Note: Despite the headline date, I'm writing this after having seen the film The Flash, which premiered on June 16, 2023.
June 14, 2013, 10 years ago: The film Man of Steel premieres, directed by Zack Snyder, and starring Henry Cavill as Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman. It began the "Snyderverse" series of movies, based on the superhero stories of DC Comics. Rather loosely based, in my opinion.
The Snyderverse bred a group of fanboys -- and they were mostly teenage boys and young men, too young to remember Christopher Reeve playing Superman and Michael Keaton playing Batman -- who decided that this was the only version of superheroes that mattered. That previous versions of Superman were "boring," and that previous versions of Batman, even Christian Bale's recent "Dark Knight," weren't dark enough. And that the "Arrowverse" group of TV shows on The CW network wasn't good enough.
In the words of the immortal Gene Wilder, "You know, morons."
Man of Steel -- or "Man of Stool," as those of us who think it's shit like to call it, and I will hereafter abbreviate it as MoS -- was a crime against the character of Superman. The 2016 follow-up, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS from here on out), was worse. Snyder fanboys told us to wait for the "Extended Edition." All that version did was make a very long, very bad movie longer and worse.
BvS' only saving grace was the introduction of Israeli actress Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Even the brief glimpse of Ezra Miller as the Flash only helped to confuse things.
Indeed, in most of these cases, the problem isn't with the actors. Henry Cavill as Superman and Ben Affleck as Batman played the characters as they were written. The problem is with, as Snyder fanboys like to say, his overall vision, which stinks. I don't mean it "sucks." I mean it smells bad.
But before I explain why -- not that I expect Snyder fanboys to understand; as the saying goes, "I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you" -- let me give 3 things I liked about the Snyderverse.
1. S Means Hope. Superman has always been a symbol of hope. In the Snyderverse, the crest on his chest, previously always meant to be an "S" for "Superman," was rewritten to be the symbol for "hope" in Kryptonese.
Even with this, though, the Snyderverse was surpassed by the Arrowverse. In their version of Crisis On Infinite Earths (2019), Brandon Routh again played the Superman he played in Superman Returns (2006), which we were led to believe was the Superman from the Superman movies that starred Christopher Reeve (1978-87). But a terrorist attack by the Joker (described, but not named, for legal reasons) killed Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and many other Daily Planet employees, meaning that this Superman lost so much of what had made him human. Still, he hung on to what he had left.
He wears an S-crest similar to the one that a potential future Superman wore in the 1996 graphic novel Kingdom Come. (Hence, his world was labeled "Earth-96.") He says to another Earth's Lois Lane, played by Elizabeth Tulloch, who went on to reprise the role in the CW series Superman & Lois (which debuted on The CW in 2021):
Superman: When I put this on, this crest, I made a promise: To keep fighting, no matter what.
Lois: Hey, why'd you add black to it?
Superman: Because, Lois, even in the darkest times, hope cuts through. Hope is the light that lifts us out of the darkness.
In so doing, the Arrowverse got Superman right in 30 seconds. Zack Snyder, if you count his cut of Justice League, had a shade under 9 hours to get Superman right, and either failed, or refused.
2. The Original Warrior Princess. There are many reasons to appreciate the 1975-79 TV version of Wonder Woman, as played by Lynda Carter. But even then, when I was a little kid, it occurred to me that she'd have to be really fast to block bullets with those bracelets, which looked too small. Instead, Gal Gadot's Snyderverse version wore gauntlets, which covered almost her entire forearms, and made much more sense when it came to blocking bullets.
Also, because The New Original Wonder Woman was aimed at a family audience, Carter rarely threw punches or engaged in real fights, and never killed anyone. Most of the time, she grabbed her opponents and simply tossed them aside, or, from a distance, threw the Lasso of Hestia around them. She was a symbol of restraint and, where possible, peace. This would later be matched by a line that Diana delivered in the comics: "Don't kill if you can wound, don't wound if you can subdue, don't subdue if you can pacify, and don't raise your hand at all until you've first extended it."
While I liked Gadot's gauntlets, I wasn't crazy about the rest of her costume redesign. (Not that it was her redesign: She didn't design it.) I didn't like that her tiara now pointed down instead of up, and, as with all the heroes' costumes, it was in darker shades of its traditional colors. It reminded me of Xena: Warrior Princess.
But the DCEU films also reminded us that Diana is a warrior, and handy with any weapon, especially a sword. Given that her show was in the 1970s, and it was for kids as much as for adults, Carter was never allowed to show Diana's full fighting potential; Gadot was. The fact that Carter gave Gadot her full approval -- something Reeve, already dead, couldn't give to Cavill -- went a long way toward establishing Gadot's credibility with moviegoers.
3. The Redemption of Aquaman. Jason Momoa, a Native Hawaiian, looks nothing like the traditional Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Aquaman, who has short, curly blond hair, and is clean-shaven. The version from the comics, and seen in the Super Friends cartoons (1973-86), has often been mocked as "the guy who talks to fish" -- even as that power, even then, was frequently shown to be rather handy. And he could fly. And he was very strong, if not on the same level as Superman or even Wonder Woman.
Indeed, if we were in the interregnum between Batman and Robin (1997) and the preparations for Batman Begins (2005), and it were the beginning of a chance to make DC movies, and I were going to cast Momoa (who was 24 in 2003, when Batman Begins got started), I would cast him as Katar Hol, a.k.a. Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman, the very buff Thanagarian warrior whose original version went back to ancient Egypt. He would have kicked ass in that role.
But he did kick ass as Aquaman. The DCEU showed us just how powerful the character can truly be: He went toe-to-toe with Steppenwolf in Justice League: The Whedon Cut (2017, JLWC from here on out), and led an army (navy? marines?) to victory in his standalone film, which showed him totally proving worthy of his royal heritage. Even the much-mocked scene in JLWC, where Aquaman, not knowing he's sitting on Wonder Woman's lasso, lets the truth fly, ennobles the character.
Still...
The Top 10 Reasons Why the Snyderverse Stinks
Honorable Mention: Lois Lane. Amy Adams is a good actress. And one of the few things I like about the Superman section of the Snyderverse is that she figured out that Clark was a hero not only before he could tell her, but before he had even put on the Superman costume for the first time, thus saving the storyline of Lois trying to figure out that Clark was Superman, which took some truly stupid turns in the comics, and didn't work very well in Superman II (1981), either.
But Adams is a redhead, like Lana Lang; not a brunette, like Lois. This is a minor gripe, so I'm not putting it in the Top 10. (When The Adventures of Superman went to color in 1954, we saw that their Lois, Noel Neill, was a redhead.) Certainly, she was better in the role than was Kate Bosworth, who was way too young to play a veteran reporter with a 5-year-old child in Superman Returns.
10. Jimmy Olsen is wasted. In more ways than one. And I don't mean he's "drunk." In the comics, he was the Daily Planet's teenage photographer, befriended by Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and grudgingly accepted but often bullied by editor Perry White.
Most live-action versions have embraced this: John Hamilton's Perry to Jack Larson's Jimmy in The Adventures of Superman (1952-58), Jackie Cooper's Perry to Marc McClure's Jimmy in the Chris Reeve movies, and Lane Smith's Perry to first Michael Landes (1993-94) and then Justin Whalin (1994-97) on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Jimmy Olsen wasn't in MoS. In BvS, we find out that Jimmy is an undercover CIA operative, probably around the same age as Lois and Clark. He gets his cover blown, and he's killed. That's it for him. He's a lousy CIA agent, he never works for the Planet, and he never becomes "Superman's Pal." In fact, there's no evidence that the DCEU's Superman and Jimmy even met.
9. The Flash is comic relief. In his comics introduction, Barry Allen was already a "police scientist," the kind of character who would later be represented by the likes of Gary Dourdan's Warrick Brown on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Pauley Perrette's Abby Sciuto on NCIS. In other words, he's old enough to have gotten his doctorate, and had been helping to solve crimes even before he got his powers. He had a sense of humor (although that was, typical for superheroes of the time, more common in his sidekick, Wally West, a.k.a. Kid Flash), but, mostly, he was a serious man.
The Snyderverse Flash, played by Ezra Miller, was first shown in, well, a flash during a time-travel attempt, already a grown man, trying to contact a past version of Batman in BvS. He gets a very brief scene in Suicide Squad (2016), apprehending Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney). But we don't really see him until JLWC: He's a teenage goofball who happens to be the fastest man alive. He provides much of the film's silliness, mostly in his interactions with Batman and Aquaman.
The fanboys demanded the release of "Zack Snyder's Justice League," a.k.a. The Snyder Cut (ZSJL from here on out), swearing it existed prior to Snyder leaving the project due to the tragic death of his daughter. They demanded the completion of "his overall vision." Their online harassment of Warner Brothers led the studio to contact Snyder, whose Cut did not yet exist, and they let him finish it, resulting in a 4-hour HBO Max miniseries rather than a theatrical release.
They took a bad movie, a.k.a. Josstice League, and made it much longer, much darker, and much worse, worse than MoS, though not quite as bad as BvS, which is so bad, it makes the 1997 Batman and Robin look like Citizen Kane, and the 1987 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace look like The Godfather.
But ZSJL did make the Flash better, giving him the chance to travel through time and prevent the failure of Victor Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg (Ray Fisher), to prevent the destruction of Earth. It's one of the few good things about the film.
The subsequent Flash film, while full of serious things, leaned on the humor more than was necessary. When the Flash tells Batman's right-hand man Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons) that he feels like "the janitor of the Justice League," it's silly -- even though he has a point. Both JLWC and ZSJL made Barry a kid who, while smart, really didn't know what he was doing. Half the Flash movie was basically Barry Age 28 telling Barry Age 18, "I'm showing you this the easy way, so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did."
8. What Snyder did with the Joker. The character was written as more of a gangster type than he's usually portrayed. That wasn't the problem: The 4 traditional Batman villains, the ones most often shown in the 1966-68 TV show -- the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler and Catwoman -- were, on that show, and in the comics before that, traditionally shown as gangsters whose identities, costumes, gadgets, henchmen, etc. had a theme.
But what the hell was up with the teeth? And the tattoos? I've said before that Heath Ledger's character in the 2008 film The Dark Knight seemed, to me, not so much like the actual Joker, but more like someone who was masquerading as his interpretation of the original Joker, whom Batman had defeated many years earlier, and had come close to getting it right, but was a little off. But only a little: He wasn't a better Joker than Jack Nicholson was in Batman (1989), but for overall performance, he earned that posthumous Oscar.
Whereas, as played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad and in the Knightmare sequence at the end of ZSJL, this Joker was a lot more than a little off. And I don't mean "a little crazy." After all, craziness is the Joker's thing. I mean that it seemed like Snyder was trying to make a Joker for a new generation, and, instead, came up with what Epic Rap Battles of History called someone who looked like rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine.
7. What Snyder did with Lex Luthor. Jesse Eisenberg might have been a good Joker. Some people have suggested that he would have been good the Riddler. But as Luthor? No way. He was far removed from even the somewhat jokey Gene Hackman version in the Reeve films, let alone the more serious versions played by John Shea on Lois & Clark, Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville (2001-11) and Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns, and, since BvS, also by Jon Cryer in the Arrowverse. (UPDATE: And also different from Michael Cudlitz in Superman and Lois.)
And while the land-grab plans of both 1978 Luthor and 2006 Luthor are dumb in hindsight, why would 2016 Luthor create Doomsday? If he wants someone, or something, to kill Superman, why would he create something that was, for all intents and purposes, Superman without the moral code, at least equal in power, more willing to kill, and totally out of his control, or anybody else's control? After all, if there's one thing a rich person values more than money, it's control.
It's possible that someone as ridiculous as Eisenberg's Luthor could have made billions of dollars. But anybody that ridiculous would have been killed by his rivals before he could become the threat that Luthor usually represents.
Disclaimer: Jesse Eisenberg and I are from the same town: East Brunswick, New Jersey. But we have never met. My assessment of his version of the character is not based on any personal issue. Or even with his portrayal. Again, he played the character as it was written, very well. The problem was with the writing.
6. Dick Grayson is the Robin that the Joker killed. This precludes any future Robins: No Jason Todd, no Tim Drake, no Stephanie Brown. Snyder's Batman suggests Frank Miller's Batman, opening the possibility of Carrie Kelley. And there is nothing that can rule out Ra's al-Ghul, and therefore Talia al-Ghul, and therefore Damian Wayne. But the existences of Carrie and Damian aren't suggested, either.
Furthermore, no more Dick means no development into Nightwing. It also means no Teen Titans, which gets backed up by the fact that no younger sidekicks are suggested at any point in this films. (Cyborg started as a Titan. How he got promoted to the Justice League, I don't know. And this version of the Flash sure seems a lot more like Wally West, who was Kid Flash before he was Flash III, than Barry Allen, Flash II.)
One defense that has been marshaled is that only the loss of his first and favorite "son" could turn Bruce into the man he is in BvS, one who has forsaken his code against lethal force. But that opens a whole other can of worms: If this Batman kills, and does so because the Joker killed Robin, wouldn't that have made him kill the Joker before he killed anybody else? In the Knightmare at the end of ZSJL, he tells Joker, "Make no mistake, I will fucking kill you" -- the 1st F-bomb in any DC superhero movie. Big talk for a man who knows that the Joker killed Dick, and did nothing about it at the time.
5. Wonder Woman fights the wrong war. Setting the 1st Gal Gadot movie in late 1918, toward the end of World War I, would only have worked without the World War II background of the character, which was established when the character was created, during World War II.
And it forces the question: If WWI was serious enough for her to leave Themiscyra, why wasn't the even more serious WWII enough to bring her back? She thought humanity was worth saving in 1918, in 1984, and in 2016. Did she not think so in 1941? This plot hole is big enough to fly an invisible plane through.
4. Daddy Issues. Superheroes being inspired to fight for justice due to the death of their father (or father figure) is a common trope. The Flash and Marvel's Hulk are among the few motivated by the death of their mother: The former saw his father falsely accused of the murder, while the latter's father actually did do it. Batman and Marvel's Iron Man are among the few motivated by the death of both parents. (Marvel's Spider-Man lost both parents before he was old enough to remember them, so it was Aunt May and Uncle Ben who raised him, and it's Uncle Ben's murder that motivates him.)
So there was no way around the death of Batman's father, Thomas Wayne; or the incarceration of the Flash's father, Henry Allen. Superman lost both birth parents, Jor-El and Lara, in the destruction of Krypton; if, when and how he loses his Earthly parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, depends on the storyteller.
Snyder made Jonathan Kent a jerk. More on that later. And look at what happens to the fathers of the other 3 Justice League members in the Snyderverse:
* Wonder Woman: She never had a father until DC's 2011 "New 52" reboot, where, instead of being molded from clay by the Amazons' Queen Hippolyta and given life by the ancient Greek gods, she is the product of an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus, the King of those gods. The Snyderverse follows this difference, which may explain her more militaristic attitude in the films, although she still becomes an advocate for peace and love.
* Aquaman: Arthur's father, Thomas Curry, was portrayed as a noble man in the comics, worthy of the love of Atlanna, the Queen of Atlantis, who becomes the father of Arthur, the future Aquaman. Tom teaches Arthur in much the same way that Jonathan Kent taught Clark, and Thomas Wayne taught Bruce, before their respective deaths. But the Snyderverse portrays Thomas as a bit less noble, and a heavy drinker.
Interestingly, while the Snyderverse has been much-mocked for "Save Martha!" pointing out that Ma Kent and Mrs. Wayne shared the name, there's mention of the fathers of Batman and Aquaman sharing a name.
* Cyborg: Victor has a complicated relationship with his father, Dr. Silas Stone, a brilliant scientist who means well, but Victor doesn't see it that way. Eventually, they reconcile shortly before Silas dies. In JLWC, when the Flash says he can't save all the people that Steppenwolf is threatening, Batman says, "Save one." The idea being that, with his speed, the Flash can save one at a time. The first one he saves, not that he knows it at the time, is Silas, who is still alive at the end of the film, reconciled with Victor. But in ZSJL, the character is killed off halfway through. Needless deaths, I suppose, is part of Snyder's "overall vision."
I can find no reason for this: If there is any conflict between Snyder and his father, Ed Snyder, an executive recruiter from Green Bay, Wisconsin, it hasn't been made public. Zack himself seems to take fatherhood seriously, having 8 kids, and taking time off from filmmaking after his teenage daughter's suicide. But his films have "daddy issues" beyond what superheroes usually have. They make the ones Aaron Sorkin gave his characters on The West Wing look minor by comparison.
3. 3-D: Death, Destruction and Darkness. Snyder learned the wrong lesson from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-12): He put the emphasis not on the Knight, but on the Dark.
The 1st time we saw Superman fight General Zod, in Superman II, it happened on 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan in downtown Metropolis. And how many people were killed? Seeing it again with adult eyes, and estimating based on the damage to buildings and cars, I'm going to say around 100. Given the damage from the Superman vs. Zod fight in MoS, someone estimated that the death toll in Metropolis was about 120,000 -- or 40 "9/11s." Someone else called it "disaster porn."
Snyder also doubled down on the darkness for Batman, showing him as a killer, almost bloodthirsty, even willing to kill Superman, when we all know -- as former Batman nemesis Jack Nicholson said in a different role, "deep down, in places you don't like to talk about at parties" -- that there's no way that Batman could beat Superman.
(No, Kryptonite is not an "ace in the hole." Kryptonite doesn't kill a Kryptonian immediately. He could lose 99 percent of his strength, and still fight through his pain, and knock an Earthman's head off with one punch.)
And, of course, the Knightmare sequences of BvS and ZSJL. Snyder so badly wants to have Superman go to the Dark Side, become evil, serve Darkseid, and enslave the world, while his dark-but-shining hero Batman (who, let's face it, does not shine in any of his movies), rather than Superman, represents the last, best hope of humanity.
I've saved my 2 biggest criticisms for what Snyder did with the 2 biggest heroes in DC Comics:
2. Batman goes too far. I understand why Superman had to kill General Zod (Michael Shannon) at the end of MoS. But Snyder made Batman a homicidal maniac, willing to kill some bad guys, willing to brand some others. That's right: Brand, with a hot iron.
1. Superman is more like Batman, and it's Jonathan Kent's fault. So this is 1A. and 1B.
Jonathan and Martha Kent taught their adoptive son Clark right from wrong. He's super-powered because he's a Kryptonian on Earth. But he's Superman because he's a Kent. Without Jonathan and Martha, or another pair of parents like them, there is no Clark; without Clark, there is no Superman, just a guy with powers, acting on what he thinks is right -- which might be right, but, as with such characters as Homelander (Antony Starr on The Boys) or Omni-Man (voiced by J.K. Simmons on Invincible), might not be.
Snyder had Jonathan (Kevin Costner) tell Clark to hide his powers, even if people died as a result. Since Superman: The Movie (1978) established that Smallville is in Kansas, and every iteration of Superman since (including the post-Crisis On Infinite Earths comics from 1985 onward) has followed this, they are in "Tornado Alley." Clark could easily save his father from a tornado -- Costner was 57 when filming the scene, and the character may have been more than 10 years younger -- but his father waves him off, to tell him to let him die. No other version of Jonathan would have ever told Superman to sacrifice anyone's life, even his.
Cavill's Superman was as whiny and moody as Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker was in Episodes II & III of Star Wars. He's not a "wooden actor," as many Lucasians complain. He played the part as it was written.
I've often joked that Cavill is so wooden, the power ring of Alan Scott, the Earth-2 Green Lantern, wouldn't work on him. But that's not it. Cavill played Clark Kent as a reluctant hero. The reason for this is that Costner's version of Jonathan was totally opposed to previous portrayals, such as those of Glenn Ford (1978), Eddie Jones (Lois & Clark), and John Schneider (showing more depth in Smallville than he ever showed as Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard).
Ford's version told Clark, "What I know, son, is that you are here for a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I can tell you this: It's not to score touchdowns." That was believable. There's no way Jonathan Kent would ever tell his son, essentially, "Let them die." Or even, "Let me die."
*
And how has Snyder responded to criticisms like these? Like an ass:
It's a cool point of view to be like, "My heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn't fucking lie to America. My heroes didn't embezzle money from their corporations. My heroes didn't fucking commit any atrocities." That's cool. But you're living in a fucking dream world.
Yeah, well, Zacky boy, I'd rather live in my dream world than in your Knightmare.
Sure, we like to see explosions, and it was cool to see Chris Reeve catch the TV antenna from the Empire State Building (how'd that get in Metropolis?) in Superman II, and then use it to temporarily trap Non (Jack O'Halloran). But do we really want to think about the 100 or so people who must have died in the battle with 1981 Zod, let alone the 100,000 or more who may have been killed by 2013 Zod? No, we don't.
We go to Batman movies to see a guy carry out our fantasies of kicking criminals' asses. But we know, in the end, as Batman does, that this is not an end in and of itself. We go to Superman movies to see Superman save people. We go to see him stop needless destruction, not to avenge it, and certainly not to cause it. We go to see him face Lex Luthor, Brainiac, ordinary bank robbers, what have you, and, in effect, give them Gandalf's message from Lord of the Rings: "You shall not pass!" And then insure that they don't pass. That's why DC's hero group is called the Justice League, while Marvel's is called the Avengers.
In other words, just as J.J. Abrams' take on Star Trek is designed to appeal to people who don't like Star Trek, and want a Captain James T. Kirk who blows shit up and takes alien women to bed, without all that high-minded pontificating about peace and man's place in the stars, Man of Steel was designed to make Superman appeal to Batman fans.
Superman isn't supposed to appeal to Batman fans. He's supposed to appeal to fans of superheroes -- and so is Batman. It's like being a fan of a sport first, and your own team second: A Yankee fan like me, for example, should appreciate a great performance by a player on another team: "Hey, did you hear, while Aaron Judge was hitting 2 home runs last night, Clayton Kershaw pitched a no-hitter?" Even if it's against your own team: "Man, we couldn't get that guy out. No wonder he was named the MVP last season. He totally deserves it again."
As I've said before: If I want to see a Batman story, I'll read or watch a Batman story. When I see Superman, I want to see a man acting in the name of hope. We watch Batman to watch him kick ass; we watch Superman to watch him "fight a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."
People who prefer Superman to Batman do so because he's not dark, disturbed and brooding; and, indeed, embraces his role as protector of Metropolis, Earth as a whole when necessary, even (in some versions) planets he'd never even heard of before. We prefer Superman because, even more than the symbol on his chest as a Kryptonian word, he means "hope."
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