[Movies] How is Man of Steel only 56% T-Mete on Rotten Tomatoes?

[Super Friendly Kitty Cat]

I was going over critics on Rotten Tomatoes and noticed that Man of Steel was only at 56%?! I went to the opening and I freaking loved the movie, at the end when the Credits rolled people got up and cheered... I don't see how it got 56% in my opinion.

I somehow deluded myself thinking "After Earth" was going to be good, or at least good enough. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.

People actually clapped after the movie ended.

[Molyneux]

if you go check out other movies you will see most reviewers give bad reviews if the movie is pure entertainment, if it has nothing to say about politics, liberalism or some anti religious stance it wont get a good review. Seeing as 99% of us go to movies to be entertained, I ignore all reviewers nowadays and look at what the people say.

I don't know what you're talking about. You just completely made that up.

More on topic: The critics on RT are simply more discerning than most people. Yes, they give better reviews for movies that have depth; movies that are more cerebral.

The majority of people will watch a movie or a show because there's violence, sex, explosions, etc. It's why directors like Michael Bay continue to be so successful. I see people make fun of him all the time, yet when a movie of his comes out everyone is flocking to see it.

I mostly agree with all the scores on RT. In fact, it's hard to find one that I think isn't close to being entirely accurate. The ones with bad scores often have some combination of the following: Bad actors, empty plot, cliche-ridden, unnecessarily long, or is not even close to thought-provoking. A lot of it is dull garbage produced for the masses that don't want to have to think about anything if at all possible.

[EyelessCrow]

It was okay, Star Trek 2 was better.

While I loved both movies, Star Trek 2 was immensely predictable, I mean I dunno if I am dumb for saying that because I never watched the original Star Treks but I am pretty sure it stayed away from anything in the past aside from...yeah...but through the whole movie I was refraining from ruining it for my cousins by being THAT guy by saying..."oh geez I wonder what's gonna happen next...OOOOH boy lookie there."

That said I still enjoyed the story, characters, and the overall movie but I enjoyed Man of Steel more and was wondering who paid off the critics to pan the movie through the whole thing

[The Ogdru Jahad]

I liked the movie the only thing I hated about it was Superman killing Zod, I am off the old school and for me Superman doesn't kill.

I think that while the "no kill" superman is a good concept for the comics. I think they kinda made a huge deal about it with the batman trilogy that it would basically be the same thing again with superman. So to mix it up and make more possible story outlets they let him kill Zod. Smart.

[mmines]

Imdb rating is a 7.9 and rotten tomatoes audience score was an 82%. That should tell you something. To me critics giving something a good rating on rotten tomatoes tells me it's probably a boring movie. Not all the ones they rate good are like this but I would say a majority of them are. A lot of the critics seem to have a problem with exactly what the audience loved (I assume that's what they loved about it).

[Godric]

Because Rotten tomatoes is full of shit.

[prwraith]

I'm sorry but superman needs to evolve as a character we expect deeper choices with lasting negative impacts and positive impacts these days.

We don't expect superman to be a giant carebear who saves everyone because he huggles them to death.

[endersblade]

Everyone has their own opinions, and I kind of giggle at the shallow-minded people that read critic reviews. You need someone ELSE to tell YOU if you're going to enjoy a movie? You need someone else to tell you why or why not? Sheesh.

After Earth, Star Trek 2, Superman, I absolutely loved all three of them. They were superbly entertaining. Were they riddled with plot holes? Probably. But I go to movies to, you know, be entertained, not look for flaws.

Again, everyone has their own tastes. I personally think Waterworld was an outstanding movie, and it's on my rotation of movies I typically watch every year. But it got terrible reviews, and lots of people thought it sucked. Their opinion, and they are welcome to it. That's the great thing about having a mind that thinks for itself - you can have your own opinions, and not have to have people lead you by the hand.

[Lastlivingsoul]

Superman is a lame concept with no sense of danger or suspense. He's immortal, he's jesus, prey to super jesus bull crap.

Christopher Reeve's childish shy guy superman made the character almost tolerable but anyone else in the tights comes off as an absolute douche. His Clark Kent was worth 10 Supermans.

Even if Zod is in the picture the amount of crap that that superman pulls out his ass keeps his character thinking intolerably linear. No cleverness, no problem solving just sraight "I pick things up and put them down" idiocy.

The directors are known for heavy handed symbolism so if someone calls them out on it don't be surprised if for all that effort the ending is overly melodramatic. For God's Sake the moment a man puts his underwear outside his pair of Spandex tights the "S" on your chest stands for "Stupid." You can't expect us to take that kind of crazy seriously in a modern world.

Honestly I think 56% is all too generous. Be lucky they gave it that.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Critics like to come off as different and deep. They dislike movies if they're pure entertainment. For a movie to get high ratings, it needs to have "depth" in their minds.

Also, who cares? If you like the movie, what does it matter if some overzealous little "critic" thinks about said movie? Same with everything. It's subjective, only critics seem to be completely unaware of that word.

[mizeri]

i thought it was interesting he had such issues with 2 people getting heat visioned but what about all those people in those buildings that were collapsing as they were destroying the entire city fighting each other lol

---------- Post added 2013-06-29 at 11:26 PM ----------

I liked the movie the only thing I hated about it was Superman killing Zod, I am off the old school and for me Superman doesn't kill.

superman killed before, he killed the zod in super man 2 by crushing his hand then he fell to his death and so did lois, George reeves superman killed the guy that found out who he was so he took him to top of a mountain and left him there and he died trying to climb down.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Everyone has their own opinions, and I kind of giggle at the shallow-minded people that read critic reviews. You need someone ELSE to tell YOU if you're going to enjoy a movie? You need someone else to tell you why or why not? Sheesh.

After Earth, Star Trek 2, Superman, I absolutely loved all three of them. They were superbly entertaining. Were they riddled with plot holes? Probably. But I go to movies to, you know, be entertained, not look for flaws.

Again, everyone has their own tastes. I personally think Waterworld was an outstanding movie, and it's on my rotation of movies I typically watch every year. But it got terrible reviews, and lots of people thought it sucked. Their opinion, and they are welcome to it. That's the great thing about having a mind that thinks for itself - you can have your own opinions, and not have to have people lead you by the hand.

Indeed. Having a mind of your own is an incredible advantage. When I say "I watched a movie last night, I loved it!!" and some shrimp then says "No, it's not good because it's a cash cow/lacks depth/lacks realism" I will just say "You are entitled to your opinion, but don't try controlling MINE in the process" and leave it at that. No use arguing with a stubborn donkey.

Just look at the dude saying that Star Trek was a good movie, and the other dude saying "No, it wasn't" as if HIS OPINION matters more than the other dudes...it's just sad.

Deep movies with a complicated plotline can be extremely good, but also exctremely bad and that doesn't make the person behind that opinion stupid or a simpleton as some of these donkeys putting prestige into movie preferences wants to think. But I guess it gives them some sort of satisfaction having such an attitude so they're unlikely to change.

[prwraith]

Movies are like video games imo. Sometimes you want that super complex dnd game with a million hidden nooks, crannies, secrets, and items.

And sometimes you want DMC just straight I'm here to fuck up your face.

[mmines]

56%? needs to be lower, its bad
1. superman in the movie is way more violent then in the comics, Way more.
2. the way he kills zod.. first of all he KILLS him, which would not happen in the comics, second he just kills him, no kryptonite or anything just kills him.
3. his costume is all wrong. not having the red underpants is like putting nipples on the batsuit!
4. its way to serous for superman.
The real superman fans where Offended by the movie.

But that's not any real criticism of the movie. Just because it doesn't adhere to the original work doesn't mean it's bad.

[Slybak]

The movie was pretty bland, and this owes mostly to the direction and to a lesser extent the writing. Snyder embraces a kind of stylized literalism in his approach to source material that takes the wrong things too seriously and ends up missing out on where the difference between the source and a film adaptation thereof can be explored to better effect, and the result is something pretty mundane; Dawn of the Dead, 300, The Watchmen... all basically have the same problem - Snyder sticks to the source in an uninteresting way and, when he deviates, deviates in an uninteresting way.

This is particularly glaring with respect to how Zod was adapted. Villains make these kinds of stories; without a good villain, the narrative is slow and encumbered, and no one cares about the hero. The portions of Zod that were closely taken from the source material (a Kryptonian general who attempted a coup and was imprisoned in another dimension) are the uninteresting bits; nothing to do with personality (extreme narcissism and megalomania) or motivation (revenge). The stuff that was replaced in terms of personality and motivation, however, were equally boring; General Zod is a quasi-eugenicist/ecoterrorist whose main identifiable personality trait is pensiveness. The result is a character that you just don't care about, and the entire movie falls apart around it.

And this is despite the fact that they got Michael "Agent Nelson Van Alden" Shannon to play the role, who is a phenomenal actor with amazing presence. But even someone like that couldn't rescue this character from mediocrity. Jor-El was more present than General Zod, and he was literally a ghost for 90% of the friggin' movie.

In fact, that's true of every actor in the film except Kevin Costner, who plays a well-written character (Jonathan Kent) that you end up identifying with and caring about. The sequences where young Clark is struggling with his newfound powers was pretty good in general, actually, but they weren't the point of the movie. The point of the movie was Superman coming to grips with his identity through the conflict with Zod. But that's not what we get. What we get is "Look at that, General Zod is standing there glowering and looking melancholy! I wonder what Superman will do! Oh... that's right... I don't care."

It wasn't a bad movie, per se. It was just mediocre, which seems to be borne out by all the ~50% ratings.

[OrcsRLame]

56%? needs to be lower, its bad
1. superman in the movie is way more violent then in the comics, Way more.
2. the way he kills zod.. first of all he KILLS him, which would not happen in the comics, second he just kills him, no kryptonite or anything just kills him.
3. his costume is all wrong. not having the red underpants is like putting nipples on the batsuit!
4. its way to serous for superman.
The real superman fans where Offended by the movie.

Hahaha, wrong.









Each one of those comic scans corresponds to one of your points. I don't fucking get this fake comic fan shit. Like, being ignorant is fine. But taking a stance that is literally the EXACT opposite of the truth is just fucking mind bottling. It puts your mind in a bottle and suffocates it.

[Drithien]

I watched the movie yesterday and I enjoyed it. I think that it is a quite good movie, and certainly among the best super-hero-themed movies released up to now. Far from amazing, but then again no super-hero-themed movie up to now has ever been for me. Sadly the genre is far away from producing anything that I could think of as amazing. For the time being creators are at best trying to sneak some essence through all the action unfolding in such movies.

I thoroughly enjoyed the aesthetics of the movie. The direction was almost impecable, missing out only on some cases of over-using shaky cam. Most of the time it was spot on. From steady cam, to realism-infusing shots, to shaky-cam for tension, the subtle use of slow-motion, all make for such interesting use of the camera; truly interesting to watch and think of, unlike most directors that seem so lazy in comparison with their by-the-book approaches. I liked the world-building a lot as well, with the presentation of Krypton, and the feeling of depth that it gave off, the culture and aesthetics of it. Characters were interesting, if only a bit under-developed; but that is understandable due to time constraints. Superman, who the movie is about after all, was developed quite well. I especially enjoyed the way there were no easy answers anywhere, with even Ma and Pa Kent shown as human beings trying to make sense of it all with just honestly good intentions and not necessarily any answers.

The fights were naturaly amazing, this is Zack Snyder after all, and just nobody does action of this kind better than him. Snyder knows better than anyone else how to balance between realism and spectacle. The fights between supermen were just jaw-dropping; they were teeming with energy, and show-cased how well thought-out such scenarios were by the creators. And about that rampant destruction: that's what happens when beings of such power fight head-to-head. Yes, people died. Yes, Metropolis will be getting repaired for a long time after all the fighting. No, Superman couldn't just move the fight somewhere else, since in both cases the bad guys were either having the upper hand, and Superman was kind of getting trashed around and could merely try to react to what was happening, or, in the case of Zod, the bad guy actually wanted to destroy the city, and again, Superman was not in control of the fight, but trying to survive it. And it was both impressive and harrowing exactly because of the combination of spectacle and loss it provided. Something with which I am absolutely fine. I never appreciated the political-correctness-driven absence of the consequences of super-conflicts in the comics. That is part of what had made Superman so boring. I much prefer the honest approach of titles such as Invincible and the Authority on this subject. I only wished the movie was even more forthcoming about what happened, but age-appropriate ratings got in the way I guess, just as they got in the way of showing what would actually happened if a human being got punched by Faora in the face. The same goes for the killing bit. "Superman does not kill" is an irrelevant notion, the product of an era where comics were under strict scrutiny and perceived as kids' entertainment. After the advances in the medium that came with the likes of Sandman, We3, Watchmen, and even Superman - Red Son, it's a shame that Superman in his main incarnation is burdened with such leftovers from the past. I liked the courage to take the character out of his cheesy comics' state.

On the negative parts: there was a disconnect between the intention to present Superman's upbringing and doing it without the intention getting noticed. In fact most of the movie suffers from this. The bricks in the structure are too obvious, and not that fluid either. There were times where a dramatic scene got off as cheesy, just because of the way it was shoe-horned in the movie like that. This made some of Pa Kent's scenes a bit awkward, some of the rescue scenes at the beginning not-that-striking, and overall made the movie seem somewhat disjointed. Moreover, while time constraints are understandable, Superman's parents didn't get much time other than his biological father, and that is too bad considering three of them are dead. Smallvile residents were treated similarly. And again, seeing as how Metrolopis will be his base of operations in the sequel(s), not having more exposition of the Smallville crowd is a shame. In general I think that the action kind of replaced some potential further character presentation. But that is more the fault of time-constraints than anything else. Damn you time-conventions for movies! For the same reason, most of the characters in the movie seem under-developed, like the army personel. And scenes seem to be cut short, like his first contact with his father, or the time he spent under arrest. And the meaning of his adoptive father's words. And so on. Truly damn you time-constraints! Other than that, some usual plot holes exist, like Superman saving people without covering his identity all-over-the-place. The decision to work as a reporter just coming out of nowhere. And so on.

All in all, a very good attempt. Much, much better than most other super-hero-themed movies released up to noe, with only a few exceptions. I didn't go in expecting a miracle, and a miracle it wasn't. I didn't go in expecting the cheesy Superman of the comics, and, thankfully, he wasn't. Instead it was an engaging movie, with some heart, lots of spectacle, and a very good Henry Cavill as Superman. I can't wait for the sequel.

[OrcsRLame]

Wrong. Superman killed Zod and the other Kryptonians in Superman 2. This idiotic thought that superman doesn't kill is pure wrong. The only JL member who doesn't kill is Batman except in Dark Knight Returns when he finally kills Joker (in a separate universe). Superman has killed many, many enemies of the US and the planet Earth. This idiotic line of thought that "Superman is a boyscout" needs to stop. Superman is one of the most violent creatures in the DC universe. He tries to mask it but anyone who can read sub textually knows he is one switch away from becoming a villain.

Batman kills.

[Flatspriest]

I was going over critics on Rotten Tomatoes and noticed that Man of Steel was only at 56%?! I went to the opening and I freaking loved the movie, at the end when the Credits rolled people got up and cheered... I don't see how it got 56% in my opinion.

I personally thought it was only an OK movie that trashed the Superman story to pieces and tried to hard to add other movie effects, such as the Matrix, Star Wars, and Star Trek to name three, into it with no reason to have done so. If this is what WB has in store for the Justice League movies, then I most likely will not view them for quite awhile after they come out.

[OrcsRLame]

1. superman killed somebody. Zod. no version of superman ever killed anybody. the fight scenes.. they were cool.. but im sure the amount of collateral damage would have killed innocents. they didnt evacuate the city. a fight of this kind, should have taken place in space or something, away from civilians so as to protect them from harm.. something Superman has always been about.

2. his alter ego Clark Kent. Superman purposely acts like a goof to throw people off of discovering him as Superman. even Lois didnt know who clark was supposed to be. and to show her finding out his secret before he ever did ANYTHING for the world, was just weird. if it was that easy for her to find out.. then anybody with access to the internet would be able to do the same thing.

3. having to face Zod in the first movie, kinda leaves it with no place to go from there. i mean Lex looks kinda wimpy by comparison. i liked the old Lex.. one that was just basically a crime boss. he wasnt alien. he didnt have magical powers. he was just a master mind with deep pockets. but he is an icon when it comes to superman. i want to see lex but i will be underwhelmed by him. since superman KILLED zod, it shows he cant resist killing if pushed far enough.

4. i was hoping to see a more realistic movie. i know.. Superman isnt real,, but just less of the alien spaceships flying around.. and destroying the earth. if the plot dealt with Crime Lord Lex Luther, we could have seen something more dramatic and realistic without all the silly alien spaceships. i wasnt expecting a Sci-fi movie.. but i felt i got suckered into one at the end. i hated the bait and switch feeling i had afterwards.

I'm not even gonna talk about Superman killing, since I dealt with that already in a different post.

Zod is a low tier villain comparatively. There's plenty of good villains left. Doomsday, Darkseid, (they should save him for a Justice League movie) Brainiac, Bizzaro and Lex wouldn't be bad either if they do him right. I don't wanna see Lex as some crime boss though, I want to see comic book Lex, the human that is literally the second smartest being to ever exist, only behind God himself. And his Warsuit lets him fight relatively evenly with Superman. In fact, with Man of Steel Superman being so inexperienced at controlling his powers, he'd probably lose to comic book Lex in a straight up fight.