Man Of Steel: Remastered

This is one of the best fanedits that has ever been created. Completely redeems a garbage movie in a way I never thought would be possible. Simply outstanding.

Agent9 has done it again, taking a big-budget and successful movie that received negative reviews and turned it into a much more enjoyable film. John Williams' score was perfectly integrated, and improved the film so much. The colour correction was a massive improvement, and made the movie much more pleasing to the eye.

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The flashback sequences were moved around in such a way that they seem less spontaneous and more appropriate to certain parts. Although it was weird to start Clark's journey off with instantly becoming Superman before we actually meet the character felt odd, it didn't bother me that much.

Loved the removal of Superman's dad, he still remains in certain scenes but only to deliver some good dialog and progress the story, rather than dying and making overly dramatic and pointless screentime that has nothing to do with the overall plot.

Krypton is now much better, though the action scenes and special effects were stunning, they also served as pointless screentime. The opening is now less than ten minutes and gets straight to the point, introducing Zod and his motivations.

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Overall, Agent9 has done an amazing job, the cuts are all reasonable. This is now my go-to version of 'Man of Steel'

WOW - The movie that should have been in the movie theater.
Not much more you can say - unbelievable :)

This was a fun edit. :)

Agent 9 has recut Man of Steel using the original Donner's Superman The Movie as a template, and replacing the Hans Zimmer soundtrack with the classic John Williams score.

And for the most part he is very successful.

The cut work is very good, the biggest cuts being the Krypton prologue and young Clark's flashbacks, along with a restructuring of Clark's finding of the Fortress and meeting of Lois. I enjoyed all these changes. It moves the story along faster, Clarks has a more mysterious quality, we learn about him through Lois's point of view and any information lost during the Krypton sequence we learn during Jor-el's education of Clark. In fact, I actually wish more had been cut. In particular, I think the entire Smallville battle could have been cut once Zod departed without significant impact on the narrative and I do wish the Metropolis destruction could have been trimmed even more than Agent 9 had, but I applaud all the clever cuts he did make.

But the real star of this edit is the soundtrack replacement. Agent 9 did exceptional work in this department! BRAVO!!! For the most part, the audio work is seamless and adds a very uplifting, nostalgia quality to the film.

However, there were times where I felt the Superman theme was used too often. There were points where it felt repetitive or too soon or an alternate, more subdued track or cue would have been more appropriate. It was almost too much of a good thing.... it sort of highlighted how these are films of very different era's and how the interpretation of the hero has changed, and the soundtrack did not always quite fit the way one would hope it would.

But overall, this was a very positive alternate viewing experience and I highly recommend it.

THUMBS UP!

I'd been looking forward to this one after being impressed with Agent9's editing skills on Prometheus and his overall sense of presentation and professionalism with his Prometheus Special Edition.c

I didn't think he could better himself after that edit... but he has surpassed himself in my opinion.

I read some of the comments in his "work in progress" forum thread but I resisted commenting until I'd seen the finished product. What I think is worth baring in mind are twofold:

1) what did he attempt to do?

2) did he achieve it?

Whether or not I think this film is helped by removing Hans Zimmer's wonderful score is irrelevant. That was Agent9's intent and I think he succeeded in a way that I haven't seen any other faneditor come close to, including my own meagre efforts at replacing an original score.

Secondly, his aim was to remove the dreary colour timing from the original and make it more vibrant and he was mostly successful as much as anyone without access to the original materials could be. Sometimes a scene or two looks a little too magenta but that is very occasional and I'm prepared to accept that because of all the wonderful work he did in making this look like a Superman film.

Both the colour timing and music replacement gave me goosebumps when I watched it for the first time. I actually believe the film looks better with a more natural palette than that horrible sickly green, over processed look that Zach Snyder released it in. It'll be interesting to see if Snyder dials it back a bit for BvS.

I can't imagine how much work went into doing all of that and if he'd just done that and not edited the movie I would still be applauding his efforts.

But here is where I believe the hidden star of this particular show is... the editing.

The re-structuring of the original story has been done brilliantly! I read a lot of criticism about how in the released version Lois was lazily dropped into the story whenever they needed her to stumble across something and I've agreed with that criticism. Also some of the other things, like the treatment of Pa Kent has also made me side with the internet critics. Agent 9, much like he did with the terrible character motivations in Prometheus and with that contentious rolling derelict, has made Lois make more sense in the story to me. After Krypton explodes, she becomes the dramatic thrust of the story, searching for the enigmatic saviour she's heard stories of. The re-structuring involved here lets us follow Lois's discoveries and that's how we meet Supes. The added bonus of this is that we lose a lot of superflous stuff that the rambling original flashback structure didn't need and inflated the run time to make the final act harder to sit through.

All the stuff cut, I don't miss. All the re-ordering of scenes are inspired. And all in all this is a triumph of editing! The best I've seen after all these years of downloading superb fan works from this community.

The only minor quibble I have is that it's not clear to me why Krypton exploded when it did or how many years have passed when we pick up the story but that's pretty pedantic of me as we all know this story well.

From top to bottom with it's adept colour re-imagining, it's maestro like sound editing and the creating of new titles and effects and editing makes this for me one of the greatest fan edits I've had the pleasure to watch.

Highly recommended.