Max Landis is a nerd. He loves comic books and superheroes and knows about the characters as well as anybody. He is also a screenwriter who has written in the genre (the excellent CHRONICLE) and knows how Hollywood works as well as anybody. His father, John Landis, raised him in the industry. While is opinion is just that, an opinion, he gives a very well thought out answer regarding why he thinks MAN OF STEEL is not a good Superman movie. He equally weighs both his nerd credibility as well as his Hollywood acumen in one of the most spot-on perspectives I have seen in a long time.
I did enjoy MAN OF STEEL when I saw it, but the further I get away from viewing it, the more the backlash against the film begins to make sense. While I am able to enjoy MAN OF STEEL for what it was, I can understand the fans who disagree with the final act of the film and what it does to the character’s new origin and the future of the series.
This ten minute video contains massive spoilers and NSFW language regarding MAN OF STEEL, but if you have seen the movie, you really should watch this. The parallels between MAN OF STEEL AND TRANSFORMERS did occur to me when I saw the movie, but Landis explains it better than I ever could.
Here is my favorite excerpt from the video:
“I guess what I’m saying isn’t so much an opinion on the Man of Steel. It’s more about the way superhero movies have become… at the end of all of these movies, all I’m seeing is fire and death. And that confuses the living shit out of me, because everybody’s going to these movies and they’re all making so much money. And at the end, a hero stands tall as all of society crumbles behind him. That isn’t a superhero to me, a guy who stands there when everyone else is dead. That’s like a rock star. I don’t want to see movies about rock stars. Put the hero back in the super hero movies, because I think ‘super’ might have taken over.”
As a movie, I enjoyed MAN OF STEEL. As a superhero movie, it does feel very similar to THE AVENGERS. But, as my colleague Paul Shirey said so eloquently in his latest C’Mon Hollywood, the destruction is getting a bit much.
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