8. Non-Linear Narrative? Are You Sure?
Man Of Steel, for reasons that are still baffling to me, clings to a fragmented, non-linear narrative that serves no real purpose - if anything, it makes the story far more muddled than it should be, and seems to exist to include calculated sections of "story" as if they were snapshots, to make it easier to just get all the necessary information across and that's that. It appears as though we've just being given the Kodak moments version of every scene, and it's frustrating as hell to watch, because it feels like we're trapped in a Greatest Hits compilation. As a result, the story feels like a series of "this happened" and "this happened" moments - not unlike a trailer, actually - and it's near-impossible to feel emotionally invested in what's happening as a result. We don't get to spend time with Clark's parents unless they're saying something thematic or explaining things
that we need to know right this second. There are no flashbacks that really put us in Clark's shoes and allow us to get to know him - we're
forced into his shoes at the most convenient moments when it suits the filmmakers. The non-linear nature of the narrative, then, simply hinders the flow. Though I presume that Goyer, Nolan and Snyder opted to do it like that because they wanted to tell the story in a way that we hadn't seen before, it's all incredibly pointless. We jump around with Clark at different ages, and - at times - there's no sense of when the present is. Writing your own screenplay, it's important to make sure that you're playing around with structure for the right reasons. Is there a genuine advantage to including flashbacks, or are you simply trying to spice things up for the sake of it? If it's the second option, you probably need to consider a more linear approach.