spoiler for Superman ) Forget that this is the first few times the Superman series has been restarted, just remember that this is the third movie that introduced Zach Schneider from China.
Schneider's many great deeds since "300" he won the title of director of the visual department. This title is quite tedious when you think about it. Movies are visual art, and they use image language to construct narratives and present and interpret adapted texts. , Is the duty of all film directors. So there may be works that are difficult to visualize, but there are absolutely no "non-visual" directors. Zach Schneider's reputation as a visual director actually comes from his courage and ambition to put unintelligible works on the screen again and again. Whether it is the extremely stylized Frank Miller comic "300", or the comic novel "Watchmen" known as the adaptation of poison and ranked among the top 100 Americans in the 20th century, Zach Schneider is loyal to the core of the text. On the basis of this, it uses powerful imagination to reconstruct its image, so that the viewer will have the synesthetic pleasure of "seeing what he hears and observing what he thinks". To some extent, the most interesting aspect of Zha's movies is to witness his tragic performance on the screen of how he exhausted his genius and material resources and performed visual interpretation of classic works regardless of success or failure.
Film remakes are very similar to literary translation, as Haruki Haruki said, they are time-limited. Timeless classics always need popular translations. The regular restart of the Superman series is an update of the value of Superman movies and a cliché of classic comics.
Classics are difficult to translate after all, and reinterpreting classic texts is both laborious and unforgettable. Even if it succeeds, there is a danger of being ridiculed as a "image porter", which is far worse than a "great author-type director". . But when it comes to the representative of the "author-type director" Norshen, one only needs to look at how bad his "Insomnia" and "The Dark Knight Rises" are. Remake and adaptation is a much more difficult task than original works. The spinning bones thrown high by the apes are a successful interpretation of the original work in the adaptation, and it is also a godly image that Arthur Clarke would not be able to create even if he rewrites the space voyage script.
I said this because I heard complaints about the uninspired remake of "Man of Steel". Movies use audio-visual language as the basic narrative method, and the novelty is largely derived from the re-establishment of the image style. Miike Takashi's remake of "Abdomen", the original script is almost unchanged, only working on the composition of the scene and the color of the scene, it has been so new and "cannot catch up with the shadow of the gods", like the surgical style of Jin Yong's drama in recent years The renovation, in fact, has exceeded the limit of the remake.
The intention of "Man of Steel" to change the visual style is obvious. In order for Schneider to make a DC comics film that is essentially a Greek demigod story compatible with the grim realism style (it is said to be for the need to dock with the dark knight style), such as a large-length description of social customs, the introduction of "Forrest Gump" "The sub-theme of "marginal people integrate into society", the film narrative is as close as possible to the biographical body, and metaphors such as the use of urchins in sheets to weaken the inconvenient comicality of Superman's uniforms. Of course, there is also the disappearance of the popular red underwear. Zach Schneider even gave up his proud signature slow motion in his movie for the first time. The beauty of fighting posture and moves intended to be shown in conventional action movies has also disappeared in "The Man of Steel", taking with it the rich capture of the savage and swift physical movement of the human body. The magnificent sonic boom and wind resistance, rapid zooming and shaking of the camera, and the movie-like look of a racing car, indeed successfully endowed the battle of the gods with a realism beauty, and gave an image testimony to the miracle of the Kansasian's son walking on the water. So that the best action segment in the whole film, I think it is the one-man show in which Superman first test flight.
On the contrary, another image mark of Zach Schneider that is easily overlooked is still preserved-the detailed close-up shots are still being used exaggeratedly.
The biggest obstacle to the realist adaptation of the hero myth is the description of the superman planet Krypton. In the early stage of creation of "Reunion" by Joes Weeden, he clearly opposed the addition of Thor, because he was afraid that the "two worlds" of God's Domain and Earth in Thor's story would tear the internal logic and aesthetic style of the movie. How does the divinely controlled warhammer and the Stark armor of scientific principles fight side by side? How can viewers incorporate the dusty western towns and the magnificent heavenly palace into a movie? Although Krypton is not comparable to God's Domain, it is at least dimensionally identical to Earth, sharing a cosmic truth, but extraterritorial civilizations are born and die. The strong plot is enough to cause fatal damage to the painstakingly constructed realism aesthetic style. The safest way to deal with this problem is to blur the description, as in the previous work "Superman Returns." However, as the first part of the restart series, "Man of Steel" is structurally responsible for the function of a growth story. If the positive description of the "one end of the sky" is abandoned, the style will be more complete, but the mythological end of this half-god myth story It will collapse again. Zach Schneider had no choice but to adopt the most dangerous and hardest method.
Although Destroying Krypton is not the most successful passage in the adaptation of "Man of Steel", it has a lot of shining points, even a little respectable.
The story of Krypton begins with the voice-over of Superman’s mother who screams during childbirth. The Superman’s mother and Russell Crowe, who gave birth, are drawn in sequence. Here is the narrative custom of heroic mythology. However, the movie plays a big trick here, because as usual, "The Birth of a Hero" will be the first chapter of a myth, and it is usually when the hero shows the first miracle. The straightforward description of the painful childbirth is conducive to the emotions of the viewers. Substitution, but the reduced sense of distance will also cause side effects, that is, the hero’s “divine nature” is reduced. In this civilization that has implemented genetic modification and machine reproduction, human embryos are all born from the science and technology tree. Since the natural birth of Superman has become an anomaly, the miracle of the birth of a hero is produced in the contrast.
This set of technology basically realizes the full control of human innate and acquired development, and it is no longer difficult to create a professional counterpart according to the needs of the work. In this way, Krypton’s central planners completely negated the rationality of human independent choice and established a deterministic civilized order through strong intervention in the fate of individuals. It is only natural that people who are branded with their innate social role will accept the fact that their growth options are deprived of their right to grow up and become premature babies of free will. As they grow up, they will gradually alienate into obedient and hard-working humanoid tools.
Another similar setting is the Cylon civilization in the space drama "Battlestar Galactica". The Cylons designed themselves as 7 character templates that can be mass-produced and infinitely resurrected. Each template ranges from character to Specialties are set in advance, and the entire civilization implements a republic under the leadership of No. 1 Cylon. A civilization continues by copying rather than reproducing, and human beings as social animals only have product attributes. However, with the destruction of Cylon's resurrection production technology, Cylons' self-replication was forced to stop, death has a real meaning, and each Cylon has become a unique existence. The accidental disappearance of product attributes even made the three Cylon models miraculously sprouted free will.
Later, it will be a bird's-eye view of the father of Superman flying over the city. The flight of the beast comes from the Greek mythological system, which is a metaphor for Krypton as the kingdom of the gods. The Kryptonian civilization's preference for building useless towers has something else to say. Cyborgs show the bridge of Kryptonian history to Superman. Smart Mercury drew teaching slides, large-scale memorial relief-like compositions, strutting flag bearers, men and women with unanimous movements and outstretched arms to guide the way. The shapes are obviously for reference Since the Soviet Union's aesthetics. These are the clear hints of "Man of Steel" to the social morphology of Krypton. That is to say, on top of the mythological system, "Man of Steel" has established a new value-level opposition between the earth and the nemesis.
In this talent training model led by the central plan, General Zod was appointed as an officer, and the elders of the council were naturally appointed as rulers. Zod’s decisive and resolute rebellion and killing, the elder died. At the end of the day, he still asked Zord, "Who gave you the right to kill?" "I don't want to exile traitors with blood on my hands" are all thinking considerations under the domination of social roles. However, the natural childbirth Superman gave birth illegally. It was an "unplanned pregnancy", a puppet without an owner, and was set as the product of a scientist's father pursuing the "right to choose". Therefore, Superman was forced to acquire a black identity since his birth. To explain this concept with mythological narrative, he is "the bastard son of the Krypton God".
The thing that people are born with no choice is destiny. At the narrative level, Krypton’s artificial intervention is actually a mythological variant of God teasing the fate of mortals. The film here leads to the motif of all heroic myths: "Heroes' unyielding resistance to fate", the issue of identity is also thrown out, and at the same time, the motivation for the battle between Zod and Superman is buried. In terms of values, this is a dispute between the Athens model and the Spartan model. At the end of the story, the illegitimate children of the gods of "unplanned conception" and "free choice of life" are designed to protect a family of three hiding in the ruins. Being forced to screw off the former fellow and professional soldier Zord's "neck. The family of three symbolizes what it means to be "forced helpless" is the fate of Superman. The fellow Zord died in a museum that symbolizes human civilization. This kind of civilization has died. Superman has solved the identity problem by turning to Krypton. This kind of turning is actually an affirmation of the free will represented by human civilization.
There is news that "Man of Steel" had been before the release. American churches have been screened extensively, and some even attached Superman’s landing farm to Bethlehem’s manger. It’s not that the savior cannot have an identity crisis, but Superman is indeed not a savior, but a demigod. The mission of a demigod is not to save the world, but to Fight for your fate and be your own master. Superman's ending is to choose to be a reporter and become a member of humanity. Similar to the identity crisis of Superman is Dr. Manhattan in "The Watcher". Dr. Manhattan is a god over night and is a real savior. He took up the task of ending the Cold War, but he ended up resenting the world and exiled helplessly.
The costumes of the Kryptonians are very intriguing, industrial and punk interesting. The S-shaped clan emblem on Superman’s chest, according to his father, symbolizes the hope of "building a civilization with the right to choose." Hope, that is, the hero's "task to be completed". After Zod took off his armor, the same style of one-piece shirt was revealed (but I didn't see the badge, everyone saw it), so the superman's uniform was given the "unloading". "Jiaguitian Zhiyi" means.
At the end of the entire Kryptonian passage, the mother sent a blessing to the parting young Superman, "He will be the god of mankind", which shows Superman's demigod identity. The "wandering cradle of space" is a biblical tradition, but it also comes from the mythological tradition of heroes. "Man of Steel" uses two sets of confrontations to establish the dual world of Krypton and the earth, avoiding the confusion between God's Domain and the real world in "Thor". At the narrative level, it is the confrontation between the heavenly court and the demigods. At the value level, it is the victory of the free man over the determinist.
It cannot be said that the Kryptonian passage is completely intact to the realist aesthetics of the film, but Zach Schneider did effectively prevent "Man of Steel" from becoming a tragedy like "Thor" and "Reunion"-due to the two cosmic truths. The incompatibility leads to the fragmentation of the internal logic of the film. When Marvel Comics began to take the path of yuppie as represented by Iron Man, Batman and Superman, one injured in the ribs and died between the two bandits, and one sitting in a cradle drifting to the shore of the earth, the Justice League will be the sons of two gods. The Confederation, the demigod and the savior, the conflict of values has only increased compared with the "Man of Steel", which makes one can't help but have malicious expectations.
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