I can't begin to tell you how much I hate the theatrical cut of this movie. It is all wrong. All of it. There's not a frame that makes sense, not a line of dialogue that adds up, it's a nihilistic mess of a movie. Just writing about it makes me want to spit on my screen, just in pure rage. Now, yes, I've got some attachment for Batman and Superman, but just the craft of the theatrical cut is beyond awful. On a technical level it is an incoherent mess.
You may have noticed I hate this movie.
And, let's get this out of the way, I like Man of Steel. Clark being portrayed as a person who needed to figure out how to forgive humanity for being shitheads is an incredible thing to portray. Most of the flaws people point out about the movie are overblown, at best, petty and spiteful at worst. It's not my favorite movie ever, but it's definitely a good movie, showing a Superman that I, personally, can believe would exist. My hatred of Zack Snyder's other work is probably to the amusement of all my friends, who periodically poke me, just to see the explosion of spite that results.
And then one day someone told me the Ultimate Cut was coherent. They didn't like it, but it was coherent. Turns out that the corporate morons had completely screwed up the cut. I was asked if I wanted to watch it.
And, to be honest, I didn't, not at the time. I still had the words from HiTop in my head: Batman does not kill. Batman is a symbol, symbols teach us how to behave. Batman is all about not repeating the action of losing his parents, all over again, by having some little boy wake up without those parents. I wanted to believe that Batman's willpower was immaculately iron. Now, all my other ideals are totally incoherent with that. I think people are not invincible ideals, that they're barely capable of good on a good day, nevermind a bad one. The Joker is right: all it takes is one bad day.
In the intervening years my trust in the American mythology of superheroes has faded. Perpetually stuck in a corporate death grip, unable to move on and become something different, these characters are a hollow reflection of what we are: controlled by corporate interests, unable to move on. They're not human, and we don't allow ourselves to be human either. Why I hadn't connected that before, I don't know.
Afghanistan happened.
"Not our country," is a phrase I've heard tossed around. As in, actually spoken. Aloud. The world shook its head sadly and said the most damning words I've ever heard: "Well, it was inevitable."
No, it was not. Damn your ideas right to the hellhole they belong, that was not inevitable, just convenient. Not to mention cowardly.
Something broke inside me, watching the whole thing. Turns out that casual cruelty isn't just limited to fetuses and folks of minority ethnicity, a fact I've experienced far too often, but just hoped that my self-hatred could explain the seemingly boundless cruelty of humanity.
Nope. Turns out people are just cruel, as a matter of course. It's the human condition.
That weekend my family went to the zoo. I love tigers. Thank Calvin and Hobbes for that, I suppose, but man they're majestic things. And they're killers. Born killers. Made to eviscerate and terrify and stuff raw meat down their throats. "God's tenants", as per Psalm 103. A tiger knows what it is. It's a killer. It has no issue with this fact. If a tiger denied what it was it would die, as it's literally made to only eat meat. It's honest because to be honest is to live.
Staring at this magnificent picture of death, a thought began to form in my mind. I didn't quite know what it was until about an hour later, when I was sitting down at a playground with my wife. I tried to bat the thought away. I really didn't want to go where I was going, but an entire generation of people were being left to suffer under a terrorist organization. All 'cause of the red, white, and blue. Reality no longer matched my model of it. And I had to give in. Had to.
"I can't like superheroes anymore. Because of Afghanistan."
My wife, as thoughtful and quiet as she is, let those words hang in the air a moment, as they mixed with the sounds of laughter and creaking playground equipment.
Me being anxious me, I mistook the silence. "Does that make sense? I don't know how else to explain it right now."
Those green eyes can just cut my soul to ribbons. She looked at me, and as she always seems to, saw straight into the cloud of grief. And through it. "It does."
I sat there, trying to figure out what had just happened. What I had just said, why I had just said it! And somehow I knew. It was time to watch this movie.
I thought I was ready. I was not.
First off, folks, there is a plot to this movie. And I actually like it. Motivations are clear, the action flows from one beat to another. There's a healthy amount of inference going on, but the movie does actually set up the points to connect between.... unlike the theatrical cut. Which does not. I like having to put the pieces together myself, so long as there's something to assemble with. I mean, I do like Terrio's work in general, so it was nice to return to his plotting.
Superman's depression, as a result, makes sense. Continuously mistrusted and hated for doing the right thing will do that. And Clark needing to figure out he was going to do with his "just rewards" was a compelling hook. The movie paints Clark's deteriorating outlook as a natural progression someone would go through. Clark does his best to fight it, but there's only one rule to the universe, and that's down! By the time we get to the end Clark has been psychologically manipulated and battered.
Now we come to Batman. I'm not going to try to convince you why I like this character now. Tigers are killers, and if you don't like that go get in the enclosure and let me know what happens when mealtime comes up. Bruce has collapsed under the weight of his own failure, something repeatedly brought up, time and time ago. Only one rule to the universe, folks! Bruce is human, he's going to collapse. After twenty years, Bruce had given up. And so Lex pushes him, manipulates him, sets him up.
Yes, the Martha moment actually makes sense in the movie. Move along.
The ending of the theatrical cut was actually my favorite part of the movie. The whole movie goes bonkers, I love the turnaround from Batman after the Martha moment as it's portrayed by Affleck, Gal Gadot is always amazing to see as Wonder Woman. But Clark's arc always felt hollow. It doesn't here. Clark's last moment of trying to reach out to the best in someone else paid off. He finally got through.
And, with Lois there, Clark realizes that she is his world, and therefore the world must be saved.
Bruce is rejuvenated. Superman sleeps in his tomb.
As I've stated before, there was a hole in my soul, where a narrative of some cultural significance should be. You can't make it up, you must receive it from others. Making up your own narrative is a fabrication of the modern era.
What did I receive from this movie? Which pretty much no one else likes?
That people are horribly flawed, and that if you keep looking at the big picture it's going to destroy you. Either you'll get addicted to changing the world and become a psycho like Lex or Batman at the beginning of this movie, (SJWs/alt-right this is your fate) or you'll drown in despair, like Superman almost did (which is what I'm trying to get out of). There is no way to fix the big picture. Too many profit off of it being wrong to be able to change it. It's just that simple. I can't change the reward system of the world, because entropy is a guarantee and one can always set themselves up to profit off it.
But if you forgive the world? Forgive it for being screwed up, irredeemably so, and find someone to love? You may have a chance. It won't be easy, because you have to give up being addicted to a cause. You have to cut yourself free of the dopamine rush, entirely, and just see the world around you.
Notice I didn't put this in "I've done it" terms. Of course I haven't. I so badly want to fix things, to get that dopamine hit, to feel important. And I've been trying to rectify that need with what this movie showed me. Why on earth should this be sufficient?
The other day I was walking to Walmart and I saw a man trying to carry some furniture out of a store. I could tell he was having a rough time. I just stopped, held the door, and then carried a few things out with him. We laughed about how bulky things were, and then moved on. When I got into Walmart I saw an aisle covered with cans. Employees were scrambling around with a panicked looks, trying to pick it all up. As I went past I bent over, grabbed a bunch of the cans, and helped them get it into their carts.
I didn't even realize what I'd done until I got home and realized I was feeling peculiarly hopeful for someone of my disposition. I just felt... light. Free. I'd seen someone who needed help and I helped, simply because that was right in front of me.
I didn't hear the dopamine scream in my head, demanding I change the world.
I saw someone. I helped. And that was it.
For once I wasn't scared of where things were going. It wasn't loud and noisy like thinking about how to save "the world", it sure wasn't sexy and glamorous.
But at that moment I believed that a man could fly.
I don't know if that's sufficient, but dopamine ain't the way to go. Especially if it does no one else any good.
Which I assure you, screaming into the echo chamber doesn't.
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