Top 10 Reasons Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim

I haven’t done a Top 10 list since Christmas, but I have to intervene at this moment in history.  As I write this, Pacific Rim (which, as you saw on Wednesday, really disappointed me) is tracking 15 points better on Rotten Tomatoes than Man of Steel (which, side by side with Iron Man 3, is a strong contender for “Best Summer Movie”), and I’ve read several reviews that agree with this consensus.  In fact, my first thought as the credits rolled on Pacific Rim was, “There are people in this world who liked that better than Man of Steel”?

My intention here isn’t to put Man of Steel on a pedestal or tear down Pacific Rim as the worst movie ever; I wouldn’t do either in any circumstance.  But I do think it bears further explanation why I preferred one over the other.  So without further ado, I give you:  “The Top 10 Reasons Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim”!

(Spoilers, definitely.)

10.  The title.  Let’s start at the beginning.  Man of Steel is a title ripe with significance; it’s the character’s nickname (a la “Dark Knight”), it distances itself from its predecessors, and it comments on the nature of the character.  The “man of steel” is virtually indestructible but, like steel, needs to be tempered before he can become truly powerful; the movie provides that tempering and, significantly, announces its title only after the character has reached that point.  Pacific Rim is only a geographical point of reference, comparable to calling The Avengers “New York.”  And while we’re on the subject of nomenclature...

9.  The names.  As I was writing my Pacific Rim review, I had to check Wikipedia every few minutes to remind myself what the character names were.  Granted, no one gets everything right the first time, but I could not remember a single character name being spoken in the film, nor did the names seem familiar after seeing them listed on my screen.  Instead, we have a bevy of names so off-the-wall you can hear the self-congratulation:  Raleigh Becket, Stacker Pentecost, Newton Geiszler.  And to be fair, the characters in Man of Steel have the advantage of 70-some years of cultural vernacular.  But where Man of Steel succeeds is in properly introducing and using character names; on first appearance, Jor-El and Zod acknowledge each other by name.  It’s Screenwriting 101; it helps the audience identify with the characters beyond “that guy” and “whats-her-face.”  And speaking of names...

8.  The names matter.  I didn’t make enough of this when I reviewed Man of Steel, but it’s not for naught that Henry Cavill is playing Kal-El – not Superman, not Clark Kent.  When these alternate names are invoked, it’s for a reason; Kal is his real identity, his birthright, and the others are names he is given on Earth (the former by Lois Lane and the military, the latter by his adoptive parents).  In Pacific Rim, I had no sense that Raleigh and Becket were the same person because the names were bandied about so willy-nilly with no perceptible logic.  In a similar vein, remember the names of the “Jaeger” robots?  It’s like an itch at the back of your head, right?  You know they had names, but you can’t remember them.  Because they weren’t significant to the film.  Names are important – it’s a basic tenet of identity, and they should mean something.  Pacific Rim never cares about the names because...

7.  Characters shouldn’t be interchangeable.  Oh, man.  As soon as Pacific Rim introduced the concept of “the drift” – in which pilots merge their identities to become one with the machine – I knew we were in trouble.  What Pacific Rim does is hypostasize its own disregard for characters, literalizing their interchangeability by stating outright, “Once you go inside the big metal thingy, it doesn’t matter who you are.  It just matters how hard you can hit” (more on that later).  Becket and Mako Mori are, aside from their chromosomes, essentially the same character:  damaged by the loss of family but gifted Jaeger pilots with something to prove.  Ditto for the two scientists, who shout exposition and SCIENCE while refuting each other; aside from grotesque caricature in lieu of personality, they’re entirely interchangeable.  Conversely, Man of Steel’s characters can’t be swapped out at random because each has a clearly defined set of goals and personality traits.  (To be fair, Steve Lombard and Jenny serve very similar functions in the plot, but at least they behave differently.)  Granted, Pacific Rim has a solid and unique character in Idris Elba’s Pentecost, but...

6.  Be subtle; I’m not stupid.  The problem with Pentecost, aside from his boilerplate characterization as “the fixed point” man-in-charge (which he actually says in so many words), is that Elba’s strong performance is shot in the foot by a transparent script that bludgeons us with his ominous nosebleeds and then declares in a last-act revelation that he can’t survive piloting another Jaeger – at which point, a giant neon arrow heralding “He’s gonna die heroically” ought to appear.  (See also Mako Mori’s motivation – the death of her parents – which is nicely understated until she actually shouts “For my family!” while punching a monster.)  While Man of Steel isn’t perfect in this regard – I still cringe at how directly Lois reminds Perry that she’s “a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist” – it allows us to appreciate the magnitude of the choice Kal makes between Earth and Krypton without having him verbalize it.  (The closest he comes is a practical moment when he tells Zod he won’t join the general because “Krypton had its chance.”) 

5.  The music.  Now, this is probably a thing that only resonates with a select number of moviegoers, and it might be too personal to rank this high on my list, but I have to say it before we get much further and it’s my blog so I do what I want, Thor.  Regardless of whether or not Hans Zimmer is the man who can do no wrong when it comes to orchestral scores (he is), he leaps a double hurdle with Man of Steel by giving us a score that is both effective within the film and wholly independent of John Williams’s brilliant Superman score that had endured for thirty years.  Zimmer gives us so many memorable musical cues that work during the film and independently on a CD (I’ve used the track “Flight” as the opener for a mix tape, to great success), in that rare mix of recognizable yet not distracting.  Over in Pacific Rim, I either didn’t notice the music or (more likely) couldn’t hear it over the din of CGI punching CGI.  Sorry, Ramin Djawadi – you just didn’t hit it on this one.  And I was really listening for it.

4.  Show, don’t tell.  If character names are Screenwriting 101, this tenet is Filmmaking 101.  I can’t begrudge the filmmakers of Pacific Rim their exposition-heavy opening montage; in fact, it’s one of the more enjoyable moments in the whole piece, with a nice bit of world-building as only science fiction can provide.  (Unfortunately, it’s also simultaneously more interesting than the actual film you’re about to see, so...)  But the expository dialogue doesn’t stop there.  How do we know Becket’s the best?  He tells us in a voiceover (cardinal sin #1).  How do we know Mako is gifted?  Becket tells us, and we just take his word for it.  And scientists Charlie Day and Burn Gorman (themselves interchangeable; see #7) exist only to shout science at us and tell us things that we need to know because the film couldn’t come up with a more creative way to deliver it other than the painfully literal “downloading from a kaiju brain” (although how do they know about the dinosaurs repelling the kaiju before they drift?).  Again, Man of Steel isn’t perfect in this regard – Nolan and his colleagues are prone to expository dialogue – but there’s enough piecing together that the audience feels engaged, not lectured.  Zod never says “I’m going to poison Earth’s atmosphere and kill all its inhabitants in order to rebuild Krypton” – as he probably would if he were a Pacific Rim character – because the screenwriting is smart enough to give him the great line “A foundation has to be built on something.”  (Man of Steel also smartly winks at expository dialogue when Zod refuses to discuss his plans with a holographic Jor-El.)

3.  Why do I care?  This issue ties in with a lot of things I’ve already raised here, but one of the biggest problems with Pacific Rim is that it just doesn’t make me care about what’s going on in the way that Man of Steel does.  I’m not invested in Becket because his bragging narration tells me he’s the best without earning it, and if we’re being totally honest here I probably only liked Pentecost because Idris Elba is a stellar actor with that Denzel level of charisma that transcends his projects.  And while I don’t expect killer monsters to have compelling motivations, the film’s tacked-on imperialist critique feels insulting (see #4) in its inorganic revelation that the kaiju are part of an elaborate conquering plan.  On the other hand, Man of Steel wisely waits about an hour to get Kal into the blue tights because we need to care about him as a character, see him struggle with his responsibilities, and earn our affection as a fully-formed character – not a stand-in for an action figure.  Ditto for Lois – we see her passion (before that “Pulitzer Prize” line) and know what she wants without needing to be told.  The same goes for Zod, because...

2.  A villain is almost more important.  Almost everyone agrees that, no matter what you made of Man of Steel in the final analysis, Michael Shannon positively killed as General Zod.  After Superman Returns, all we asked of Man of Steel’s baddie was that Superman punch him.  Oh, they duke it out in one of the more engaging slugfests, but Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer go an extra mile by making Zod a complicated villain with valid, perhaps even noble, motives, even if his “greater good of my people” mentality necessitates the death of innocents.  Kudos to Shannon for pulling it off, burying significance and emotion beneath a snarl and a brow twitch (that condescending head shake when he asks Lara if she thinks her son is safe – phew!).  But Zod is one of the best parts about Man of Steel not just because of how well he’s crafted – he tells us something about our protagonist, as well; the choices he makes are not the same as Kal’s, which helps us understand our hero better.  I don’t think I need to tell you why the kaiju fail in this category:  by trading significance for visual flair (the mindset of a toymaker) and digital dexterity (the mindset of a showoff), the kaiju are, again, interchangeable.  Yes, mindless beasts and all that, but at least make them represent something beyond punching bags.  Which brings us to the #1 Reason Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim:

1.  A film really ought to say something.  Almost as a follow-up to #3, as I always ask my writing students, “So what?”  You’ve taken two-some hours of my life – what do I do with what you’ve given me? And it’s not fair to say “Pacific Rim is just entertainment,” because that kind of thinking takes us to a place where Twilight and 1984 are equivalent; entertainment ought not be mindless, yet Pacific Rim is.  The greatest mistake the film makes is in assuming the audience already accepts the innate awesomeness of its premise and will swallow anything as long as Big Dumb Object #1 punches Big Dumb Object #2.  In the end, the only big dumb object left standing is you, moviegoer, as you shuffle out of the theater.  (And don’t tell me it’s a movie about international cooperation – nations only agree on bad ideas in this film.)  Man of Steel, while a long ways from the best that narratives have to offer, has important things to say about identity and free will (especially vis-à-vis nature vs. nurture), tapping into the post-9/11 discourse to ask how we cope with disaster (do we run away, or do we help each other, as Perry and Steve do for Jenny?).

But the most important thing that Man of Steel has to say is that the character of Superman – and of all heroes, for that matter – still matters because the fundamental nature of humanity remains unchanged:  we are, at our core, no matter where we come from, a people with the capacity for good.  Whether we look to our role models or whether we choose to step up and be that light to show the way, whether our heroes are messiahs or superman, Man of Steel reminds us that heroes are worth believing in because of their unchangeable nature – and the possibility that, even if we stumble and fall, we will join them in the sun.