Well. Let’s see if I can be succinct for once.
This movie.
…You know, I think
there’s a definite hypocrisy about me.
For all my talk about intelligence by design and exploring
possibilities, I like a lot of dumb stuff.
Think about it; I’m the guy that enjoyed Iron Man 3 and shrugged off its flaws, just because I had a good
time with the jokes and action. And most
of the movies I’ve seen over the past five years or so have been superhero
movies. Or involving some sort of action
(Looper, Django Unchained, and The Hunger Games all come to mind). I do all right for myself, but given the
media I take in on a regular basis, I can’t help but wonder if in spite of all
my talk I’m kind of an idiot.
Well, let me revise
that statement a bit. I’m really not as
smart as people think I am. I’m about as
far as you could get from “genius”, and while these posts of mine let me show
off some real intuition…well, to put it in RPG terms, it’s like my Intuition is
maxed out, but everything else is still at its level one value. (Barring my Facetiousness, of course. And Verbosity.)
I guess intelligence
just comes down to A) making yourself look like you’re ahead of the curve, and
B) doing so consistently. If you can do
that, then it doesn’t matter how inherently dumb you, or the circumstances
around you, or the things you like, can get.
Which brings us to this movie.
Guys? I’m going to be honest with you. History has repeated itself, and done so
almost a year -- on the dot -- as The
Dark Knight Rises. (It can’t
possibly be a coincidence, but that might be something I’ll have to explore
later on.) The key difference is that,
whereas I spent more than a week struggling with my feelings on THAT movie,
when it comes to THIS movie I know exactly how I feel. So I’ll go ahead and stay what I told my
brother and my buddy on the way out of the theater:
“I don’t think I’ve
ever seen a more disappointing movie.”
The two of them immediately called me out on it, and I
tried to explain my rationale over the next several minutes. I think I got the gist of my problems out in
the open -- something that I don’t usually don’t do so spontaneously -- but I
left a LOT of explaining in my head where it belonged. This movie…this movie is something that I HAVE to explore in detail on this
blog. There are things I didn’t say that
I should have. There are thoughts that
need sorting out. And…honestly? I’m starting to think that “disappointing”
isn’t the word I should have chosen.
I’m not going to say
that Man of Steel is a completely
terrible movie. There are some good
things about it, and it’s more than possible for others to like it (my bro and
buddy were genuinely shocked that I didn’t like it…and they made that very
clear very loudly). But it is immensely
flawed. Immensely. And I just can’t bring myself to give it a
pass. A mistake is a mistake, and criticism
is criticism. To gloss over them would
be a betrayal to me, and a disservice to anyone who follows this blog. It’s a matter of standards. Standards and pride.
Bear in mind, of
course, that reviews -- or a facsimile of them, as they appear on this blog --
are only a suggestion of quality, not a confirmation of it. So no matter what I say in the coming days,
don’t expect them to be the absolute, unflinching truth. These are problems that I had with the movie,
not things guaranteed to drag down the overall product for any given
viewer. What’s important is that we can
use Man of Steel to launch into
discussions about plenty of topics -- and more importantly, use it as a
teaching tool. It can offer us lessons
that we can all take to heart, and keep in mind in our own creative
pursuits. Already I’m seeing ways that I
can improve my abilities just by not doing
what they did.
So that’s about where I
stand. It’s going to be a little bit
before the posts get flowing, but they’re on the way. In the meantime, hang tight. Go see the movie if you’re not afraid of the
consequences. Read some reviews (I’d
recommend MovieBob’s
take above a lot of others). Do
whatever you think you need to do, or just want to do. But know this: the next time Man of Steel appears on this blog, it’s
not going to be pretty.
This movie. Man, this movie.
