Man of Steel Kris Notes

io9's Rob Bricken did a great job of talking about the most memorable parts of Man of Steel. Like him, I saw MOS and didn't particularly like it. I also took eight pages of notes as I watched it. I'd scan and post them, but I wrote them in the dark. In my own handwriting. And I called Jor-El "Luthor" a couple of times, which probably says a bit too much about my psychology. 

Anyway, in the tradition of The Hulk and Iron Man, enjoy Man of Steel Kris Notes

FYI: the notes are made during the movie. Italics are used to denote something that I penned in after seeing the whole film.

Previews
RIPD:Guess this is still on.

Turbo: Is that snail Ryan Reynolds, or am I just hearing RIPD?
Is that Samuel L. Jackson?
I like that Dreamworks is sticking with the tried-and-true formula of: A [animal] can't [do] [dream], but then does!

Pacific Rim: Yes and still yes!
They're actually calling them "Kaiju." Fuck yeah.
2 pilots thing. Good hook.
Ron Fuckmothering Pearlman!
Using Battleships as weapons
----Tell Jaha "No." No, Jaha.

Lone Ranger: You tried.

White House Down:
Don't know how cyberattack scenario plays after the Prism leaks. Who am I kidding? No one cares.

I would not list 2012 as a movie I had done to get people to watch my movie. 
It's not 100% serious, which might be for the best. A buddy-buddy cop movie where one of the buddies is The President of The United States is a pretty fun idea.

World War Z: *sigh* still the same movie as before

Man of Steel
Rusted metal as a sign of Krypton's age. Fascinating topic of discussion about the perception of virtue and wisdom of age and older civilizations. Dare I say, it remarks on the corruption intrinsic to Golden Ages?

Thank Rao Kal-El is still born on Krypton. Except he's being birthed into a birthing matrix or something or is than image. Yeah, it was a Kryptonian Pin-Art sonogram. BTW, hate stories where Kal-El gestates in the pod but is born on Earth.

"Jeez Lara. This baby looks an awful lot like General Zod." I did not realize at the time how incredibly off the mark this joke was. 

Environmental message about energy. 

Jesus, Krypton. What did you guys do to your moon?

FAST start. 

"I, Zod, now rule Krypton."
"You and what lightning gun?"
*ZAP!*

Ah, yes, the Jor-El/Zod thing is a classic and I like it.

Nice way to broach those eugenics issues. Russel Crowe pivots like a pro. He's like a condemnation tank with a 180 judgment turret. 

I know it's Russel Crowe and he's pretty good at fighting and everything, but I don't like that Jor-El some kind of scientist ninja. Terry mentioned that if Jor-El hated the caste system, he might've studied martial arts in order to be a Kryptonian renaissance man, which makes sense.

Krypton is pretty fuckin' fancy. I like that Jor-El is basically riding a horse in a tank battle, but it makes Krypton exotic so whatevs. 

Jesus, how to blind people take notes? Computers or other people.

Despite the age of Krypton, there doesn't seem to be a unified aesthetic for the technology.

How'd the baby get from a vagina to a pond? Skull what?

Carbon "S" and the baby-beam. Jesus, their fuckin' moon. Is dragonfly--jezus--a Krypton thing from the comics? Don't think so.

Earth. (Earth not to scale)

Lara digging in her heels here slows the movie down, but I think it's appropriate, considering she just shoved this baby out of her vagina. Yeah, and how did that conversation go? The one where Jor-El convinces her to have sex without a space condom and have a real baby? "Will it hurt, Jor-El?" "Completely painless, Lara; I won't feel a thing."

MacGuffin-to-baby transfer complete.

And how messed up is it that the only homage to the Donner films is probably gonna be this baby penis? I'm looking around and no one seems to think this is weird.

Gunships. Heh. It looks like it really is an Apocalypse. Now.

But seriously, apocalyptic revolutions were never this toyetic.

Ha! Jor-El shoots first.  But jesus, Zod's genetically-bred soldiers are shit.

But...Zod still ends up in the Phantom Zone, right? Right?
please tell me there's still a Phantom Zone.

So the natural birth thing is kind of a big deal. Way to make Kryptonian culture alien and explain a lot of the weird shit we've seen so far.

And Zod gets his ass kicked by a scientist?

So we know Shepard could take Jor-El. Good. Good.

Yeah, I bet that reconditioning works perfectly on Zod. #eyeroll

Jeez, Kryptonian bailiffs suck. Terry mentioned that the Kryptonian criminal caste were probably more pliant than Zod. Which, seeing as how they're probably all jailed as infants and the Phantom Zone is full of babies in body condoms, I couldn't really disagree.

Zod is a bad general, a bad soldier, and a bad fighter. He's fucking awful.

Wow. I'm just now realizing that is a massive, red sun.
Kito? Not Brainiac? Thought they would have at least set that up. 

Seems like this apocalypse could've been avoided by taking more energy out of the planet's core. 

Fishing boat? OH GOD--FLASHBACKS!
OTOH, not wasting time getting to the super-stuff. 

S-buttons on kid-Superman's shirt? Really?

I'm not cool with Superman stealing clothes.

Stop sign when the bus crashes is a nice touch. Makes it a bit more realistic. 

I'm laughing as this bus sinks because we just saw they have those escape hatches on the top. Speaking of evolution and whatnot, this might be a busful of Kansas kids that might not be missed. Evolutionarily. Just sayin'.

How did fatty even fall out? 

Superman: Aquaman the Movie.

I bet Kevin Costner doesn't shoot first. >_>
 What a dick. Diiiiiiiiicck.

I'm crying right now, not because Clark is learning what is origins are, but because I'm thinking of the first six words of All-Star Superman. 

"You are the answer to 'are we alone in the universe.'"
Jesus, Kevin Costner, there's punctuation in that sentence and you didn't say any of it.
 
"...to stand proud in front of the human race."
...or to kneel before Zod. That's also a possiblity.

Clark's a waiter now
There's always this guy in movies.
So he quits over a mug of beer?
Wow, that was pretty fucking petty with that logging truck mister El.

Hey, Lois!
Channeling Batman there, Clark.
"...writer's block if I'm not wearing a flack jacket" Audience, this is Lois. Lois, this is Audience. I think you're gonna hit it off.

See, this is great because Lois and Clark meet because they're doing the exact same thing.
And she's only in danger because of him. It's been ridiculous that Lois only gets into these deadly situations after Superman starts showing up. 

Nice use of the heat vision.

"I can do things other people can't." Jesus, there are some bad lines of dialog in here. You guys consider, "Close your eyes?" Seriously, him hiding his identity has been a big thing in this movie and, great job for getting him to abandon that when it comes to saving someone's life. Good job. But he really didn't have to. He could just have her close her eyes and she could peek or even if she didn't, she could know some crazy shit happened in there.

It's interesting that Lois knows who Clark is from the start of Superman. Cool idea. It sidesteps the issue of why the world's best reporter can't tell that the guy sitting next to her is fucking Superman.

This is some shiny exposition. 
"For 100,000 years, we had great civilization, and great fuckin' hats."

eJor-El apparently spent his time on the Kryptonian USB stick making kick-ass Pin Art powerpoints and designing creepy-ass suits for his son.

Superman is good because his space dad says so.
Clark, you don't have to do everything your dad says. You can put some pants on that thing. 
It's cool.
Pants are cool.

Ugh. Superman now joins the ranks of superheroes with a "learning how to use my superpowers" montage. Meant to write "execrable  learning how to use my powers montage."

HATE that his morality comes from space.
HATE reactive superflying from The Matrix.

Pete Ross works at iHop.

'97. Is that the year Jonathan Kent dies in the comics? Nope. The death I was thinking about was in '93. Jonathan Kent dies a lot.

I like that Lois knows who Clark is.

Costner dies for the DOG?! No.
Okay, considering that they went this direction with it, this is a hell of a way to play it and it's bringing a lot of the other decisions they've made together. 

This movie is finally bringing itself together.

Holy shit, he's actually kind of handsome when he smiles.

I thought that Lois was suspended and then she's changing toner. I've lost track of how much time has passed here.

I'll add "shitter than Jor-El at A/V" presentations to the list of Zod's faults.
RSS feeds? Really? They're hacking the blogs? With what? YouTube videos? Proprietary Kryptonian video format?

Lois, good luck and good night.

He's Pete Ross. I'm glad he's a good guy.

Alternating messages of changing the world and the world being too big to change.

"I'm not sure the people of Earth can be either." Ugh, these lines.

No symbol on the back of the cape.

I like Lois, but Clark's less impressive. BUT I like Clark because Lois likes Clark.

Clark loves Lois.

Zod's troops are covered. No yellow sun. So are they superpowered?
Lois volunteers to go along. Well, Kal, your odds of getting out of this alive just doubled.

Kal! Kal! Ask them what their plan is. That's the first step to stopping alien invasions.

Kryptonians sure do speak a lot of English. 

A what engine?
"A world engine"
And that's a bad thing, right Egon?
"So Krypton can live again on Earth."
Right. Bad thing. Important safety tip guys: Do not start the world engine.

Wow, I so wish I was watching Terminator 2 right now. That's not a knock on Man of Steel, I always wish I was watching Terminator 2.

Jesus! Can Kryptonians not take care of moons?!

Find another planet Zod. Jesus. Seriously Zod, you need those baby Kryptonian Phantom Zone prisoners to fucking review your evil plan.

Wait. Why did you even bring Lois?

Jor-El, did Perry White teach you to talk folks through emergency egress?

But seriously, Jor, you are in the running for best AI ever. And while Jor-El staying so long was a surprise I didn't like at first, it was just because I expected him to vanish after the opening act. He works. Besides, if you have Russel Crowe, you use Russel Crowe. If I had Russel Crowe in  my movie, I'd have him playing extras in every scene his character wasn't in. I don't particularly like/dislike Russel Crowe, but I know he's top shelf acting.

Superman: "Dad, was your plan for me to kill all humans?"
Jor-El: "You were going to be a bridge."
James Kirk: "That's kind of vague, Jor-El."

Zod! You gotta go flippin' trucks through people's houses? Not mature.

That armor can't be doing Zod any good.

Superman, quit monologuing about the flashback from twenty minutes ago.
--or just--
--watch Zod fly away. That's cool too.

Okay. Just fight Lady-Zod and Lur-Ch then.
I have no idea if these guys are resilient because of their space armor or superpowers.

Not the iHop!

Lady-Zod either doesn't understand evolution well or understands it well enough to make ironic jokes about it.

I know a lot of people don't like it, but the product placement is grounding this movie. If I say nothing else about this movie, it feels really, really real. Moreso than any movie I can recall.

He actually needs to say something coming out of this Sears.
Something to get the military to know that his first priority is helping the people who just got hurt.

"This man is not our enemy." Such bad dialog for such well-framed scenes and moments.

How does this guy have a space-German accent? 

More baby penis. Really guys?

Zod: "Does Kal have to be alive?"
German Kryptonian: "No."
Zod: "..."
Zod: "...Sorry for the pause. I just remembered a really funny, really long joke."

No matter what else I say about this movie's dialog, "Release the world engine" is a boss line.

Metropolis destruction porn scene. The realism of this movie is starting to work against it. There's nothing appealing about watching this.

And Zod joins the fraternity of laiens ominously descending over a metropolitan skyline with a...oh...through the Earth.

Good to know that the schizophrenic Kryptonian design elements include Reaper tech.

Ugh, "What's terraforming for the stupid people" moment.

Of course she's coming along, she's Lois Lane.

Impressive scale of damage on Metropolis. Well, not "impressive," "sickening."

WHY WERE YOU RUNNING TOWARDS THE DEATH RAY, PERRY?!

 It is pretty early to evoke 9/11.

Superman versus silver tentacled thing is a pretty dumb fight. 
Superman, punch it harder!
He did punch it harder!

Is Lombard the asshole from the Dawn of the Dead remake? No. He's CJ from the Dawn of the Dead remake.

With the tripod lift and drop pattern, maybe Perry can wait for the rubble to lift up, then pull what's-her-name out. That would be cool and--no, they're just gonna wait for death.

Have you tried turning the space-cradle-rocket off and back on again?

"Krypton had it's chance." Cold, bro.
Way to observe the Prime Directive with laser eyes though.

Emil Hamilton fixes it with SCIENCE!

Superman, fly harder!
He did it! He flew harder! *massive eye roll*

Jesus, Jersey City never looked this bad.

He didn't say, "Kneel before Zod."
But he did say, "The greater good."
"...the greater good..."

Is Zod gonna off himself?
Oh. No. They're gonna do that shockwave charge thing from The Matrix.
Doesn't mean anything but a bad, indeterminable fight scene.

Supes' blaise face does not reflect the fairness this fight scene. Hope for a second he was going to ace Zod in a stand-up fight. No such chance.

Kal, don't just hang there getting your degree in fucking optics and architecture. THE BUILDING IS COLLAPSING PUNCH ZOD!

Clark, mind the humans.

It's nice to see the "thrown through multiple buildings" bit in live action/CGI.
It's pretty, even if the implications are...whoah. 

Nonono--

That was a shit. Ending.
Fuck.
This.
Jesus, someone to my left is crying. Well, good for you.

"Kinda hot" bit. Kinda lame.

But there's no...archetype for him to aspire to for him to wear that cape.

The globe is inside the building? C'mon!

At least that was a nice, upbeat line to end this grim affair on. WTH?