The face of Wonder Woman's blueprint
BY: Dominic Ciolli
This is not a review of Man of Steel. Jack will have one coming next week, once
he’s seen the movie five times. Before
moving onto a few notes that I took away from the film, let me say that it was
terrific and very enjoyable. See it for
yourself, but let’s get to the (mildly) fun stuff! A few silly/short notes before getting to two
large take-aways.
- Major Carrie Farris (Christina Wren) is beautiful
- Lois Lane’s (Amy Adams) last line in the movie, and the second to last line of the movie itself, is without a doubt the best line in any Superman movie.
- The “Flight Fight” between Superman and Zod at the very tail end of the movie is a perfect template for a fight in a live action Dragon Ball Z movie. Which, if they make one, will strike me dead with awesome.
- I’m an above average Supergirl fan. I think she’s an awesome character, enjoy her monthly series, and loved her in Batman/Superman Apocalypse and Superman Unbound. That being said, is there a way she could appear (she won’t) down the line within this movie’s universe? It’s possible, but she’ll obviously be different. For what it’s worth, we’re going with Kara Zor-El (Superman’s cousin), who has been the default Supergirl for a while. I see four possible ways.
a. Possibility
One: Let’s get the most complicated,
stupid, and worst possibility out of the way first. Man of Steel establishes that the Codex of
Krypton, a registry of biological information for every Kryptonian yet to be
born, exists within Superman’s body, fused with his cells. In theory, he could extract the information
for a fellow House of El member (Kara) and “give birth” to her, but it would be
a stupid and pretty much impossible way to do it. But better options exist, such as….
b. Possibility
Two: Introduce her as part of a Brainiac movie.
Brainiac is an alien intelligence which travels the cosmos stealing
cities from planets, shrinking them, bottling them, and then destroying the
planets in an attempt to learn everything there is to learn in the
universe. In the comics he bottles a
Kryptonian city, Kandor, but senses that the planet is about to die naturally
so he leaves the planet alone. A
potential way to introduce Brainiac and Kara is to have Brainiac come to Earth
in order to bottle a city (what do ya know, he picks Metropolis). In the fight, somehow Superman gets captured
and sent into bottled Kandor, where he meets Kara. They get out of the city together back to
Earth and fight Brianiac together.
c. Possibility
Three: When Superman is exploring the Scout Ship, he finds a pod with a dead
body in it. He immediately sees another
pod…which is open! The ship landed
nearly 18,000 years before the movie takes place, so surely the occupant of
that pod would have died, right?
Wrong! It landed in the North
Pole during the last Ice Age. We know
that Kryptonians can be frozen (it is what happened to Zod and his soldiers
before being sent into the Phantom Zone, after all). Suppose that a distant ancestor of the House
of El, Kara Zor-El, was on that scout ship when it crash landed on Earth all
those years ago. Most of the crew died
on impact, never getting out of their pods.
Kara, however, did manage to escape and even got out of the ship…where
she promptly froze in the Ice Age. The
context for how she comes unfrozen depends on where you want the story to go.
d. Possibility
Four: The Kryptonian outposts mentioned during the History Lesson. Jor-El mentions that these outposts were
deserted over time, but what if not all of them were? Suppose that one of them has persevered,
found out about the destruction of Krypton somehow and figured that they were
all alone in the universe. But then an
emergency beacon flares! The same beacon
which attracted Zod now attracts the interest of this peaceful outpost, who
send Kara, for plot-related reasons, to investigate. Kara could either be a distant (get it???)
cousin or just sever familial ties and just have her be a random Kryptonian.
- The Smallville Fight Sequence is not only the best action scene in the movie, but (in my opinion) the best superhero fight scene ever. But it’s own greatness aside, it provides vital support to the movie efforts of two of Superman’s Justice League colleagues: Wonder Woman and the Flash. Out of the core lineup, these two are often described as the hardest to adapt, for different reasons. Wonder Woman because studios apparently think it would be hard to sell a movie about a crime fighting woman (??) and Flash because apparently his powers (super-speed) do not translate to the silver screen well. Let’s take them one at a time.
a. Wonder
Woman: Would anyone be able to buy a
female character going toe-to-toe with other superheroes? Of course!
Black Widow is a good example of this.
Can she really fight with any of the other non-Hawkeye Avengers? Not really, but she’s badass in her own right
so nobody questions why she was with them.
No serious viewer thought, “Hey, why is there a girl on this team? I can’t believe this.” Wonder Woman is a step
above Widow though, because she is arguably the second strongest member of the
Justice League (depending on how you feel about Green Lantern), but can this be
conveyed in a movie? Man of Steel says:
ABSOLUTELY. The Smallville Fight
Sequence features Superman facing off against Faora-Ul (Antje Traue) and
it.is.incredible. I loved Cavill as
Superman, Adams as Lois, Michael Shannon as Zod was incredible, but Faora was
probably my favorite character. She
beats the hell out of Superman and it is incredibly believable and
awesome. Why is it believable, you
ask? Faora is a trained fighter, a
warrior her whole life. Superman has his
powers but never had to fight anyone even remotely in his league, so once he
was faced with a competent opponent, holy hell did it turn out bad for him (at
least until he remembered he could shoot lasers out of his eyes). Well guess what, Wonder Woman has also
trained as a fighter her whole life.
Without a doubt, Wonder Woman could beat Aquaman, Flash, and Batman in a
fight. I personally think she could take
Green Lantern, but that would be a much closer fight. Man of Steel’s Faora-Ul proves that a woman
can kick the ass of the strongest comic book character in a believable
way. Wonder Woman here we come!
b. The
Flash: The entire way that Faora fights
is proof that super speed can translate to film in an awesome way. She whips from one opponent to the next in
seconds, using her momentum to add force to her already powerful attacks,
pausing to taunt her soon-to-be victims.
Throw some red and yellow on her and she fights the same exact way that
Flash would (minus the super strength obviously). If they use Wally West as the Flash, this can
be played to very comedic effects. Plus,
Faora-style super speed would look great in tandem with the rest of the
League. Superman and Wonder Woman can do
traditional fighting while Superman occasionally does some speeding, but the
Flash is always somewhere in the background fighting, never stationary. Think about it this way: one of the coolest parts of the Avengers
movie was the tracking shot. It followed
Iron Man to Captain America, where the two fought some enemies, then Iron Man
flew past Hawkeye while he put an arrow into an enemy pilot, which crashed a
glider into one of those huge monster things, upon which Thor and the Hulk were
fighting some baddies. It was an awesome
sequence. Now imagine that same style of
a shot with Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Aquaman/Martian
Manhunter, but with Flash being a constant in the background of every shot all at
one time. It would be the coolest thing
this side of the Phantom Zone.
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