1. Action Is Never A Substitute For Good Story
With Zack Snyder poised behind the camera, perhaps it was naive to expect anything else but a mindless smashfest, but
Man Of Steel really did go way over the top with its action spectacle - to the point where the story, relatively thin as it was anyway, ultimately suffered. Goyer's original concept looked to treat
Man Of Steel as an "alien contact" movie, which makes sense given that Nolan's influence opted to make things more "realistic." But that idea seemed to have got lost admist the strange structure and CGI mayhem. For all the punching and exploding, we just needed
more story to get our teeth into here. So remember this when you're writing your script: get the story right first, and then concentrate on the action. Better yet, make sure that every time you write an action scene in your movie, you're sure that it feels natural and that it makes sense given what you've established. In the case of
Man Of Steel, we had action scenes where there should have been more story or character moments: these should ultimately come first, no matter what kind of picture you happen to be writing. We need to feel invested in the narrative before we can actually
enjoy action. As witnessed here, if we're not being stimulated elsewhere, huge-scale action sequences that cost millions and millions of dollars to make are... well, actually kind of boring to watch. Go figure.
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