Man of Steel answers insight commentary episode to tangential Trinity a welcome to Man of Steel answers insight commentary on your Man of Steel apologist Dr. awkward to cover a mosaic of topics are fans who love discussing the Man of Steel in the DC cinematic universe together to tackle the criticisms and controversies of an ambitious and polarizing film to gain insight into the future of this year universe in this episode we talk about the open hibernation pod revisit the world engine discussed Superman's position on kryptonian technology and how that might lead to a beef with the bat we tangentially touch on the Trinity in today's talk trust me and stated this is a podcast for fans who want to dive deep into the Man of Steel to answer the critics and the confused the show is not meant to convert anybody but the celebrate a film that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and investigation reason all mines will differ but this is a show for fans who love to Man of Steel and love to chew their food will start with Digest analysis for what happened in the film then analyze the creative decisions that took place outside the film die genic means within the logic of the story I'm compiling chronological list of such die Jette questions an alleged plot holes so we can start to move through them for now working to do general topic episodes like this last episode we talk about the seven remnants of kryptonian technology left on earth at the end of the movie why didn't mention the open hibernation pod and the world engine scrap just as well because I get to talk about wonder woman and Pac-Man in this episode let's start with the world engine I can't believe I forgot it in the last episode but it's okay only have a quick for talking points about the world engine which didn't get sucked into a singularity like the black zero the first and the most interesting thing I think is the fact that it's outside of the United States jurisdiction and possibly in Aquaman's backyard that means any scrap anything recovered from it is up for grabs its is a global resource or global piece of kryptonian technology that is a can of be solely controlled by the United States second it's massive so it's possibly going to leave a little more scrap and say Lois's escape pod so that's more material to study and it's also the largest reservoir of liquid Geo if you don't know what liquid Geo is it's a three-dimensional display technology that allows for a physical interface is capable of forming physical tools like the command key or appendages like the world engine did to fight Superman liquid Geo is the name that the special effects company gave it in creating this visual display technology and there's a featurette online and on the disk if you want to watch it and learn a little bit more about it and lastly like the STL example from the previous episode humanity now knows definitively that terraforming isn't just a theory the possible other reasons to pursue technology like this beyond just space exploration such as addressing or combating climate change speaking about climate change 18,000 years ago was when the Earth's climate began to warm and human civilization began to take off well coincidently that's roughly one of kryptonian scout ship arrived and that leads us to our second piece of technology the open hibernation pod so the open hibernation pod was something that they highlighted in the film Clark goes into the scout ship he sees a pod swipes the glass and then Caesar desiccated body inside and then briefly they show an open hibernation pod but that's the extent of what we see in the film it's ambiguous presumably they then travel through the stars with an empty pod that was open but at the same time the scout ship seems largely unused the Genesis chamber is intact it wasn't turning how kryptonian babies in the whole ship was buried 300 m under the ice roughly 100 stories and just to give you sort of an idea that is less than 20 buildings that are over 100 stories tall in the world so it was it's very quite deeply unfair however if you're a hard-core fan you're probably aware of the Man of Steel prequel comic entitled originally Man of Steel prequel with a story by Boyer Snyder and comic book writer Geoff Johns the actual script was written by Sterling Gates and that gives us a little wiggle room to talk about canonicity to be honest I doubt the canonicity of this particular's story I don't think any future writers or filmmakers are going to have their hands tied by this they not going to lose any sleep if they come up with something that contradicts or deems this particular comic noncanonical and I don't have a problem with that but I have to omit my prejudice against the comic deals with a specific theory of mine but as Alton Brown says that's another show if you read the comic you know that to kryptonian's made it into Earth's solar system and at least one of them made it to the surface it's ambiguous it's a figure casting shadow but late in the comic you see the crest of the house about and that strongly implies that it is Kara who lives on to spread krypton's story its values and perhaps it's genetics the comic possibly creates more questions than it answers as far as we can tell she abandoned the self repairing ship to be fair though we don't know how long it takes for such ships to regenerate and self repair it may have taken longer than powerful natural lifespan so that might've explained the disuse or the abandonment of the ship now one of the most intriguing possibilities that has many fans divided is the suggestion that wonder woman might be a descendent from kryptonian heritage and that leads us to talking about whether wonder woman is or should be a kryptonian so is wonder woman the kryptonian nor should she be that's a topic for an entire episode but I just thought I'd run down some of the pros and cons really quickly in the pro-column it's elegant and orderly in the sense that you don't have to introduce magic into the universe it's hard to tell grounded stories once the door to be irrational has been opened you have to explain and deal with a hidden world of magic one that's always been there and is suddenly the doors are blown open wide onto the real world with the mundane world and to have a story that's more sort of condensed to that way can be very appealing to writer those constraints make things much simpler to work with but in the con column it's not traditional if you're going to have wonder woman there's certain elements you expect in one of them is magic it's wonder woman's large contribution to the archetypes that the Trinity represents Superman represents science fiction Batman represents contemporary storytelling and she represents the fantasy archetype if we condense everything into just being kryptonian in origin it sort of limits your world you don't have the opportunity or the ability to expand out into those areas as readily and if you do you cut off the legs of wonder more woman's tradition only to introduce magic later with another character in may be showing her character maybe short shrift so I tend towards con but I have an open mind and not married to the position I can I can see validity in either approach I'm open to being convinced otherwise and open to seeing what the filmmakers do with it speaking in multiple approaches that we come to Superman's attitude towards kryptonian tech in the future films so Superman can roughly have two different approaches to kryptonian technology left on earth and of calling them the steward of krypton or Prometheus titan of tomorrow those in noncanonical you can ignore them the steward of krypton approach is where Superman takes an affirmative stance he says this is my heritage it's my birthright at the last son of krypton this technology is mine to take care of I want to avoid a global tug-of-war over technology and so I'm going to be a steward over it a cost of the more neutral stance it could be an biding his time in trying to figure out how this whole Superman thing works he may say I don't really know what my position is in the meantime I'm going to hold onto this technology until we figure it out and to do that he got a put the technology out of humanity's reach now to Fortress of solitude was first put in the Arctic in 1958 and back then the Arctic was largely out of humanity's reach today not so much so where can Superman put all this technology so that it's out of humanity's reach and I think the answer to that is to put in orbit or on the moon so you'd have an orbital or moon Fortress of solitude that brings us to a quick aside can Superman breathe in space and surety He does it three times in the film first when he discovering his flight second when he's escaping the black zero and lastly when he's fighting odd this is consistent with his ability to not need a mass in the oil rig fire and to not drowned when he was dreaming underwater this is also consistent with the kryptonian atmosphere weakness but that's another show now there are two things I really like about this particular approach the first is it's so easy to tell elegantly only have to do is have Superman flying to space get into the scout ship remnant and hang up his Kate and you can leave it to the audience to put together everything that we just talked about the second thing I like about it is that was self repairing and healing technology Superman can have access to a bunch of kryptonian technology that can act as a lubricant to make traditional superhero in work he may have key Lex as an AI assistant he may have holographic projectors to help him appear simultaneously with Clark Kent and preserve his secret identity he may have access to kryptonian supercomputers in order to do super hacking and say scrub his image from social media or whatever of course are some problems with this approach it it is kind of moron the fantastic spectrum of science fiction it does make Superman a little detached from humanity in heading to that fortresses of solitude and that's why we can start to talk about some of the character reasons against this approach now granted there's cause for a big shift in Superman's character in after Man of Steel and that's definitely going to be a future episode but from the character we saw Superman's human he chose humanity and he was raised human although finding about his heritage was something really cofounded him an important tool and it's not his core identity and his core identity is of somebody who was raised by Martha who said that objects are just things he's a guy that lived as a vagabond for 16 years and was always on the move living out of the duffel bag so it's not like he had a great attachment to things he readily gave up his ship he gave up his command key if it were me and I had that object dangling around my neck for 16 years irrespective of the actual informational value who that thing just a sentimental value would make it hard for me personally to part with it he wasn't worried about downing the scout ship or the black zero so the other approach is Superman takes a hands off approach on the technology and this is the Prometheus titan of tomorrow approach he says the rules aren't clear and he's got a letter the chips fall where they may these things are largely in US government jurisdiction and so he leaves it up to the government and that can have sort of profound effects as we spin forward and see how that attitude could also inform and affect plot in the prequel comic that we talked about above we know that the kryptonian snow about other intelligent life in the universe the pfennig Aryans are specifically named but even without the comic think this is consistent with the film Jor-El says it's a seemingly intelligent population he isn't blown away by finding the first intelligent life in the universe besides themselves by the way that's another show so the kryptonian snow and by extension humanity now knows that there are other aliens out there so far humanity's only experience with extraterrestrial life has been the attempt at total annihilation of the human race so they have cause to give pause to the idea of future alien incursion as the Superman yes he save the earth but he did it by the skin of his teeth with fortune conspiring to help them and at great personal cost so for humanity's sake it's not a burden that Superman necessarily wants to bear alone for the humanity wants them to bear alone is not that he wouldn't willingly serve or step up but Earth's chances get that much better if Superman had men like Col. Hardy fighting alongside him equipped with kryptonian technology so I can see Superman willingly turning over and encouraging technological advancement so the earth doesn't have to go right up to the brink of extinction with their fate resting solely in Superman's hands but what do those preparations meanwhile simply it has to be weapons you as a side we can talk about this for the scout ship but had a Genesis chamber and presumably that means it had the capacity to fabricate the needs of those people that would be coming out of the Genesis chamber for those newly born colonists so if that technology can be repaired or replicated you suddenly have the ability to quickly ramp up humans R&D towards proliferating kryptonian technology Superman would do this because he optimistically trusts humanity to stand beside him but who do we know who has an issue with weapons well there's the back Batman was a victim of weapons technology and in opposition to Superman he has a cynical view of humanity Batman doesn't see it is preparation against cataclysm but he imagines kryptonian weapons in the hands of mad men like Joker or flooding the streets of Gotham with Penguin is a weapons dealer so this allows Batman and Superman to come into conflict were both sides a reasonable and based on their personal experiences even better it means that they can the end of the film or an resolution to this conflict they can come to a compromise with the Justice league is the answer with the Justice league Superman doesn't have to stand alone in the defense of earth he doesn't have to worry about being the one and only contingency against alien incursion now he has the other members of the Justice league to help and defender and with the Justice league Batman can see that there is still great power and play but it's with in a small group of individuals committed to justice and which Batman can monitor and influence this makes for far better conflict than just beef over collateral damage their ways to make that work to but that's another show let's talk a little bit about what Batman takes away from the black zero that I think the prevailing theory is that Batman comes away from it believing that Superman is a threat or somehow responsible I have to disagree think Batman comes away thinking kryptonian technology is an incredible threat and that Superman is well-intentioned but inexperienced look at it this way no one is more acutely aware of their own limitations than Batman a couch potato doesn't know what their hundred meter dash times but Batman does that man knows that if he's just a little bit stronger just a little bit faster he can save another life he has to assess and calculate the limitations of his opponents so that he can overcome that he's going to recognize a rookie making their debut and not hold Superman accountable for the experience that he couldn't possibly have Batman trained Robin Batman didn't just send Robin into the field expecting him to be the bat the first time out likewise Batman would not expect Superman to act like a veteran's first time that man is a hero who dedicated his life to the defense of his city Gotham in BDS is a task that took such a: Batman that he is in the words of the WB's CEO Kevin Sugihara tired and weary imagine all his work rendered meaningless exotic and want in Batman's mind Superman saved custom summit argue that Superman jeopardize Gotham by being on earth but there's a lot of rebuttals to that that's another show additionally have to remember were Man of Steel leaves us Clark has decided to take a job at the daily planet to keep his ear to the ground specifically because he intends to begin to publicly help people as Superman to Superman's can have a track record of Ernest to Gooding by the time Batman can bring a grievance to him it would make sense for Batman to perceive Superman as an enemy based on the black zero event alone if he views Superman is either naïve or abdicating his duty to police kryptonian technology that could precipitate a conflict between the two of course everything I've laid out assumes that Batman is an intelligent and rational being the world's greatest detective and the noble dark Knight is my preference in portraying one half of the world's finest but there's another thing that Batman has been and that's crazy Batman is in many portrayals the walking wounded he took a horrific trauma and used it to forge himself into someone trying to exercise their demons by beating criminals to a bloody pulp in the night so there's ways that the film could pray on that woundedness and trigger Batman's madness and to bring the world's finest into conflict under less sensible circumstances between the two I obviously prefer it if it's the case of reasonable minds differing were both perspectives are sane and sympathetic to the audience their differences bringing to light the duality of their eventual partnership I think it would be a disservice to Batman and Superman if Batman were acting out of insanity even if it's an interesting performance that could rise out of that rather I prefer if they both seek the common goal of justice in protecting the innocent but have differing but justifiable views on how to go about their debate doesn't have to be just about the weapons technology as I proposed here there are plenty of things on which people are reasonably defined it and which could be reflected with Superman and Batman government teamwork preparedness whether humanity is inherently good or evil any of these would be a better fulcrum of the future story than the fact specific issue of collateral damage something that's less sale and relevant or relatable to the general audience then say the merits of the government or trusting your neighbor their ability to act as foils and characterize each other is one of the most compelling partnerships in fiction and why will be revisiting the Batman in future episodes of this Man of Steel podcast I think it's fundamental to a degree that Batman represent cynicism the dark while Superman exudes optimism the light now given the tone a Man of Steel many detractors can't picture and optimistic Superman coming from the film they expect Superman to be dour joyless and guilty from the collateral damage caused by the black zero event that Superman should feel guilty about the BZ is a fundamental misinterpretation of the film Superman was guilty about Jonathan because he held back and always doubted what he did that's why after telling blows the story he asks her what do you think the question is still live in his mind and it's what stopped him from ever moving past it and settling down by contrast Superman gave his all in the BZ he put his freedom in humanity's hands he laid his life down on the line against the world engine and he held back nothing not even his innocence and shed blood to do the right thing like many servicemen before him now those actions would leave him marked but also secure in the knowledge that he did the right thing it would be reinforced every day that he gets to see his mom's new girlfriend his coworkers a home for he sets down roots in a calling that he's waited his whole life to feel and fulfill a grateful planet and a government that calls an ally all of these things would cause them to move past it and be happy that's were Man of Steel leaves us and that's what those last three scenes in the film show belief that Superman should feel guilty morels or regretful of the BZ is meta-commentary coming from the critics outside of the story of the film and injecting itself into the film world bowing to that misinterpretation compassion and respect for the loss of course but not a feeling of personal guilt Superman is very analogous to a fireman or emergency services and they can't do their jobs if there consumed by the ones they couldn't save instead they take the perspective of individuals were doing good and doing their best and that's what Superman did in the BZ E and that's while he'll be up to move past it so this Superman that has a new calling as a new city has a girlfriend is able to publicly exercises gifts to the utmost of his ability that's the Superman that were going to get in Batman versus Superman that's the Superman that is can be facing off against the tired in weary veteran Batman so it is my hope that we get that contrast between light and dark and that it plausibly comes out of Man of Steel it isn't something that they're just tacking onto the film artificially it does naturally arise out of the events and the occurrences of Man of Steel in this episode we covered what impact the world engine scrap might have we talked about the open pod and its possible ties to wonder woman we discussed two ways that Superman might tackle kryptonian technology and how giving humanity access might cause him to come into conflict with Batman we talked about what Batman's logical attitude toward Superman should be but then we also talked about how Batman could have an illogical attitude toward Superman we discussed how Man of Steel lays the groundwork for an optimistic Superman and finally my preferences on the approach to a Superman Batman conflict and partnership so that could be my time I really appreciate each and every listener and the great feedback is getting if you have any questions anyone answer or insights that you want to share commentary that has said go to Man of Steel answers.com or email me @MosaicandManofSteelofSteelanswers.com if you like what you heard please review the show in iTunes and subscribed this is Dr. awkward your Man of Steel apologist signing off.
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