Brad of Steel

or,

The Zack Snyder Complex

"GUYS I LOVE MY FAMILY OK KIDS FAMILY BABIES KIDS FAMILY LOVE" - Brad Pitt [photo via an usweekly 'here's a trailer for a movie, yall' article]

There are many things one can fault the very loose World War Z adaptation Brad Pitt has finally shrugged his shoulders at and surrendered to inevitable, inexplicable profit-and-sequel-generating theatrical release for, a brief list of which follows:

1      it is a zombie movie rated pg-13

(1a   I get that when a film costs $200 million to make it has to be pg-13, but if your movie is about the zombie apocalypse maybe it just can’t be the summer tentpole you might wish it could be. Just saying.)

2      a theoretically major character falls over and accidentally shoots himself in the face in a moment only a fart noise away from self-parody

3      another character has her hand hacked off, and the camera proceeds to avoid the wound in ever-more-hilarious-and-maddening Austin Powers-style ways (see point 1)

4      Brad Pitt’s film children—“o hay dad so I know there are zombies killing [but not devouring; see point 1] most of humanity but I WANT MY BLANKET I WANT MY BLANKET MY BLANKET AAAAAAA”

5      In the last third, where they visit the budgetary black hole that is Cardiff and it turns into a pretty standard zombie movie, the likewise standard ~brutal killz~ Brad dishes out all happen off-camera with the ‘Indiana Jones punching a Nazi’ sound effect (see again point 1). It’s a small thing, but a good, juicy smashing-a-melon-with-a-hammer noise would go a long way towards making the entire third act feel satisfying.

All that aside, I found myself enjoying World War Z almost despite my-and-itself, because it’s really fun. Good? No, certainly not. Not as a zombie movie, at least. But it’s a light summer romp with big, impressive action sequences and brisk pacing; the plot duly resolves itself, seemingly advancing with its own confident energy. Given that no less than five people have writing credits, that’s something of a minor miracle—or perhaps no surprise at all; writing-by-committee may not provide coherent vision nor striking artistic statements, but usually neither do $200-million-budgeted movies, Batman aside.

That Nolan reference is not accidental, and not just a rule-proving-exception. The other day, I was trying to figure out why I liked World War Z even as I recognized its many flaws, and I realized something kind of shocking:

Man of Steel, a movie depicting Superman’s origin story and first big adventure, was infinitely more horrific than World War Z, a movie about the literal end of the world.

Zack Snyder has a very particular style, and like most artists he only becomes more like himself as he, well, matures isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. Develops. The terrified, awestruck shakycam and the icy-instagram palette and the grim, explosive bombast were perfect for, say, the Dawn of the Dead remake, but nonsensical for Superman. I’ve seen various people critique Man of Steel as essentially what every 13-year-old boy in the world “would totally do if I were Superman”, only saving the couple people he knows personally and actually likes while throwing trains at his stupid, boring hometown, God, mom, I’m like, Superman, okay, and punching The Bad Mans so hard they like fly through a building full of screaming innocent civilians pow crash argh BOOM crunch pow. 

Pictured: HEROISM [photo via an entertainmentweekly 'box office preview']

David Goyer, Christopher Nolan’s screenwriter-of-choice, has said in most of his Man of Steel interviews that the point of the movie was to depict “what it would be like if Superman really existed, in our world. How people would react, etc” (a paraphrasing). Leaving aside how boneheaded it is to put the primary-colored symbol of Truth, Justice, and the American Way into a ‘gritty and realistic’ world, the answer he came up with seems to be that if Superman ‘existed in our world’, he wouldn’t be Superman, but a cape-wearing sociopath with a puréed fossilized baby skull lasered into his genes and no respect nor concern for the lives of mere mortals.

There essentially is no ‘Clark Kent’ in Man of Steel’s version of the universe, just Superman when he’s not wearing the suit. In large part this is down to the film's characterization and treatment of Kevin 'Not My Real Dad' Costner as Jonathan Kent: rather than the basically good, noble, and kind man who teaches his son that it is one's responsibility to use one's gifts to help one's fellows as best one can, he is presented as a basically reactionary, terrified misanthrope so concerned about 'fitting in' that he forces said son to watch him die a ridiculous and easily preventible death, just to prove some incomprehensible point about... something. Goyer, Nolan, and Snyder's Superman is a traumatized outsider, an eternal victim frightened of his own potential (and rightly so, to be honest, based on how he resolves his fight with Zod), rather than a representation of 'what is best in us,' an ideal to be aspired to.

The one appearance the classical Clark--the doofy, sweet kid from Smallville, Kansas--makes is in the final scene, and even there he’s a cute in-joke shared between Superman and Lois: “hahaha, wouldn’t it be silly if I were a human being with human flaws and emotions.” The Man of Steel Superman is unreservedly and overtly the version of the character Tarantino has David Carradine present at the end ofthe second Kill Bill movie: a smirking alien demigod who sees us as helpless worms, to be protected or destroyed as suits his unfathomable whim. Zack Snyder has made Lex Luthors of us all.

Me, watching Man of Steel [photo via a businessinsider article about the 2nd trailer]

 Contrast Man of Steel’s deeply offputting and alienating ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Kal’ tone to the very traditional Hollywood ‘Ostensibly Everyday Normal White Dude Fixes the Apocalypse so he can Hug his Kids’ story Damon Lindelof turned World War Z into, and the relationship between this year’s biggest selfconscious blockbusters becomes clear: while both films misinterpret their source material to an absurd degree, World War Z remembered that people go to big, expensive summer movies to see pretty people do exciting and impossible things—in other words, to have fun. And extremely stupid though it may be, ‘humanity’s last, best hope’ tripping as he steps off a plane and blowing his own head off is also extremely fun to watch.