Review Detail

When Man of Steel first came out in 2013, I remember thinking that this is the Superman movie that humanity deserved. Having seen Superman in almost every live-action incarnation so far, except for the live-action TV series Lois and Clark and anything before 1978, I always found the representation lacking (particularly in Smallville, so much angst). Here we have a Godlike character only doing things that humans do, with just a sprinkling of superhuman achievements. There have been plenty of animated adaptations of Superman that have showed the Superman that's willing to go above and beyond in order to fight for the greater good and have displayed his godlike attributes when necessary. In fact, the DC animated universe is overall much stronger than most of the live-action projects that DC has created thus far. Regardless Man of Steel finally gives us Superman the God rather than Superman the man.

However this first attempt in true Godlike action was not flawless. This is where Avid4D has taken up Zack Snyder's slack. I would say that this edit is not only masterful, but is Avid4D's masterpiece (though I have not yet seen his edit of Cloud Atlas). The transitions between scenes, particularly the transitions between Jor El's explanation of krypton and then the actual scenes on krypton was particularly inspired. Rather than starting the movie on krypton and then referring back to it later, we get to see the weight behind Jor El's words with the actual story as it happened. I also really liked how it was rooted in smallville and made Superman seem less like an alien than he did in the original cut. Overall the reordering works extremely well and strengthens the narrative and rather than getting the sense that Superman was an alien with little to no remorse we instead feel with him at the end of the movie when he must snap's Zod's neck to prevent him from eradicating humanity.

In particular the structure of this edit made me once again realize how truly epic Man of Steel was, and how different it was to most other live-action Superman incarnations before it. This edit seeks to both humanize a Godlike alien and the rearranging of structure for better flow made Henry Cavill's performance more weighty (though it was still a little stiff at times). Overall the end fight scene seems trimming was well served and turned what was otherwise an almost too long of a fight scene into something a little more reasonable at just about 11 minutes long. I remember when watching the original cut thinking during the entire last fight scene that all Superman would have to do in order to defeat Zod would be to clap both his hands over Zod's head so that it would explode. It was something I saw on a Hulk comic once and having to watch Superman and Zod beat each other across miles of a completely destroyed city seems somewhat superfluous if all it took was a simple handclap motion. Of course for the narrative to work then it would have to dawn on Superman earlier that Zod could not be saved from destroying everything. This edit saves a bit of the unnecessary destruction and the implied amount of lives decimated by focusing the action on just Superman and Zod and makes Superman seem like a bit less of an asshole for further destroying an already almost completely destroyed Metropolis.

Once again Zack Snyder has made a great movie that suffers from pretty shitty editing, and Avid4D stepped up and made a truly remarkable edit to an already fairly good film. I watched all of Avid4D's Superman movies in one giant Superman movie marathon in one day and what a day it was! I would highly recommend anyone trying to watch good live action Superman movies to watch Avid4D's take. I cannot praise enough how fantastic it's been to have a nice streamlined narrative for Superman with a focus on the things the viewer cares about and less about what hollywood can shove down our throats. Bravo, sir! I can't wait to watch your Cloud Atlas edit and eagerly anticipate more of your work.