With Great Power Comes Pugs

Last night I dreamt my friend, Tim, who's recently moved into a new apartment, was at his old place going through his closet at the back of which he found a live, adult panther and a pug. Both animals tore past him and went out his window to fight the two gorillas and two grizzly bears kept in the neighbour's yard. I felt like the panther was winning by the end of the dream but the pug had been injured in scrambling through the window and ran with a limp.

I may have to see Man of Steel. I do want it to fail because I don't want there to be any more Zack Snyder movies. Hearing him talk at Comic-Con was enough to convince me he's as much of an unimaginative, lazily overconfident, misogynist douchebag as his movies make him seem. But I'm far in the minority as there's a sometimes amusing chorus of people who clearly want Man of Steel succeed, perhaps the most embarrassing being Garth Franklin at Dark Horizons. On June 11th, he wrote;

With 32 reviews counted, Rotten Tomatoes has scored the film 72% and a 7.5/10 average rating. That average rating is actually one of the best of the year so far, and on par with "Star Trek Into Darkness" which scored a higher tomato-meter rating.

Over on Metacritic, it's on 63/100 which is on par with films like "Spring Breakers" and "Les Miserables," and just above recent Summer blockbusters like "Iron Man 3" at 62/100 and "Fast and Furious 6" at 61/100.

That's some rose coloured glasses. One of the best ratings of the year so far? When This is the End scored over 80 before its release? Right.

Of course, Man of Steel has fallen to 57% at Rotten Tomatoes, most of the reviews confirming my impression from the trailer that the film would be self-serious and dumb, a particularly lame combination. Though I'm noticing comments on articles about the movie are generally positive. As a reaction just against my own schadenfreude, I'm compelled to see it to give it a fair shake.

Though the positive comments about the movie have generally focused on how much it kicked ass. This one from someone named Josh on the Dark Horizons review gave me the sense the movie may have gotten Superman wrong in a way very typical of 21st century western culture;

Superman is not a protector in this movie. He's a weapon of mass destruction with good intentions. He doesn't exhibit the slightest concern for anyone but those closest to him, and makes no effort to avoid or minimize collateral damage. I could excuse the murder, if they'd made me believe for a second that this guy gave a shit about the sanctity of life. Instead it's just a button at the end of an action sequence with five seconds of denouement, and then its quips and cutesiness.