How It Should Have Ended: Man Of Steel

Inane Battles of the Internet: Man of Steel

Like being a snot chef or romantic masturbater, there's little acclaim to be won in winning a fight on the internet. Maybe that attitude is a bit like ridiculing a jogger for spending an hour a day running in a circle though. If they were trying to get somewhere, they'd be driving; joggers do it for the exercise. Maybe the united trolls and comment warriors aren't attempting to delineate their dominance over fictional characters so much as to simply sharpen their rhetorical claws, feel the rush of conflict, or spit out some excess bile over discovering another one of life's infinite, sucking orifices.

As most of you know, I didn't like Man of Steel. That doesn't mean it's a bad movie. A reviled film can be perfectly good. A cinematic disaster can be loved. We could journey down the rabbit hole of just what exactly makes a movie good or bad, but it would be a waste of time.

That Man of Steel squanders the promise of a Superman movie makes it bad. You can't cite sources on a movie being awful, but if I could, I'd mention Chris Sims' "On My Planet, The 'S' Is For Sucks," Andrew Wheeler's "Choice And The Moral Universe Of 'Man Of Steel,'" and Tom Scioli's "I Teach You The Superman."

There's also Rude's bit, RDGStout's words on it, Dave Willis' Shortpacked!, Bully Says a few words about parallels with 9/11 and a thousand other nerds talking about it, so go where you want with it.

This puppy is over 6,000 words. In addition, though I don't think I need to say it, after the jump...

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.

Shoot The Doctor, Then Throw Batman Into the Sun

There's a trope, whether it's on TV Tropes or not, called "Just Shoot The Doctor." You see, in Doctor Who, the titular character causes all manner of trouble for the variety of militaristic aliens (The Doctor's an alien too, so they're not all bad). It would be far easier for the Daleks, Sontarans, and Cybermen of the universe to just shoot the insufferable Doctor the moment he emerges from his little blue box.

But they don't. Why? Because the universe of Doctor Who does not work that way. There are in fact, quite a few writers who work very hard to make sure that universe expands according to a set of rules which start with and sit below that one. As with every other piece of entertainment, the creative team are a pantheon of gods, defining the hero's method of triumph by crafting every atom of the conflict from the ground up.

So, like Captain Picard staring down Armus on Vagra II, we find our selves face-to-face with the skin of evil that is Man of Steel. (Spoilers after this point)