Does Man of Steel Exploit Disasters Like 9/11? (SPOILERS)

[KalElFan]

Man of Steel's Monday box office numbers are in and they
were 1.15 times that of Spider-Man's first Monday, a movie
that went on to gross $403M domestic. It raises the prospect
that Man of Steel could defy all expectations and become
the #1 movie of 2013. That tends to generate more buzz
and discussion everywhere, including the question in the
subject line. It's from an article in Variety and here's the
link:

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/does-man-of-steel-exploit-disasters-like-911-1200497860/

And here's an article and two source site links that estimated the
death and destruction in Metropolis:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jordanzakarin/man-of-steel-destruction-death-analysis

http://satblog.methaz.org/?p=1404/

http://hurricane.methaz.org/tracking/mos_oped.pdf

The latter is presented as an "editorial" from Perry White. :-)

My answer to the question is a big "No," but in some ways
this kind of controversy and publicity may spur even more
people to go see the movie and decide for themselves.

Metropolis is a fictional city in a fictional world, known best
for its association with Superman, a fictional character in an
SF story. There are so many layers upon layers of Definitely
Not Exploiting 9/11 here that it ought to make the No answer
obvious IMO, with one caveat that I think is actually a plus.
It's that science fiction stories have a long tradition of trying
to be relevant by addressing current issues in our society.
Metaphors are routinely present, but often most subject to
individual interpretation. So sure, one can see similarities.

That's just as true for movies made years before 9/11, like
Independence Day. Clearly, ID couldn't have been exploiting
9/11 in 1996 because it hadn't happened yet. In fact, Man
of Steel is to a large extent based on the 1978 and 1980 movie
premise in which Christopher Reeve played Superman, Margot
Kidder played Lois Lane, and General Zod was the villain from
Krypton played by Terence Stamp. About 35 years later, we
now have a reimagining of sorts, condensing the two movies
into one with some very significant other improvements. It's
resulted in not just the best Superman movie ever in the
opinion of many core fans and moviegoers, but also the best
Superhero movie.

"No, that was Avengers," the Marvel fans might say, or "No,
that was The Dark Kight" the Batman fans might say. The
thing is, Superman preceded both Batman (by a few years)
and anything Marvel has by about 25 years. Superman 1978
was the first Superhero movie to get on the box office map
in any significant way, and it went way beyond that into the
Top 10 all-time and borderline Top 5 depending how one
counted it back in the day.

The alien context of Superman was there from the very first
page of the first comic in 1938. The story is unlike Batman,
Spider-Man and most other human or human-turned-mutant
heroes in that respect, and it was so more than 70 years
before 9/11.

Can Superman, the most iconic of heroes and of modern
American mythology, be fairly criticized for updating itself
decades later, or for doing so because johnny-come-lately
whippersnappers have tried to horn in on his impenetrably
iconic status in the interim? :-)

To each his/her own and if they want to do that so be it, but
I think the iconic status of Superman and the Superman story
make Man of Steel an even greater achievement. It received
an A CinemaScore (a survey of opening night moviegoers) in
both the under-18 and over-50 demo. The movie is working
very well for both the oldtime fans and the new ones.

It may be that the Man of Steel sequel, to be released as
soon as 18 months from now in December 2014, will focus
in part on the ramifications of the destruction, First Contact
with aliens and so on. Many expect it will. But in the Silver
Age when Superman's powers soared to virtual god-like levels,
he'd have had all of Metropolis rebuilt in less than a half an
hour. Or gone back in time to undo everything. :-) This 2013
version of the story has him powered-down from those levels,
but by the end of Man of Steel he's already a savior of Earth
and I'm expecting he'd do a lot to help after that.

So if Man of Steel 2 comes back with some "can't trust those
mutant heroes no matter who they are" storylines, where they
make Superman some pariah to all of Metropolis or Earth, I'm
complaining. :-) That'd be moronic based on what we saw. A
concern about what may be next, and Lex Luthor launching
into action to do what he thinks needs to be done, sure. That
could be the makings of an iconic struggle of sorts Part Deux. :-)

[KalElFan]

Just adding some additional SPOILER-including material
and also replacing a duplication of rec.arts.sf.superman
in the original post (rec.arts.movies.current-films added).
Original post quoted for ramc-f.

"KalElFan" wrote in message
news:b2c223...@mid.individual.net...

Now the additional material and again SPOILERS as warned
in the thread title.

S
P
O
I
L
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S

Consider this. For anyone under 18 in the U.S. and much of
the Western world and indeed world, 9/11 is also iconic in a
very bad way. Especially since it's led to a seemingly never-
ending war on terror, and tight security, and restrictions in
liberties and so on. Perhaps even more looming for the
young is the prospect of nuclear or other mass destruction
terrorism, and yes that level of threat is depicted in many
movies these days often non-SF ones. Because of context
and its use of metaphor, SF can enable a more detached
and objective treatment of the issues of our time, as it has
in times past. I'd argue that's part of what makes it Not
Exploitive.

In Man of Steel, the main villain is General Zod, a superhuman
military leader from Superman's destroyed home planet Krypton.
He arrives with a small number of his cohorts who have also
survived because they'd been banished to the Phantom Zone.
They're intent on rebuilding a New Krypton on Earth, with the
help of a "Codex" that contains the genetic profile of all future
Kryptonians yet to be born, as mapped out by what their very
dystopian society had become before it was destroyed.

To achieve their objective, Zod & Company must first "terraform"
the planet Earth to make it amenable to these New Kryptonians.
Humans who survive the terraforming process might be able to
live with special breathers or the like, but the terraforming
process will end human life as we know it and quite possibly
take the human race to the brink of extinction.

Also part of the scenario, during the final battle between Zod
and Superman, is that the key part of the Codex still exists within
Superman and Superman does not have to be alive to access it.
So even though Zod alone remains, he could perhaps reconsititute
the terraforming effort, access the Codex, and create New Krypton.
Even if he couldn't, as the sole Superhuman he could rule Earth.
Zod announces it's a life and death battle between the two of
them. So, as bad as the destruction is or may be, a sector of
Metropolis in ruins is small potatoes relative to the threat posed
to billions and indeed all life on Earth.

If one were looking for metaphors in that scenario, rather than
9/11 per se or alone, try those aforementioned doomsday-type
threats after "Consider this" four paragraphs up. Not capital-D
Doomsday as in another Superman villain, but Our Planet and
its doomsday scenarios or close. For example some Religion A
crazy nut job regime with multiple nukes uses those to wipe out
Religion B folk and install a region or even a planet of Religion
B folk only. Sometimes, the stakes are so high that violence
and collateral damage are unavoidable to prevent much worse.

Metaphors and relevance aside, MOS's scenario itself is such
that it can't be effectively nitpicked. There is the overall nitpick
that "they shouldn't have written it that way," which is an opinion
and can't be challenged other than to point out it was not any
particular moviegoer-with-an-opinion's movie to make. This is
the movie Warner Bros. and everyone else associated with the
project decided to make, and I think it works beautifully. We'll
see how Man of Steel's sequel follows up.

[Bill Steele]

In article <b2c223...@mid.individual.net>,
"KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:

> does-man-of-steel-exploit-disasters-like

"any contemporary American blockbuster offering up a spectacle of mass
destruction is a 9/11 movie."

Well, then we'd have to include Godzilla movies. (Actually those are
more about earthquakes and typhoons than 9/11...)

There's a deeper subtext here. Superheroes came into being in the 1940s,
when the world had big problems that ordinary humans couldn't solve
right away, so we enjoyed fantasies about superbeings who could solve
them for us.

After WWII everything was going to be great. We were going to have
flying cars. Superhero comics faded, and the industry turned to westerns
and romance comics; Johnny Thunder became a gunslinger.

1960s we had problems again: Cold War, Vietnam. the Silver age began.
Now we've got even bigger problems, and superheroes have risen from
comics to blockbuster movies.

Maybe the next stage is that the superheroes themselves become symbols
of the forces beyond our control. The big forces that are fighting each
other today are killing a lot of innocent bystanders and messing up the
landscape. Maybe Man of Steel isn't about 9/11, it's about Afghanistan
and Mynmaar. And Congress.

And I can't help thinking of Abdul Abulbul Amir vs.Ivan Skavinsky
Skivar.

[AC]

All movies exploit their subjects.

--
AC