a few more viewings to decide where it rates among the first two Christopher Reeve movies.

I liked the way that they portrayed Krypton. While I enjoyed that "Lois and Clark" chose to focus primarily on Clark's human side and not his alien origins, I'm enough of a science fiction fan that seeing the alien world shown in the movie was fun for me. Plus, since modern technology finally allows filmmakers to do so much more than what could be done in some of the previous versions of Superman, it was nice to see all of the special effects that came with bringing Krypton alive.

Henry Cavill did a pretty good job as Clark Kent/Superman, and I had no big issues with the way his costume looked in the movie. The costume had been one of the things I was a little worried about before seeing the film, but I didn't even notice the alterations made to the costume that much as I watched the movie.

Amy Adams' performance as Lois was probably my favorite part of the movie. She was very believable as an intelligent investigative reporter, and I loved how she was able to figure out who Clark was so quickly. Actually, Lois knowing that Clark is Superman right away is one of the changes I've long thought should be made to the classic Superman story. It really does make more sense for her to be able to figure it out if you want to portray her as being very smart.

I liked Laurence Fishburne as Perry, too. We didn't really get to see a whole lot of him or the Daily Planet, but I understand that since Clark wasn't even a part of the Daily Planet staff until the end. Besides, I suspect that we'll see more of the newspaper in the sequel.

Jonathan Kent's death scene is one of the few scenes I didn't really care for that much. I really wish they'd at least shown some attempt from Clark to try to save his father. The one good thing about the scene, though, was that it did show that he was willing to die to protect his son's secret, which I do find somewhat admirable.

I watched the credits at the end of the movie because I wanted to check if Jenny was listed as Jenny Olsen, and she was simply credited as Jenny. Since they didn't actually commit to her being a female Jimmy Olsen, I hope that that means we might eventually see Jimmy in the sequel. After all, I always thought that the idea of turning Jimmy into Jenny was stupid considering the fact that if you wanted a female staff member besides Lois you could easily either use Cat Grant or create an entirely new character.

Zod was a really good villain to use since it led to a lot of good action scenes. One of the complaints I've seen made about "Superman Returns" was that they didn't utilize Superman's powers enough since he didn't have a strong enough opponent. That definitely wasn't the case for this movie.

Overall, "Man of Steel" was good movie. I look forward to the sequel.

Her name tag said " Jurwich " so make of that what you will.

Well, with her nametag being a completely different name from Olsen and her not being given a full name in the closing credits, I hope it's safe to say she wasn't supposed to be Jimmy. If the people involved in creating this version of Superman don't want to use the character of Jimmy at all, that's fine with me, but the idea of turning him into a woman just seems silly to me. As it was, though, I didn't have any problems with the character of Jenny that was used in the film.

I really don't think having Superman kill Zod was for shock-value. It seemed logical to me within the parameters Superman had, and I really feel like people have made too big a deal about it.

On the civilian casualties issue, Zod had set up a plan to kill all humans, so Superman had to work as fast as he could to stop that.

I do think they went a bit overboard in having the fights right by bystanders, but since it seemed the invaders wanted to attack everyone, I don't think there was much Superman could have done about it.

I think this still rates higher up than the first two Superman movies. While I can see complaints, nothing they did was on the level of horridness of the memory wide kiss or Superman reversing time.

I think that is why I was OK with him killing Zod. It was a solution to his problems that did not involve total suspension of disbelief.

I also liked the fact that when Superman used his x=ray vision he saw people's bone stuctures, not their underwear.

While I wish we would have seen more of Clark and less high-packed action, it certainly beat hockey dialogue.

I do have to agree some of the best parts were the Lois and Clark or Lois and Superman lines.

One question though, when Lois asks what the S stands for, Superman says it is not an S, and Lois says it is an S here, are they operating under the assumption that they are being monitored. It seemed that Clark was being overly alien and Lois was treating him like he was a recent arrival, instead of someone who had no actual memories of his home world. So are they to some extent putting on a show.

I have to admit my mock the movie side wants to say the reason that they did that scene in a way that it seems Lois can be thought to think Superman is a recent visitor is so they could use it in trailers without giving away that Lois knows that CK=SM.

So we have Jenny Jurwich, who is Perry's executive assistant. She is not a photographer, and not an Olsen.

I thought on the whole thought the character was good, although under-utilized, but that was also true of everyone else. I would even argue that Lois was under utilized, because they had way too much carnage.

Still, I guess Lois got to do more than she has in a lot of other Superman films. They gave her a clear role even in the fighting. Without her help, Superman would never have escaped from his initial being placed in the hands of Zod. So I can't complain too much.

I do have to say this film is way better than what I saw of the Christopher Reeves Superman films. I guess the whole feel is different, but I liked it a lot better.

Did anyone have a clue how long after the final scene when Clark shows up as a stringer at the Daily Planet is from when the big battle happened.

Part of me wants it to be a while since it makes Clark getting higher more realistic. However since he is a stringer, he probably ran a few articles in smaller papers, and is now going big time. He is still only a stringer so he does not need too much experience, so a few months will work.

It has to be a few months, because Steve is asking Lois and then Jenny to go out to a sports event. I would assume all sports events in Metropolis would be cancelled until some rebuilding was done. So it was a few months. Long enough that rebuilding has started but not much more.

I have it second-hand, sort of. Another poster on another message board said an interview said that the tag scene was three weeks after the battle. But I didn't read the interview myself, so can't verify. And I also cannot promise that my memory isn't playing tricks on me.

3 weeks is probably for Clark getting into the news business. Since he is super he can write a whole bunch of aritcles and just send them out like crazy and actually get a few published. It might help if he has a related college degree, but it is believable.

It might be a bit fast for recovery, but we only know that rebuilding has started.

On the other hand, it still makes it so they can be dealing with the aftermath when they open the next film.

I have seen some people complain the ending was too upbeat (while other people think the film was too dark).

While I do agree this was not a happy, cheerful film, I think the complaint comes more from comparing it too much to previous Superman films. Although considering in Superman the Movie, Lois dies, while in MoS, Superman always saves her, that might even not be entirely fair (even if Superman reverses time and saves Lois).

I have to say I loved, loved, loved the ending. Especially Lois and Clark's banter, even if it was short. It was definitely a way to make me want to see a sequel.

I'm finally catching up on this thread, so I've got a lot of comments to what others have said.

I completely agree. I hate Wells' speech about this. It's a load of baloney to make Lois feel better about having fallen for Clark's deceptions.

I also don't like the idea that Lois can only really forgive Clark for pretending to be two people if he can convince her that he had always intended to tell her. This theme crops up in a lot of fanfiction, and it makes me cringe. In both cases she just needs to accept that he had good reasons for keeping his identity a secret from everyone, and rather than having to come up with excuses why he didn't tell her, he would need specific reasons why he should tell her at all.

AmyPrime said: Who is Jonathan to determine whether the world is "ready" to know about Clark? How can the world really be ready if it's not generally accepted that there are aliens? Jonathan seemed to assume that the world would be ready some time in Clark's lifetime, but how would he know when that would be? Jonathan's reasoning didn't make a lot of sense to me.

I would contend that Clark wasn't ready for the world to know about him. He needed to mature and learn not only to handle his powers safely, but also to hide them when appropriate. He also needed to decide whether to be "out" as Clark Kent or to come up with an alternate persona. Then when Clark was ready to reveal himself, the world would take care of itself.

AmyPrime said: I hadn't noticed that. Thanks for pointing it out. It makes more sense that Clark would start as a freelancer, since even if he did have a degree in journalism, he has no experience (or at least no recent experience).

Mozartmaid said: I liked the suit except for the weird pointy design around his waist. Why does Superman have an outfit that points at his crotch?

Before seeing the movie, I had massive reservations about the texturing on the suit, but it works the way they portrayed it as part of the Kryptonian military uniform. It's kind of the padded armor under the platemail. I'm not sure how easily he'll be able to wear it under his street clothes, though. It's pretty thick. But I guess we can hand-waive that issue away along with "where do his boots go when he's in street clothes?" and "How does he fit his glasses and shoes into that pocket in his cape without destroying them?" People seem to harp on wondering where his cape goes, but I've read comics where it shows him tucking the cape into his pants.

John Lambert wrote: They certainly wrote Superman into a corner. He didn't seem to have any other option than to kill Zod. I hadn't made the connection to Nephi, but that comparison breaks down for me because their paths to deciding to kill are completely different. I see as more similar to the defense of "freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children". Under the circumstances, Superman was right to kill Zod. It was a war in defense of his freedom and his people, and the only way to stop Zod was to kill him.

If it was anyone else in Superman's place, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I contend, though, that the writers shouldn't have written Superman into that corner in the first place. Despite killing being acceptable under the circumstances, it goes against Superman's character to have him kill. In Kingdom Come, for example, Magog is a new superhero that resorts to killing the villains, and the public cheers him on. Magog and the public make fun of Superman for refusing to kill, and they end up driving him away because he's "too old-fashioned" and won't keep up with the times and kill. Without too many spoilers, things go massively awry because of the methods of Magog and his ilk, and Superman's morals are vindicated.

I like the way Mark Waid explains why Superman killing Zod doesn't work. (He has written Kingdom Come, other Superman comics, and a whole slew of other comics. I agree with everything he says in his review except for his opinion about Pa Kent.) I also like his comment further down the page why claiming "But he killed Zod in the 80s" isn't a solid argument why he should have killed Zod in the movie.

I also liked a review on Comics Alliance that ended with That's exactly how I felt as I was leaving the theater.

Good point. That raises the question, though, of how they learned all those Earth languages. It didn't take them long to get to Earth, so they didn't have much time. What were they using as a language reference? TV signals?

I read this review and while I agreed with some of what he said (with the exception of his hating that Clark from LnC got the curl instead of Superman), something he mentioned made me think of something.

At first, I thought he was thinking of two completely different scenes. So, I pose to you THIS interpretation of Clark not saving Jonathan's life scenario:

What if Clark didn't save Jonathan's life, because Jonathan told him (after the bus incident) that Clark should let people die, so others wouldn't know of his abilities. So, Clark let Jonathan die, because he was doing what his dad's had told him to do.

I've always had mixed feelings about the whole birthing matrix thing. It was added to the backstory in the 80's so that Superman was technically born on Earth when Martha and Jonathan pulled him out of the spaceship. I don't think it would necessarily be a case of not knowing their Superman lore if they hadn't used it in the movie, though. Superman was around for almost 50 years before that was added to his backstory.

I agree. I wonder how many people watched the destruction in the movie and didn't at least momentarily think of 9/11.

I wondered that, as well. Others seem to be of the opinion that a lot of time passed between the destruction and Clark starting at the Daily Planet. That's not the impression I get from the movie, though. I figured that the DP must have been on the other side of town. I was disappointed when I didn't see the globe anywhere in the skyline.

AmyPrime wrote: True, most of the damage to Metropolis was due to the world builder, but Superman did nothing to try to mitigate or minimize further damage. He didn't even try to take the fight out of town. He and Zod repeatedly threw each other through presumably occupied buildings. I imagine they took out a lot of load-bearing walls. I remember thinking as I watched that a lot of those buildings would collapse off screen given the damage they sustained on screen. How many people were killed because Superman didn't throw Zod out over the Atlantic to finish the fight?

Katherine Kent wrote: Or maybe Bruce Wayne can get ahold of it first...?

That's exactly what I think Jonathan was doing, but in my opinion it was poorly executed. They shouldn't have had him saving a dog, and they should have set up a threat to Jonathan's life where there was absolutely no way that Clark could have saved him without revealing himself. He and Clark were close enough that it was conceivable that Clark could have walked over and helped him to safety without being obviously super.

I have to agree with that. Clark needs to have a compelling reason to tell Lois, so he should not have to justify his not telling her.

That said, I will go with the view that Clark has no justified reason to propose before telling her. He would have told her if it had not been for Mazik's call at the start of the episode, so his actions at the end make no sense. Plus in Whine, Whine, Whine Lois rejects Superman and Dan Scardino, and choses Clark. She has shown that she choses the real man over the Superman, even when the real man runs out on dates without any explanation, repeatedly (sometimes in cases where even if he had explained, she would probably still be "Clark, why is stopping vandals more important than talking with me").

However I would actually go so far as to argue that really, Lois made her choice not in "Whine, Whine, Whine" but in "That Old Gang of Mine", where she so quickly embraces Clark on his return, while being non-plussed about seeing Clark. Even without hearing Lois's confession of her feelings, Clark should have realized that Lois loves and trusts him, and should have told her. From a story telling standpoint and the fun of the irony of Lois not knowing that Clark loves her, and has really good reasons to run off (except for a few times when he really doesn't, but I will grant Clark had a good reason to run off to save the musician, even if it just created more problems for both SM and CK), but I can see Clark needing to apologize to Lois for not telling her. I will accept that "Ides of Metropolis" would have been too soon for Clark to tell Lois, although it does add to the irony of his arguing for complete honesty.

On the whole I am glad the avoided this whole issue in "Man of Steel". I just love that they did it. We have seen every possible "Clark fools Lois into thinging he is not Super" story line done multiple times, and while "Lois helps Clark make/keep his secret" has been done some, it is a much more workable solution.

Anyway, while glasses and other misdirection may work with everyone else, it never was convincing for Lois and Clark. I mean she has seen Clark in just a towel and how he eats even before Superman debuts. At some point she should have clued into the facts.

You probably have a point. The Nephi/Laban comparison is a very different case, because Laban is out cold from being drunk.

I think the reference to Moroni's title of Liberty also is helpful because it points to what Supwerman is in: He is fighting a war against Zod.

I have read some places where people say in response to comparisons of other killings "yes, but that other killer was a soldier, killing is allowed in war."

Well, the Superman is clearly at war with Zod.

Of course, because Superman is Superman he is held to a higher standard. But I do not know it quite holds up when we consider that Zod is also a super-powered being.

I do get the impression that the creators intend Superman to resolve on his no-killing rule as a result of having killed Zod. Some people respond "do you have to kill to know not to kill". Well, the problem is that most people will accept killing to stop an active and rampaging killer, which Zod clearly was. To move up a step in moral restrictions, to not killing at all, under any circumstances, either requires Superman to have thought deeply on the issue (which is unlikely, because until Zod showed up, he never dealt with anyone he could not actually subdue, and seems to not have done any crime fighting, as opposed to disaster rescues, at all) or to have someone impose a specific code of "what you cannot do under any circumstances" rules, most likely by Jor-el, but that is not the type of mentor this Jor-el is.

I agree. It's unconscionable for Clark to propose without Lois knowing. He's asking her to marry him when she doesn't have all the facts. He did the same thing in the comics, too. They were engaged for a while before he told her, and I think they broke up for a while as a result. Not a smart move.

In the comics Clark did not have any of the assurances that LnC Clark should have picked up on. He knew that they had a good relationship, but there had been no obvious declaration of intent from Lois. He could not be sure that it was Clark she truly wanted.

Also, my recollection is that he told her pretty soon after she accepted, within the following couple of comics (days). Plus, after inital confusion and shock for one or two comics she then fully accepted it. When Lois broke off the engagement it was years later .... MANY years later and was nothing to do with him keeping this secret. Doomsday and much more had also happened in the mean time. The reasons for breaking it off were actually very similar to Lois's concerns about marriage in LnC. She didn't want to be 'pushed aside' or 'surpressed' under the personality of Superman. She worried that she'd have very little worth against his worldwide, overawing personality. Obviously she did get over this.

I'm actually, personally, of the thought that Clark should ALWAYS propose before telling her. This is not the kind of secret to tell anyone who is not fully invested in Clark for the rest of their life. An extremely good friendship (eg Jimmy) or even romantic entaglement, no matter how wonderful, loving, trustworthy ... can end - often badly - and 'tit for tat' hurting is par for the course - not good for Clark and his secret.

Even with relationships that end amicably the two people could gradually just drift apart, move to different parts of the country, loose contact ... the emotional investment could fade ... and would they feel the need to be as faithful to his secret anymore? No. I really believe Clark did the right thing. Only someone bound to his family for life, committed to this level, should be burdened with this.

Maybe that's a controvertial idea *shrugs* Plus there are AUs out there where it just doesn't work cause she'd already found out for some other reason ... but under the normal circumstances ... Clark should propose and *hopefully* get a "yes" before he tells her.