Man Of Steel: 7 Reasons The ''S'' Stands For Sucks
2. The JJ Abrams Effect
While Nolans influence is blatantly obvious in Man Of Steel, there are some points in the film that suggested that Star Trek 2009 was also relied upon as reference material.
Along with Christopher Nolan and Joss Whedon, the other hot director in Hollywood is JJ Abrams who ruined and rebooted Star Trek to bring it to a more mainstream audience. He is another man that can do no wrong in the eyes of film studios.
So that must be why Man Of Steel opened with a dramatic birth, which was followed by a difficult upbringing story. There was Kevin Costner who always saw something special in the main hero, much like the relationship between Kirk and Pike. Characterization was rushed and the audience was treated like an idiot. There was an attempt at elevating the villain beyond the traditional revenge motive but broken down, Nero, Khan and Zod all graduated from the same villain school.I actually didn't mind Michael Shannon's version of Zod, the bit where we are supposed to feel sorry for him didn't work for me, I didn't like the whole ''predetermined society'' plot line which explained why Zod was doing the things he was doing but Shannon was by far the only reason to watch this film.
There were beams being fired into the ground that looked remarkably like the drill nonsense from Star Trek 2009. We even had black holes that appear, kill the bad guy and conveniently disappear when their job is done. When Man Of Steel turned full on science fiction/action towards the climax, there was even a distinct increase in the number of on screen lens flairs. There were a few more similarities I noticed but I forget them now, I must mentally be blocking them out.
JJ Abrams has no right to claim all those clichés for his personal use but when you see a film trying so hard to reboot a franchise, a film trying so hard to mimic the most successful reboots of recent time i.e. Batman and Star Trek, you cant believe that all those similarities were there by accident.
Combined with the tiny homage to Superman II, Man Of Steel felt like a super hero film that you have seen many times before. It so desperately wanted to be different and special, but Nolan and Snyder only achieved in making a dull traditional blockbuster. At least JJ's Star Trek could never be called boring.