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Man of Steel: The Speeding Bullet Cut by StreetsAhead

StreetsAhead

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So, I've been editing a cut of The Hobbit movies, but I'm still waiting for the third one to release before I can finish my cut, so in the meantime, I decided to look to another movie I thought needed editing, and so I've been working on Man of Seel.

I've finished the cut, and am currently awaiting the the movie to finish encoding out of Premiere. I've watched the full edit a couple times, and played it to a friend wasn't very big on MoS. He didn't notice any issues with my edit, and truthfully, he still found the movie a bit dull, but he did say he preferred my edit - We've worked together on a lot of projects, so he wouldn't go soft on me if he thought I did a bad job editing it. I'd probably agree with him about the movie, if it weren't me editing it, because I tend to think there are some fundamental issues with MoS that needed to be fixed in the script.

Unless someone wants more details, I'll get into specifics about what I've cut, and so on, when I submit. But broadly, the basic idea of the edit was to shave off some of the endless exposition, remove unnecessary distractions & minimise the "destruction-porn". I've managed to cut around 45 minutes out of the movie, and so my cut is pretty short. The film clocks in around 96 minutes (including credits & and a mid-credits scene).

This seems like a fun website, & community, which I'll hopefully find myself involved with in some time. While, I wait for The Hobbit, I may move onto making The New World a more conventional movie next.
 

StreetsAhead

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I might try another encode before submitting. The blacks have came out quite poorly.

2q8u2cy.png

15hn9si.png


It's not as clear in the screenshot, but in VLC it doesn't look very good.
 

Kal-El

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If possible, could you post a more detailed cut list?
It would certainly help to 'sell' your edit to other members here ;)
 

StreetsAhead

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Fair enough.

99% of the prelude is gone. The film opens with Krypton exploding and Kal-El's rocket heading to Earth, and you also hear Kal's mother say "Make a better world than our's, Kal", in the titles. I played around with including some of it, but ultimately wasn't able to cut it in a way that I was happy, and found it useful. To me, the prelude is a time suck and a slow start to the movie. Too much exposition dumping about character's who aren't in the actual movie, and the stuff with Zod isn't really important. Everything relevant to the actual story is later re-explained to Clark throughout the movie.

After Kal-El/Clark's ship hits Earth, I follow the actual edit where it goes to him saving the people on the Oil rig, but I've removed the ending of that where he's floating in the water. It goes from the oil rig to the first flashback where he starts to get x-ray vision, then it cuts to him saving the bus, then to Jonathon Kent talking to him about where he came from, etc and those are the only flashbacks in the movie, until the very end.

Lois Lane's role is shortened. Lois & Clark's first interaction on the spaceship is gone, and she isn't shown in the area. It's implied she had just heard about the story/used her journalistic skills, rather than actually witnessed anything. I couldn't entirely cut her story about the spaceship, because it is later referenced in scenes that are necessary to the story.

I wasn't a fan of the idea that Clark had been on Earth for 33 years, and had only discovered then that he could fly. Most of the origin has been shrinked, and so when Kal's father is narrating while Clark is walking out into the snow, in his Superman suit, I cut out the part where Clark has his first attempt at flying, where he's just doing huge leaps around. Instead the scene plays out like he walks out in his suit, and then takes off flying.

When Zod first arrives to the planet, there's a lot of cutting back & forth between Clark, Lois & the military (I believe), and in my cut, I mostly stay on Clark until the part where it shows the message being broadcast all around the world.

I've removed the part where Clark goes to see a priest, and he tells him he needs to take a leap of faith. I've also removed the part where Faora talks about how "if history has taught us anything, it's that evolution always wins". I just find there's a strange message there, as it's coming from one of the antagonist's, as they give a "bad guy speech", and if I feel that coupled with the faith thing, is a weird vibe, for me. Because of these cuts, the Faora/Clark fight plays a little differently, but it's hard to notice. If you go frame by frame, you'll notice where I've sliced the scene. Basically, when Faora throws Clark against the wall, in the actual movie he rests in the rubble for a moment, but in mine, he kind of hits the ground and instantly gets back up and flies at her, and I also cut in the fist fight between them, there's a part she she slams him onto the ground, and I cut to her then throwing Clark out of the building, which makes it look like he kind of bounces off the ground, and she catches him on the rebound.

When Zod has captured Clark, and Clark's kind of dreaming, but Zod's in his mind, explaining his plan, etc, I've cut that down by a couple minutes. It ends when he explains how his Kyptonian father wanted Clark to rebuild Krypton on Earth.

There's a lot of excessive destruction in the original movie, which I've largely cut down. There's also a lot of parts where Superman unnecessary causes destruction. When Superman tackles Zod (when Zod's at the Kent home), he flies through a building for no real reason, so I managed to cut that out, and if you pay attention to the background when he's carrying Zod through the field, you'll notice the building in the background, but it's very brief. There's also a part which always really bothered me where Zod kicks a big truck at Superman, and he just calmly floats over the top of it, letting it crash into a parking lot behind him, completely destroying the lot, and setting wrecked cars all over the place. The Zod/Superman fight is shorter by a minute or two, again just to bring down the over the top destruction.

At the end of the movie, when Superman snaps Zod's neck, I found it extremely weird & tonally poor that the film then cuts to a weirdly light-hearted scene where Superman & the General are talking, and Superman's asking for privacy & trust. This scene is now the middle of the credits, and I've cut the end of it where the General asks what the female soldier is smiling about. So, in my cut, Superman's killed Zod, and then it cuts to the flashback of him as a little kid running around with a cape, and his father sees him pretending to be a hero, then it does the same ending scene as the actual movie where he finally dons his Clark Kent disguise, aka wearing the glasses.

Throughout the film, I've cut lines of dialogue from the movie. During Lois' first scene with Perry White, there's a lot cut from this to remove the fact that she was at the site when the spaceship took off. I also really didn't like the part where she tells Perry "I'm a Pulitzer winner" something or other. There's a bit where Clark is talking to his Earth mum, and she says "This is just stuff, it can all be replaced", and Clark replies "But you can't be replaced". The line felt redundant, and almost sounded like a question, so I cut it. I wasn't a fan of Clark's father replying "Maybe", when Clark asked him if he should have let those kids die, so that's gone.

Like I've said, a lot of destruction has been minimised. When Clark & Zod fly through the petrol station there's numerous shots showing the explosion, so I cut that bit down. There's a part where Clark throws one of Zod's men at a bunch of trains and there's a huge explosion, I cut away before you see him hit/the trains explode. During the Smallville fight, when one of the jets hit the ground, there's less time on the explosion.

Hopefully this wasn't too much of a ramble. To give you an idea of the speed of my cut, maybe this will help.

00 minutes in - Opening titles.
02 minutes in - Clark's ship hits Earth.
03 minutes in - Oil rig sequence.
04 minutes in - Kid Clark gets x-ray vision.
08 minutes in - Teenage Clark saves the bus.
10 minutes in - Jonathon Kent tells Clark he's not from Earth.
12 minutes in - Clark finds the Kryptonian spaceship stuck in ice.
14 minutes in - Lois reports the story of this spaceship taking off.
15 minutes in - Clark meets his father, Jor-El, and Jor explains about Krypton & Clark's abilities.
21 minutes in - Clark flies.
23 minutes in - Lois & Clark meet.
24 minutes in - Lois drops her story about Clark.
30 minutes in - The "You are not alone" part happens.
36 minutes in - Clark & Lois get on the ship.
39 minutes in - Zod explains why he is on Earth.
47 minutes in - Clark saves Lois, after escaping the ship.
49 minutes in - Clark brawls Zod after he's attacked his mother.
50 minutes in - Smallville fight.
58 minutes in - Colonel Hardy says Clark "is not our enemy."
59 minutes in - Lois tells Clark she knows how to stop Zod.
60 minutes in - World engine is released.
62 minutes in - World engine is initiated.
63 minutes in - The plan to stop Zod, using the spaceship Clark landed on Earth in.
65 minutes in - Superman goes to stop the world engine, while people flee the city, Lois & the Colonel fly to Metropolis to drop the bomb/send the Kryptonians back to the Phantom zone.
72 minutes in - World engine is destroyed.
76 minutes in - The Kryptonians are sent back to the Phantom zone.
78 minutes in - Clark & Zod fight.
82 minutes in - Clark kills Zod.
83 minutes in - Flashback to Clark as a kid.
85 minutes in - Clark is welcomed to The Daily Planet.
86 minutes in - Credits.
88 minutes in - Mid-credit scene.
89 minutes in - Credits.
 

wilhelm scream

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This edit sounds amazing! The only way to make it better would be to remove Superman killing Zod, He would just be sent back to the Phantom Zone along with he other Krytonians!
 

StreetsAhead

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Thanks! I'm pretty happy with what I've cut, and surprised that it all makes sense despite having so much cut from it.

I'd like to have been able to do that, but it would have been a bit of an anticlimactic end I think. No real fight between Zod & Superman, and if I included the fight, I can't imagine how you could get Zod back onto the ship to be sucked back into the Phantom Zone. Plus there wouldn't be a shot of Zod going back into the Phantom Zone anyway without maybe compositing him into the shot where the rest of his people are being sucked into the PZ.

Also, I have no inherent issue with Superman killing Zod, really, I'd really rather it didn't do that with this first movie though. To be honest, I'm more bothered by the fact that the family don't just run off. They've got a lot of room to do so before Zod's lasers are near them.

I'm not sure if you, or the people of this forum, are very familiar with the comics, but I originally wanted to try & have the film open like this comic page from All-Star Superman, as it is how I hoped Man of Steel would open.

2ppcyyr.jpg


I couldn't really get it to have the right pacing and feel, though.

I also considered including this fan-made track which is a mix of the Zimmer theme & the original John Williams theme, but ultimately decided to not include it.

[video=youtube_share;JnxzxB_BEow]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but Jonathan Kent's death scene is removed. There's a shot of his grave stone, but the scene where Clark lets him die is gone. It felt like a really bad way to kill Pa Kent, to me, so I kind of prefer it being a little more ambigious.
 

MusicEd921

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StreetsAhead said:
Thanks! I'm pretty happy with what I've cut, and surprised that it all makes sense despite having so much cut from it.

I'd like to have been able to do that, but it would have been a bit of an anticlimactic end I think. No real fight between Zod & Superman, and if I included the fight, I can't imagine how you could get Zod back onto the ship to be sucked back into the Phantom Zone. Plus there wouldn't be a shot of Zod going back into the Phantom Zone anyway without maybe compositing him into the shot where the rest of his people are being sucked into the PZ.

Also, I have no inherent issue with Superman killing Zod, really, I'd really rather it didn't do that with this first movie though. To be honest, I'm more bothered by the fact that the family don't just run off. They've got a lot of room to do so before Zod's lasers are near them.

I'm not sure if you, or the people of this forum, are very familiar with the comics, but I originally wanted to try & have the film open like this comic page from All-Star Superman, as it is how I hoped Man of Steel would open.

2ppcyyr.jpg


I couldn't really get it to have the right pacing and feel, though.

I also considered including this fan-made track which is a mix of the Zimmer theme & the original John Williams theme, but ultimately decided to not include it.

[video=youtube_share;JnxzxB_BEow]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but Jonathan Kent's death scene is removed. There's a shot of his grave stone, but the scene where Clark lets him die is gone. It felt like a really bad way to kill Pa Kent, to me, so I kind of prefer it being a little more ambigious.

I pitched the same idea in the Man of Steel The Fanedit thread. There was a mock up of it done there by another member, plus I made my own at one point, but have not posted it.
 

MovieMaven

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Wow. There are some films that just Cannot Be Saved, and it sounds like this might be one. Somebody apparently wanted to make a movie about Super-Hulk, and totally perverted the Superman mythos to do it. Never mind that he's absolutely the wrong character to do that to.

Not even DC Comics ever quite made that believable - and they tried, once or twice.
 

StreetsAhead

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MovieMaven, your username sounds familiar. Does Hollywood Mogul mean anything to you?

While I think this can be saved to a degree, but it's still going to have wounds if you know what I mean. I think my cut does make this a better movie (although, I'd love to hear if any of you guys agreed), but in a time when so many good superhero movies are dropping, this one falls a little flat.

I think some of the main issues with the movie is there is way too much boring exposition (fixable), but Henry Cavill's Clark/Superman is given very little character. He hardly ever does anything in the movie of his own accord, planning, thinking, whatever. There's moments where he expresses an opinion, or shows some character and it's so appreciated, even in little moments like when Zod's begging him not to destroy his ship, and Supe's replies "Krypton had it's chance!", but they are far & few between. This is a problem I expect BvS to address, especially without Goyer handling the script this time, we've finally got the Clark Kent disguise, which should be fun to see, and by the sounds of things, he's going to be in a position where he has to take a stand.

The other issue, I think the film has, which I think is tied to the last one, is it misappropriates their use of Lois Lane. Yes, she's a journalist, but did we really need her to find out & explain crap to us? Superman should have been the one who found out how to stop the Kryptonians. Lois shouldn't have been brought onto that ship, or if she was, they should have at least had one moment where they use her to threaten Clark. I think she should have been stuck on the ground level of Metropolis in the thick of all the destruction, with Perry & Lombard, and maybe given a moment of confrontation with Clark about all the chaos.

All this reminded me of another thing I've cut. Pretty much all the relationship stuff between Clark & Lois is decreased. They don't hold hands (it would have been too soon, in my cut, I think), and they certainly don't have a "super-romantic" kiss when the Metropolis has just been destroyed.

musiced921 said:
I pitched the same idea in the Man of Steel The Fanedit thread. There was a mock up of it done there by another member, plus I made my own at one point, but have not posted it.
How did it turn out? I had wondered if I should have spent more time trying to make it work, but I just sort of reached the conclusion it didn't quite have the shots I wanted, or especially not for the length I wanted them to last (without maybe trying to slow them down).

BTW, do you know how long it usually takes to get a reply to a fanedit submission?
 

MovieMaven

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I think it's just coincidence (the name). Never played Hollywood Mogul, and I don't think I know anyone with that handle.

As for my issues with the movie, I was a very serious DC Comics fan for a very long time, and Superman. Does. Not. Kill. Period end of sentence.

If a film company wants to take a high-level super-powered character down that road, they should go back to Philip Wylie's Gladiator (the book that kick-started the whole super-powers idea) and make a movie about Hugo Danner - he's an antihero from the get-go and amenable to a lot rougher treatment.

Or if they need the recognition factor, talk to Marvel and get permission to use the Hulk. He's been hero, villain, antihero and whatever the plot needs him to do and be.

It was DC darkening and grittying-up its universe(s) and its heroes that drove me away for the final time (I had quit once or twice before over other issues).
 

ssj

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what's the runtime for this edit? the theatrical version was too long—not that there's anything inherently wrong with longer durations, as long as there's enough interestingness to justify the length, which wasn't the case with this mubi.

and welcome, streetsahead!
 

StreetsAhead

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Thanks!

I couldn't agree more, the runtime for my cut is 97 minutes (including credits). It's roughly 85 minutes without credits, but there's a brief scene 3 minutes into the credits that is about a minute long.

MovieMaven said:
I think it's just coincidence (the name). Never played Hollywood Mogul, and I don't think I know anyone with that handle.

As for my issues with the movie, I was a very serious DC Comics fan for a very long time, and Superman. Does. Not. Kill. Period end of sentence.

If a film company wants to take a high-level super-powered character down that road, they should go back to Philip Wylie's Gladiator (the book that kick-started the whole super-powers idea) and make a movie about Hugo Danner - he's an antihero from the get-go and amenable to a lot rougher treatment.

Or if they need the recognition factor, talk to Marvel and get permission to use the Hulk. He's been hero, villain, antihero and whatever the plot needs him to do and be.

It was DC darkening and grittying-up its universe(s) and its heroes that drove me away for the final time (I had quit once or twice before over other issues).
Yeah, I was guna say that it was a crazy coincidence, as it's been probably 5+ years, it's possible the username was MovieHaven.

I'm a big DC fan, but haven't ever been huge on Superman's comics (other than the random one's I picked up as a kid), to be honest I'm mostly a Batman & Flash guy, but Superman was always my favourite as a kid watching the original Christopher Reeve movies, the cartoons, and even the Lois & Clark tv show with Dean Cain. So, I don't doubt you'd have more knowledge about the character than I, but I wasn't hugely opposed to the idea of it, but he needed to be put into a much more believable situation if he's to be forced to kill.

I'd rather they didn't have him kill, especially because throughout the entire movie he's been so careless, and while editing the film did make me realise he does actually save a few people, it certainly didn't feel like that when I saw it in the cinema. I'm curious to see how they handle the fallout of this movie in BvS, because Superman always seemed to me, to have a moral high ground against Batman, but that's completely eliminated now, and I feel Luthor's imminent case against Superman will be strong.

While, I would have liked to remove the Zod killing, it just wasn't possibly without really reshaping the movie, and including some possibly jarring changes.
 

MusicEd921

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I deleted the source video by mistake, but I had it in a way I liked. I'll probably redo it as a mockup to post, so I'll make sure to post it here.

I think the big thing with this movie is that they realized after the fact that there was too much destruction and that they didn't exactly do Superman justice considering they wanted to push the action aspect of it. Now MOS is being treated like it was all just a prelude into BvS so that they can right their wrongs and have the destruction from MOS motivate everyone around them (Luthor and Batman). It is starting to feel like Superman/Batman Apocalypse where Supes helped to train Kara so she wouldn't be so wildly out of control with her powers except now it's Superman who needs help keeping himself in control which is weird for mightiest of superheroes.
 

Kal-El

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I can't believe this is still up for debate...

You can't just have someone not kill anybody and never explain why a person is so strongly opposed to not killing anyone. I think some of the people who have an issue with Superman killing Zod still don't realise what this means. Superman doesn't want to kill ANYONE. Not ever. NO MATTER WHAT.

Why can't people let that sink in for a while before they ramble in threads or facebook pages?

Allow me to give you a list of examples where you'll see that Superman refusing to kill his opponent could spell DISASTROUS problems for him: Darkseid, Mongul, Imperiex, Zod, Lex Luthor, ...

The list is pretty much endless. He killed Imperiex because it would save the universe. It was either him killing one person, or that one person killing every living organism in the entire universe.

There aren't many exceptions to him breaking his no-killing-rule.

So even with the most powerful beings in the universe wanting to kill Superman, he still doesn't return the favor. Why is that? Why won't he kill his enemies? As a superhero, you can't just impose a rule like that and get away with it. People will want to know why. Your Justice League team members will want to know why, especially if it means Superman not killing anyone could potentially put themselves or their loved ones in life threatening danger...

He had to kill the last living Kryptonian in the entire universe besides himself to save a family. He was yelling because he realised he was now truly alone. That he was in fact an alien on Earth without real family or kinsmen. He tried to make Zod see the errors of his ways and it didn't work. Zod forced his hand. Now he's devastated and he refuses to kill anyone ever again in the future.

That's a strong motivation and it needs to be clear why he has it. END OF RANT.

It's also quite baffling to see how people are complaining that Superman didn't do anything to stop the destruction in Man of Steel. I actually blame the writers and how the movie is set up, not the reality in the movie itself.
Clark arrives in Smallville to fight Zod and Faora and is already warning people to steer clear.
When they turn on the World Engine everyone starts running. 20 minutes later when the Engine has already leveled several blocks, people are STILL RUNNING. I blame the story, simple as that. In real life people would already be on the other end of Metropolis if you activated a machine like that. When Superman's flying into the Engine controller on the other end of the world, people are still STANDING STILL and staring at the Engine. Let that sink in for a bit. They're STANDING STILL. Goyer screwed up there. That's all.

StreetsAhead I think the family in the Zod killing scene didn't run off because the rubble next to them is supposed to imply that they're cornered against the wall and have nowhere to go to. It's dumb, I know, but it's the same problem as above, poor writing and ditto execution.
 

StreetsAhead

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I understand the rubble was supposed to imply they were cornered, but considering the budget & time they had, I don't know why they didn't make that look like they were actually cornered.

I think what bothered me the most about Superman's lack of effort with regard to the amount of destruction that falls upon Metropolis, is that there are instances where he could have easily prevented destruction, and didn't for no reason, like with the parking lot, among a lot of other things. Not including the world engine, he probably sits on the same level of destruction of Metropolis as the other Kryptonians.

But, say what you will about MoS but at least it inspires debate about the film, positive or negative, and hopefully some of you guys would be interested in seeing how my cut has turned out, even though I'm aware there's already a decent amount of fanedits for MoS.
 

Kal-El

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Like I said, the story is poorly written in the sense that Goyer didn't take time to write Superman trying to save more people or trying to steer Zod away from the city. The best you can do with this poor sod's excuse for "writing" is trim and cut the fight sequences so it appears that Superman has been attacked by surprise with no time to react (the Metropolis fight) or that everything is happening so fast he has no time to react.

Likewise when the World Engine starts I'd cut out all of the footage of people just standing there gawking around.
 

StreetsAhead

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The Zod/Superman fight has less stop & starts in my cut, and much less destruction. It's not a surprise attack, but I feel like it works better because there's less people seen in it, and Superman doesn't actively destroy stuff (or at least, nowhere near as much).

I've also got less of the gawking at the world engine. I have the initial hit with the world engine, but people start running soon as they realise what the hell is happening. The only other bit is maybe when Perry & co are in the Daily Planet, or very briefly when they're running out but I've trimmed that also.

There may be some more that I'm forgetting off of the top of my head, but yeah, I've tried to cut that down as much as possible, especially because it's a pretty shocking machine that's violently destructive, so I try & not show it doing it's thing too much because it felt gratuitous at times, in the movie.
 

Kal-El

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To me it's pretty simple: Zod vs Superman should end right after Zod ditches the armour. Superman realizes he's becoming a more formidable foe every second, so as soon as the armour is gone and the fight continues in the air, Superman slams him down into the Metropolis Station building and he snaps his neck there. The end. Done.
 

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True that would make for a swifter battle. It would remove the satellite scene though, and while it does nothing for story development in MoS there is a Wayne Enterprises logo on the satellite, and I'm a sucker for a tie in to the sequel ;-)
 
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