Man of Steel did one thing better than James Gunn’s Superman
In many ways, James Gunn’s Superman is an improvement over Man of Steel and the DCEU – but Zack Snyder got one thing right, and it hasn’t been beaten this time.
To be clear, I am a Man of Steel defender. It’s one of the most underrated superhero movies of the past 20 years; solemn, awe-inspiring, and imbued with a sense of genuine majesty. Plus, Michael Shannon is amazing as Zod, Hans Zimmer’s score is incredible, and it’s one of the best-looking films in the genre (Christopher Nolan’s influence is clear, too).
However, its greatness includes its flaws: Henry Cavill looks the part, but he’s a bit of an uninspiring Clark Kent, nor is he a personable Superman, and the final, calamitous sequence of Supes and Zod throwing haymakers at each other across the world is preposterously destructive. (That said, I don’t care that he kills Zod.)
Gunn’s movie is completely different: silly, light, with a do-gooder Supes that’s considerate, careful, and more man than God. It’s a wonderful film that gets a lot right, but it misses the mark on one thing.
Man of Steel’s flight scenes are better than Superman
It’s strange. Gunn’s flight sequences are unique and often thrilling, but there’s always something… off. For example, as John Murphy and David Fleming’s ‘Last Son’ booms out of the speakers and you feel like you’re riding Superman’s cape over icy cliffs, you’ll believe – as the original tagline said – a man can fly.
And then… the shot switches to David Corenswet’s face, and it no longer feels real; not quite super-imposed, but obviously studio-shot, and it takes you out of it.
In another scene, Superman dips and zips around a kaiju’s flames, and as dynamic as the direction is, there’s an artifice to it; maybe it’s the VFX, or maybe I’ve just never seen anything like it.
The worst offender is a later scene of Superman barrelling through the clouds, with the camera seemingly shaking as it struggles to keep up with him – a cool idea, but in practice, it just looks janky and forgets the simplest wonder of Superman: watching him fly.
It was never going to beat Man of Steel’s first flight scene. In Snyder’s film, Clark steps out in his costume for the first time, letting the wind gently waft his cape as he basks in the light of the yellow sun. He leaps into the air, but he crashes down into (and through) a mountain.
As he pulls himself up, Russell Crowe’s Jor-El narration tees up Zimmer’s cue. “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you; they will stumble, they will fall, but in time, they will join you in the sun… in time, you will help them accomplish wonders,” he says, and Clark finally takes flight, sonic-booming through the sky and across the world. To cap it all off, we get a shot of him soaring in and out of space.
While Superman’s flight scenes are fun, Man of Steel felt magnificent. In short (and this is a symptom of Snyder’s filmography; it’s good in this case, but bad in others), Cavill’s Superman is always given the space to look cool, whether he’s forcing his way upstream through a terraformer’s laser beam or gliding out from the wreckage of a spaceship.
Gunn gets almost everything else right. There’s even one scene that has a touch of Man of Steel’s earnest reverence for his powers: after saving a woman from a collapsing building, she looks back and sees his silhouette emerge from the cloud of dust. A powerful image, and the film needed a few more.
Here’s another question: does Superman break the same ‘killing rule’ as Man of Steel?
Superman is in cinemas now. In the meantime, find out more about its box office projections, where Superman will be streaming, how long it is, details about its post-credits scenes, and our ranking of the Superman movies.
You can also read why Robert Pattinson should be the DCU’s Batman.
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