van der graaf

But, will it kill people?

EddieMoney

What people? All those buildings are obviously empty! Duh!

Mike86

Dude, I liked the movie but even I won't deny there was a lot of human casualties. They may have not been intentionally caused by Superman but they definitely happened there's no way around it. Just because we didn't see people on screen dying I think it's logical to assume that those buildings were likely not completely empty. Personally my thoughts are while there was a lot of destruction during his fight with Zod it really wasn't anything that he had a ton of control over.

chess

Not sure I'm dying to wade into this again, but I also took it that the buildings near the terraforming thingie had been evacuated. At a minimum, it was implied when they evacuated the Daily Planet.

RichC2

I also assumed most of the buildings had been evacuated by then.

Paul_SD

Yes. It was.
I also, honestly, involuntarily laughed at Zod's first scene and Shannon's line reading.
The dialogues bombastic urgency to dispense exposition and Shannon's essaying of Goyer's tortured, florid prose - with the intercutting of the reaction shots of the council members wearing those ridiculously ornate chandeliers- made the entire scene come across like a parody of itself.

this film really got off on a bad foot with me and never recovered.

Wasn't going to bother posting this since it seemed like conversation had died down- but a friend of mine just did a one page comic on the stuff in the movie that rubbed her the wrong way. She's a big science nerd so these things stuck out at her. She said reaction has been pretty negative to it and I can actually understand that a little as picking on the science aspects of what is clearly a fantasy film seems a little misguided. Especially one that already displays so many glaring problems in terms of basic character logic and motivation.

anyways here it is for anyone interested.

fujishig

Weren't Perry and the rest still in the Daily Planet building when the terraforming began? I also seem to remember people bouncing off the ground when it first started. I'm not 100% sure, though. Certainly the people in the Daily Planet weren't far enough away to be out of danger, and they were basically very lucky that only that one girl got trapped.

How far away was the museum where Superman fought Zod? It can't have been that far away, since Lois presumably ran there. And there were people there.

Not that they addressed any of that, the filmmakers did seem to want to gloss over any kind of ramifications of the destruction. We basically cut to what must have been a year or so later, when Clark Kent gets a job at the refurbished Daily Planet and at the very least the local stadium has been rebuilt for ball games.

edited to add:
As for the science stuff, I do think we have to suspend disbelief with comic book movie science. For instance, even though they call it a singularity it's basically a portal to the Phantom Zone, isn't it (which I still don't quite understand, because they escaped from the Phantom Zone earlier). I did have a problem with the power thing, which I stated earlier, because I don't understand how the sunlight gave them powers, but the atmosphere took it away somehow, so that the Kryptonians in suits had access to super strength and invulnerability but not the vision/hearing powers. Or why Zod would want to terraform the world into an environment where he didn't have as many powers. Or why Jor-El injected all this Kryptonian DNA into Kal when his whole argument was that Kal was special because he was conceived outside of that environment and could choose what he wanted... if he did repopulate the Kryptonian race, what was he going to do, be Adam and try to make sure the next generation was born naturally, hoping that Kryptonian DNA can survive inbreeding?

But for the sake of the story, Zod had to be adamant about destroying humanity and have no leeway in terms of allowing the humans to live, so that Superman's choice would be obvious. There needed to be a way for Lois and the humans to deal with the Kryptonian ship while Superman dealt with the World Engine, so they needed that whole Jor-El pulls a deus ex machina out of his hat to give them something to do (even though hey, they're going up against Kryptonians with superior technology and powers). They needed a way to depower Superman on Zod's ship, and a way to give Superman an advantage against Zod when the helmet came off.

Rob V

When normal humans can outrun falling skyscrapers, there will be no human casualties --- that should have been the assumption for this movie.

Rob V

Then we're already dead.

Mike86

That's not how I took it. I assumed it was fairly shortly after that Clark got the job at The Daily Planet. I think some people are over-assessing the damage actually done to Metropolis. It seemed pretty contained to a general area and it's not like the entire city was destroyed. It could be they have a stadium that wasn't in the vicinity of the damage.

Paul_SD

I could have sworn I saw the entire skyline devastated when Supes returns from doing whatever it was he did with the world engine.

Brack

Probably a negative reaction because that comic is not funny and doesn't even come close to explaining anything scientifically.

He/she/it is named Professor Science, but it goes on to school us about morality and Jesus connections? And comparing the black hole by using a Star Trek reference with Planet Vulcan? There's nothing scientific about the comic. And Man of Steel is not the first major movie to be promoted to Church folk. Les Miserables, The Blind Side, Soul Surfer did as well, to name a few. Who gives a shit where a film is promoted? Why should Professor Science care about marketing practices?

Mike86

Metropolis is supposed to be pretty huge right? I somehow doubt that the entire city was shown and was all destroyed. A good chunk of what looked to be a central point of the city but not all of it. I could be wrong but that's how I took it.

fujishig

Didn't the Daily Planet get destroyed, though?

While searching for pics of the destruction, I came across this:
http://metropolismayhem.manofsteel.com/

That's gotta be a joke site someone put up after the movie came out, right?

chess

As I've said before, I really liked the movie and don't think it makes sense to pick apart, but I generally like these guys, so I'll share:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CjSNLmb0Ndw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

dan30oly

Those guys should make the next one.

Or, at least be given a copy of the script in advance of shooting so they can fix up garbage like this from happening to begin with.

RocShemp

I really enjoyed Man Of Steel but that was great. I also enjoy the old video they had done spoofing the Reeve movie:

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yavK0mnE3wI?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Giantrobo

Exactly

I have been watching Godzilla/Giant Monster films since the 70's. I guess my brain has ALWAYS gone under the assumption that people were evacuated for the most part. Unless, of course, a scene was specifically done to show someone didn't make it. That's not to say that I never think about people.

That's probably why I don't totally understand the "Too Much Destruction" complaint. I can't relate due to years of just accepting that it is what it is in G-Films.

Giantrobo

I hear Faorah is coming back to the Superman Comics. I think the MoS version/Antje Traue has a growing fanbase.

Mike86

I guess this probably does make sense that the buildings were mostly evacuated. Still I'm guessing there were some deaths even though they weren't seen. I find it hard to believe that all the people in that area would have been able to get out of the area to safety in time.

Dragon Tattoo

Yeah, she's pretty much entirely based on the actress, even though Zod is clearly not based on Shannon.

RocShemp

The ones that didn't get evacuated where likely killed when you saw the World Engine levitating people and then slamming them into the ground (along with cars, trucks, etc).

Although, given those LexCorp trucks were intact it's likely people in that particular area were not immediately affected and likely got out.

In any case, as Giantrobo pointed out, the rule of thumb with movies that show epic disasters is that people made it out of all standing buildings in time unless specifically shown still stuck inside said buildings.

chess

I actually took it that the Daily Planet was one of the last to evacuate the area, which is the only thing that made it heroic for them to stay to free their coworker. No doubt there were many deaths, but most, I would think, were before the fight scene when the machine first landed and started up.

Also, the animated series has very similar destruction, often without any implied evacuation, and I would think that most here hold it in very high esteem. I personally think it's the best version of Superman ever put on screen.

taffer

The animated series did show a lot of similar destruction. Giantrobo posted a video clip earlier that showed Superman punching Darkseid through several buildings.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/BiTWeu0nOKs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The comics also frequently show a lot of destruction. I remember in The Death of Superman that Superman and Doomsday fought in the middle of Metropolis causing a lot of destruction. The shockwaves of their punches were causing windows in buildings to shatter. The final scene with Superman dying took place literally right in front of the Daily Planet. Also the destruction enabled Clark to easily explain his absence during the period of time Superman was dead. Clark explained his absence by hiding under a bunch of debris until rescue crews found him.

RocShemp

Yup. And the Supergirl at the time, Matrix, morphed into Clark Kent so Superman could be seen rescuing Clark Kent personally.