My third viewing of Man of Steel led me to appreciate it just a little bit more, but not much. The...

My third viewing of Man of Steel led me to appreciate it just a little bit more, but not much. The visuals, the (overall) story, the acting, the direction it took, all of it was pretty good. Not great, but good. Superman was Superman, the villains were nasty, the Kryptonian tech was superb, and it did a good job of portraying a boy growing up with powers he didn’t understand. Meanwhile, the actual script is still atrocious, the film largely ignores the casual decimation and loss of lives, and tells a fairly straightforward story in the most unnecessarily complicated way while completely ignoring how literally none of this could have happened. After loving it the first time, then hating it the second time, now I’ve seen a film that I can get behind, but still recognize that it’s not a good movie. Like, from the standpoint of making sense or storytelling. Am I in for the second film? God help me, yes. But I’m very wary. The thing is, Man of Steel is the kind of superhero film that, in the 90’s, wouldn’t have gotten a sequel. Right now we’re experiencing a surge of comic book movies that are being plotted out as trilogies or better, with massive studio backing because people keep going to see these films. So we’re getting films that are being slapped together out of spit and baling wire with expensive effects that look flashy and enough action to keep the popcorn makers in business. These films cannot fail anymore; they are guaranteed successes from the moment of inception, and they are simply because there is already more on the horizon. So we’re going to get Superman vs. Batman, then Justice League, and perhaps a Wonder Woman film. This is all decided. We’re also getting Spider-Man 2 & 3 along with a Sinister Six and Venom films. X-Men has Days of Future Past this year, then Apocalypse, then potentially a crossover film with the Fantastic Four once the FF film has been released. Studios are banking on these movies. They are plotting them out in advance, crafting stories that bleed over from one to the other, and we’re not going to get solid stand-alone films. This ought to be worrisome. Instead we’re just going to keep seeing them in theaters and buying them on blu-ray. Because, when WE were kids, we wanted these movies. Desperately. Now we’re money-spending adults, and we’re spending money on seeing them come to life again. If they keep maintaining some kind of quality, that’s great. But it makes me worry that, at some point, the quality will drop to zero, and we’ll just have flashy effects with zero substance. I yearn for the days when a film had to bank on how good of a film it was on its own merits, and not on how well it would set up the next movie. Funny thing is, that was only a couple of years ago.