By Matt Fleming and Jarrod Jones. This is the ANTI-MONITOR podcast, where we have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal geeks. This week, Birdy & Jarrod expound on their feelings concerning Zack Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’, a film so colossally disappointing and frighteningly bad that it spawned a certain website you’re reading right now, this minute. This is a detail-heavy one, folks. Bring some coffee.
But first, the boys dwell on the latest trailer for HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’, discuss their predictions for its sixth season, and lightly touch on how dull that fifth season actually was. It’s a veritable fanboy love-in this week.
As always be wary for any spoilers throughout, and please enjoy.
ANTI-MONITOR: MATT — Ever since Christopher Nolan rebooted the Batman film franchise in 2005, Warner Bros. and DC Comics have been convinced that moviegoers crave gritty realism from their fantastical superhero films. Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel is the unfortunate product of this misguided thinking.
The film takes its stunning visuals and desaturates the vitality from the picture, leaving a dim and grey world that is filled with unmitigated disaster the moment Superman stands revealed. In this world, the last son of Krypton can brazenly kill his foe, only to then kiss his girlfriend and go to work with a smile. This movie seemed destined to give Superman the epic story fans have desired for decades, but instead it loses focus on what makes Clark Kent a shining light in such a dark world. Now we’re stuck with a “cinematic universe” that takes itself too seriously, while simultaneously attempting to sell Jeeps and Doritos. Thanks a lot, Snyder.
ANTI-MONITOR: JARROD — For people who know me well, Man of Steel remains one of my least favorite movies, but perhaps that’s owed to my bias as a life-long Superman fan. As someone who has faithfully dived head-first into nearly every single ongoing Superman title that’s been put to print since the early Nineties, Man of Steel was a frightening reminder of how inherently wrong-minded those days were for the comics industry. It’s needlessly mopey, shockingly violent, and eerily dogmatic in its narrow world view.
From the director of 300 comes a contemporary reboot of Superman that demystifies a beloved icon in an attempt to be more palatable to the wider world. In effect, Zack Snyder made Superman far more alien to us than he’d ever been before. Which, just in case you’re keeping score, is beside the point.
CONSENSUS — Zack Snyder’s Superman movie betrays the core concepts of the character by drawing a line between people who want hope in a story about the world’s greatest superhero and those who don’t. — 3.5 out of 10
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Check out our take on ‘Superman Returns’, here!
