I'm gonna just out and say it: This entire post has been inspired by Lindsay Ellis' video on Megan Fox in the Transformers movies, which you should watch. But if you know this video, you probably know where I am going with this.
One of the most interesting phenomenons about the DCEU is how dissonant the viewer's perception of Superman is with the text of the films he's in. Many, many criticism of the DCEU are founded on the idea that this version of Superman is indifferent to being a hero and the suffering of others. Now, there have been a loooot of questionable arguments defending this interpretation of Superman, there is one bone we have to throw to the defenders of the DCEU: This Superman has saved people. Not only that, he's kinda dedicated his life to it. To date:
And others, but beyond that, the entirety of both Man of Steel and BvS is largely about Superman struggling to realize his heroism on a level that satisfies him, which he does at the end of MoS, and then sort of again at the end of BvS. And yet people still walk away from the theater with the idea that Superman doesn't save, or atleast that he doesn't care.
How does this happen? I'm hardly the first person to have noticed this, but I could never think of a good way to articulate why this was. And it wasn't until I watched Lindsay's video that it was made clear: The film was unable to frame Superman as someone who gives a shit, despite the text of the film clearly showing he does.
Once I put it in those terms, a lot of the cause of the problems became clear. For example, here is superman in the midst of a attack in the smallville town.
He's telling people to get inside to safety, and you can argue that there isn't much more he can reasonably do for them other than take out the aliens who pose the danger, as he proceeds to do. But they've already been scrambling to find cover for several seconds when he says this, so yeah, thanks for the update superman, 10/10 heroing. But more importantly is how he conveys this crucial information. He doesn't yell this, he just...says it. As if he were talking to someone in front of him, with a normal tone of voice, while his body language is just casually walking toward the other Kyptonians. It's hard to believe anyone even heard him. There's no urgency in his voice, no concern or panic, no body language indicating tension.
Compare this to a similar scene in avengers where Captain America tries to get people to safety from an alien invasion
Now, I cut out some parts that also contribute to the films depiction of heroism like the cop's confusion and panic, as well as Captain America proving his credentials as a protector in front of them right after, because I want to focus solely on body language. Captain America is directly speaking to a specific individual, so you know he's being heard. You don't hear it in the gif, but he's slightly winded, his breathe a bit ragged between sentences. He's very animated pointing to a particular location along with his instructions, showing that he doesn't just wants people 'inside' but he wants them in a specific location where they'll be safest. Not only does this convey that Captain America wants to safe people in a much more visually intense way, but also shows confidence in his competence. He's standing on the car, slightly above them, giving the impression of having higher authority or power. Everything about him communicates he's the hero and knows what he's doing.
You might want to be tempted to frame this as exclusively an actor's problem with Cavill, but it's not that Cavill is just acting unconvincingly concerned, it's that the scenes around him are designed to focus on his misery rather than the hope and safety he is meant to be inspiring. In BvS's montage, you get several scenes. One is where he looks extremely uncomfortable while a crowd of people gets too handsy. The boat pulling scene and the flood scene have him as a distant figure, away from humanity. Same thing with the rocket saving scene, except we see his constipated face. Maybe he's just straining with the weight of it, but it's hard to tell because he's lifted similarly large things with relative ease. And then we see him after he finishes watching the newsreal where people are discussing him (not just in a negative way, but in general).
He just seems thoroughly uncomfortable to be involved. And while this is intentionally serving the theme of the story where Superman is uncomfortable with his perception of being viewed as a God, what it visually conveys is the depiction of a guy stuck doing a job he doesn't care for. If Superman were at a sports event, he would be this dude. He just looks like he's not into it, regardless of whatever is going on internally.
And while the text of the film shows that Superman does save people and want to save people, that's not to say that it doesn't also conflict with itself either. The narrative of both MoS and BvS put into serious contention of whether Superman is good for the world. Pa Kent promotes a distrustful and selfish viewpoint, to the extent that he would suggest Clark let kids die than be a hero. BvS's Knightmare scene implies that Lois' lifeline is the only thing keeping Superman from going full Murderman/Dictatorman. Batman's entire arc is him tackling Superman's danger to the world. It's confusing how the story seems to want you to consider whether Superman's effect on the world is actually a positive one, only to end with a seemingly conclusive note of "Yeah, he is, totally, symbol of hope and all that". And you can argue that that conclusion retroactively disspells those notions, there is still the fact that you, as a viewer, are forced to consider whether Superman is worth all this trouble when he's being depicted as uncomfortable as a superhero through the majority of the film's run time.
And there is more to consider that I don't even want to get into. The editing, like how Superman kills Zod and then the next scene is a jokey scene with the general of him knocking down the drone is moodwhiplash from something that apparently is deeply traumatic to Superman to him basically having gotten over it. Lois and Superman establishing their love in the ruins of Metropolis. Or how, if you compare Superman's reaction (screaming in horror) to when he kills Zod to his reaction to when the Senate explodes (mehface), he looks like he just doesn't care as much. People can bring up their own examples of the dissonance of what they see vs what the film clearly wants them to see in the rest of the thread.
Anyway, I just wanted to do one last MoS/BvS topic before we get our next superhero whipping boy next month. I probably repeated some stuff that's already been discussed before, but Lindsay's video personally offered me a new understanding of the problems that Snyder's superman has.
One of the most interesting phenomenons about the DCEU is how dissonant the viewer's perception of Superman is with the text of the films he's in. Many, many criticism of the DCEU are founded on the idea that this version of Superman is indifferent to being a hero and the suffering of others. Now, there have been a loooot of questionable arguments defending this interpretation of Superman, there is one bone we have to throw to the defenders of the DCEU: This Superman has saved people. Not only that, he's kinda dedicated his life to it. To date:
- He saves kids against his father's wishes as a child.
- The movie opens with him saving people from the oil rig.
- Man of Steel opens with him saving people from the oil rig.
- He saves individuals in multiple instances during Zod's invasion and he saves the world as a whole by defeating Zod.
- The climax of Man of Steel is him saving a family by killing Zod.
- In BvS, there is a montage over newsheads talking while he saves people from a rocket, pulls a boat by chain walking on ice (I would fucking LOVE to know what that particular disaster even was and how Superman tugging on the ship through the ice helps), saves some during a flood or something, and he saves some from a collapsing building on fire.
- He helps those he can when the senate building explodes
- Saves Lois on multiple occasions
- Saves Lex Luthor for some reason
- Saves the world in general again from Doomsday. Multiple times if you count him nearly dying to the nuke that he willingly took, if as something he expected to kill him.
And others, but beyond that, the entirety of both Man of Steel and BvS is largely about Superman struggling to realize his heroism on a level that satisfies him, which he does at the end of MoS, and then sort of again at the end of BvS. And yet people still walk away from the theater with the idea that Superman doesn't save, or atleast that he doesn't care.
How does this happen? I'm hardly the first person to have noticed this, but I could never think of a good way to articulate why this was. And it wasn't until I watched Lindsay's video that it was made clear: The film was unable to frame Superman as someone who gives a shit, despite the text of the film clearly showing he does.
Once I put it in those terms, a lot of the cause of the problems became clear. For example, here is superman in the midst of a attack in the smallville town.
He's telling people to get inside to safety, and you can argue that there isn't much more he can reasonably do for them other than take out the aliens who pose the danger, as he proceeds to do. But they've already been scrambling to find cover for several seconds when he says this, so yeah, thanks for the update superman, 10/10 heroing. But more importantly is how he conveys this crucial information. He doesn't yell this, he just...says it. As if he were talking to someone in front of him, with a normal tone of voice, while his body language is just casually walking toward the other Kyptonians. It's hard to believe anyone even heard him. There's no urgency in his voice, no concern or panic, no body language indicating tension.
Compare this to a similar scene in avengers where Captain America tries to get people to safety from an alien invasion
Now, I cut out some parts that also contribute to the films depiction of heroism like the cop's confusion and panic, as well as Captain America proving his credentials as a protector in front of them right after, because I want to focus solely on body language. Captain America is directly speaking to a specific individual, so you know he's being heard. You don't hear it in the gif, but he's slightly winded, his breathe a bit ragged between sentences. He's very animated pointing to a particular location along with his instructions, showing that he doesn't just wants people 'inside' but he wants them in a specific location where they'll be safest. Not only does this convey that Captain America wants to safe people in a much more visually intense way, but also shows confidence in his competence. He's standing on the car, slightly above them, giving the impression of having higher authority or power. Everything about him communicates he's the hero and knows what he's doing.
You might want to be tempted to frame this as exclusively an actor's problem with Cavill, but it's not that Cavill is just acting unconvincingly concerned, it's that the scenes around him are designed to focus on his misery rather than the hope and safety he is meant to be inspiring. In BvS's montage, you get several scenes. One is where he looks extremely uncomfortable while a crowd of people gets too handsy. The boat pulling scene and the flood scene have him as a distant figure, away from humanity. Same thing with the rocket saving scene, except we see his constipated face. Maybe he's just straining with the weight of it, but it's hard to tell because he's lifted similarly large things with relative ease. And then we see him after he finishes watching the newsreal where people are discussing him (not just in a negative way, but in general).
He just seems thoroughly uncomfortable to be involved. And while this is intentionally serving the theme of the story where Superman is uncomfortable with his perception of being viewed as a God, what it visually conveys is the depiction of a guy stuck doing a job he doesn't care for. If Superman were at a sports event, he would be this dude. He just looks like he's not into it, regardless of whatever is going on internally.
And while the text of the film shows that Superman does save people and want to save people, that's not to say that it doesn't also conflict with itself either. The narrative of both MoS and BvS put into serious contention of whether Superman is good for the world. Pa Kent promotes a distrustful and selfish viewpoint, to the extent that he would suggest Clark let kids die than be a hero. BvS's Knightmare scene implies that Lois' lifeline is the only thing keeping Superman from going full Murderman/Dictatorman. Batman's entire arc is him tackling Superman's danger to the world. It's confusing how the story seems to want you to consider whether Superman's effect on the world is actually a positive one, only to end with a seemingly conclusive note of "Yeah, he is, totally, symbol of hope and all that". And you can argue that that conclusion retroactively disspells those notions, there is still the fact that you, as a viewer, are forced to consider whether Superman is worth all this trouble when he's being depicted as uncomfortable as a superhero through the majority of the film's run time.
And there is more to consider that I don't even want to get into. The editing, like how Superman kills Zod and then the next scene is a jokey scene with the general of him knocking down the drone is moodwhiplash from something that apparently is deeply traumatic to Superman to him basically having gotten over it. Lois and Superman establishing their love in the ruins of Metropolis. Or how, if you compare Superman's reaction (screaming in horror) to when he kills Zod to his reaction to when the Senate explodes (mehface), he looks like he just doesn't care as much. People can bring up their own examples of the dissonance of what they see vs what the film clearly wants them to see in the rest of the thread.
Anyway, I just wanted to do one last MoS/BvS topic before we get our next superhero whipping boy next month. I probably repeated some stuff that's already been discussed before, but Lindsay's video personally offered me a new understanding of the problems that Snyder's superman has.
