Action Films

"Eric Chen as Imperial Guard (as Eric Chi Cheng Chen)"

"Henry O as Royal Interpreter"

"Yuen Biao as Saloon Fighter (uncredited)"

"Garvin Cross (stunts)"

"[to Chon Lin] You have a GREAT body. There! I said it! It's out in the open!"

"Kelly-Marie Kerr - Clara"

"Brandon Merrill as Falling Leaves"

"Xander Berkeley as Marshal Nathan Van Cleef"

"Lucy Liu as Princess Pei-Pei (doubled by Marny Eng)"

"Roger Yuan as Lo Fong"

"Robert Arden - CIA Chief"

"Jackie Chan as Chon Wang / John Wayne (doubled by Andy Cheng and Yuen Biao)"

"Kate Luyben as Fifi"

"Owen Wilson as Roy O'Bannon / Wyatt Earp"

"James Hampton - Harry Oslo"

"Jean-Pierre Kalfon - Morovich"

"Barbara Carrera - Natalia Rambova"

"Dana Elcar - Russ"

"Michael Crawford - Woodrow "Woody" Wilkins"

"Vernon Dobtcheff - Russian agent"

"Jason Connery as Calvin Andrews"

"Oliver Reed - Krokov"

"Condorman - vulture of the Western world. [takes drink, looks surprised, spews jet of flame]"

"[after accidentally firing his machine-gun walking stick] That's a hair-trigger!"

"Who can save Princess Juliet - held captive by the evil Count Lorca? Who can save the city? Who? [pauses to put on goggles; in a deeper voice] Who... this is a job - for CONDORMAN!"

"Have you seen this report on this Condorman? Or this man Wilkins? He is an AMATEUR, do you hear? He is NOT an agent of the CIA! He is a WRITER OF COMIC BOOKS!"

"[as Condorman drops into the Seine] Flap, Woody! Flap!"

"Woody, you're a great cartoonist, and you're a great comic book writer - but you're a lousy bird."

"Simon R. Baker as Little Feather (doubled by Marny Eng)"

"Walton Goggins as Wallace"

"“I really wanted my Krypton to be this kind of special place that’s immersive and totally different from Earth, but not unbelievable. And ancient. I really wanted to give this ancient feeling to Krypton. I love technology that’s rusty because it’s so old. It’s so advanced, but it’s so old. That was the kind of world that I tried to create. A dying world that’s ancient and torn apart.”"

"Snyder weighed in with the idea that Superman killing Zod is actually key to him developing as a hero. “If it’s truly an origin story, his aversion to killing is unexplained,” Snyder said. “I felt like, if we could find a way of making it impossible for him - Kobayashi Maru, totally no way out - I felt like that could also make you go, ‘This is the why of him never killing again.’ He’s basically obliterated his entire people and his culture, and he is responsible for it, and he’s just, like, ‘How could I ever kill again?’” The idea of a morally ambiguous and unpredictable Superman seemed to resonate with the director. “If there were more adventures for our Superman to go on, you’re given this thing where, you don’t know 100 percent what he’s going to do. When you put in stone the concept that he won’t kill, and it’s totally in stone, it really erases an option in the viewer’s mind…you’ll always have in the back of your mind, ‘How far can you push him?’ If he sees Lois get hurt, or his mother get killed, you just made a really mad Superman that we know is capable of some really horrible stuff, if he wants to be. That’s the thing that’s cool about him, in some ways. The idea that he has the frailties of a human emotionally. But you don’t want to get that guy mad,” he said."

"This conceptualization works because "Man of Steel" is well-cast (courtesy of Lora Kennedy and Kristy Carlson) starting at the top with Cavill. He's a superb choice for someone who needs to convincingly convey innate modesty, occasional confusion and eventual strength. Ably supporting him on Earth are Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as adoptive parents Jonathan and Martha Kent, as well as Amy Adams, such a dead-on selection for uber-intrepid journalist Lois Lane (she's a Pulitzer Prize winner!) that she was up for the role previously. Also effective are the folks from Krypton, including Russell Crowe as super-serious scientist Jor-El, Kal-El's father, Michael Shannon as the relentless Gen. Zod and German actress Antje Traue as the general's right hand Faora-Ul. (Who thinks up these names?) But for all its positive aspects, including a noteworthy visualization of the dying planet Krypton from production designer Alex McDowell and his team, "Man of Steel" is only partially realized."

"“Killing Zod was a big thing,” Goyer said. “And that was something that Chris Nolan originally said, ‘There’s no way you can do this’.... Originally, Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone along with the others.” When that ending proved to be unsatisfying, Goyer had to convince others to go with the twist. “We talked to some of the people at DC Comics and said, ‘Do you think there’s ever a way that Superman would kill someone?’ At first they said, ‘No way. No way.’ We said, ‘But what if he didn’t have a choice?’ Originally, Chris didn’t even want to let us try to write it. Zack and I said, ‘We think we can figure out a way that you’ll buy it.’ I came up with this idea of the heat vision and these people about to die. I wrote the scene and I gave it to Chris and he said, ‘OK, you convinced me. I buy it.’”"

"The title "Man of Steel" tells you what you're in for: a radical break from the past. The absence of the word "Superman" leads us to expect a top-to-bottom re-imagining, and that's what the film delivers, for better and worse. This is a 2013 version of the story: dark, convoluted and violent, chock full of 9/11-styled images of collapsing skyscrapers and dust-choked disaster survivors. It's sincere but not particularly funny or sweet. The hero is a glum hunk, defending a planet so scared of apocalyptic conspiracy that it assumes anyone who presents himself as good guy must have ulterior motives. Steel is what you need to have in your spine if you're going to be super in this world. Directed by Zack Snyder ("Watchmen," "Sucker Punch (film)") and overseen by Christopher Nolan (the Dark Knight trilogy, "Inception"), "Man of Steel" largely abandons the sunny spirit and kooky humor of the Christopher Reeve-starred films, as well as Bryan Singer's homage to them, 2006's "Superman Returns." It brings the character in line with the recent craze for brutal, morose tales of loners defending a world that doesn't appreciate their sacrifices. This time the big guy's suit isn't Dick Tracy red, blue and yellow; it's a muted ensemble of synthetic chain mail that's described as "battle armor" rather than as a uniform or costume, and Supes wears his underwear on the inside, thank you very much."

"We were pretty sure that was going to be controversial. It's not like we were deluding ourselves, and we weren't just doing it to be cool. We felt, in the case of Zod, we wanted to put the character in an impossible situation and make an impossible choice. This is one area, and I've written comic books as well and this is where I disagree with some of my fellow comic book writers - 'Superman doesn't kill'. It's a rule that exists outside of the narrative and I just don't believe in rules like that. I believe when you're writing film or television, you can't rely on a crutch or rule that exists outside of the narrative of the film. Also our movie was in a way Superman Begins, he's not really Superman until the end of the film. We wanted him to have had that experience of having taken a life and carry that through onto the next films. Because he's Superman and because people idolise him he will have to hold himself to a higher standard."

"This is a butch Superman film, driven by machismo. Lois is an important character, but only for how she furthers Clark/Superman's attempts to understand himself and claim his destiny. She's less of a fully-realized human being than the kooky narcissist played by Margot Kidder in the Reeve films, or Kate Bosworth's Lois in "Superman Returns," a melancholy figure defined by her ability to move on after the hero's sudden departure from earth. Adams' Lois is tough and smart, but she has no personality, only drive, and she's not as integral to the action as she seems to be on first glance. It's telling that this movie gives equal weight to the story of a distrustful general (Chris Meloni) whose relationship with Superman lets him become the stand-in for a doubting Earth, a role filled by Lois in the 1978 film. Ma Kent is endearing, but she's not as powerful a presence as the doomed Jonathan. The hero's birth mother vanishes after the prologue, her absence explained in a throwaway line that Crowe seems embarrassed to have to deliver. The uncharitable might notice than when a stupid question has to be asked, or a trivial remark made, it's often delivered by one of a handful of women in a room full of burly guys; they may also note that while every significant male figure in "Man of Steel" is given an option to be physically brave under horrible circumstances — even grey-haired Pa Kent and Perry White have their moments — females exist, for the most part, to be saved, or to have things explained to them. Considering that every previous "Superman" movie put the courtship dance between men and women at the heart of its action — particularly "Superman: the Movie", "Superman II" and "Superman Returns" — the fact that "Man of Steel" has a No Girls Allowed sensibility seems like a deliberate creative choice. It's as if the filmmakers want to reassure young male viewers accustomed to the glib swagger of "Iron Man" and the dire self-pity of Nolan's Batman trilogy that Superman is in the same wheelhouse. (Zod's right-hand woman Fajora-Ul, Antje Traue, is a powerful presence, but she's even more desexualized than Lois; her character's main trait is a pathological hatred of men.) Again, this is all state-of-the-art, very much in line with the way superhero movies are done now. And yet this aspect of the "modernization" feels retro, because it comes at the expense of an under-acknowledged part of Superman's appeal: virtually alone among big-name superheroes, he's a romantically and sexually mature man who seems to like and be comfortable around women."

"“It’s a more violent experience. It’s raw. It takes effort to do it, and that’s what we were really going for. It’s almost like there’s this kind of Right Stuff quality to it. He’s constantly booming around, accelerating. You think he’s going as fast as he can and then it’s like ‘Yeeaahh!’ He’s always got an extra gear he can use.”"

"There are a number of overt references to the past in “Man of Steel,” a title that itself summons up America’s lost industrial history. There’s even a scene in which Jor-El narrates Krypton’s rise and calamitous fall using immersive, metallic-gray images that morph and scroll across the frame like an animated version of a W.P.A. bas-relief mural. For roughly 100 minutes, or the running time of an average movie, Mr. Snyder is in control of his material. His handling of the story’s many flashbacks, which fill in piecemeal Superman’s Kansas childhood as Clark, is fluid and apt. Each return to the past becomes another tile in the mosaic, adding to the emerging portrait of the adult wanderer and seeker he has become. His adoptive parents, Martha (Diane Lane) and Jonathan (Kevin Costner), come into focus, as does the bewildered child (played by Cooper Timberline and Dylan Sprayberry), who doesn’t understand why he’s so different. Mr. Snyder borrows too many canted camera angles and too much sun-kissed fluttering laundry from Terrence Malick, but the Kansas scenes solidify the human foundation of a divided identity."

"A good death is its own reward."

"Yet with the removal of mortality from the equation, the mayhem is just deadening; all bombast, little consequence. Zod’s villainous compatriot Faora warns Superman, “For every one of them you save, we will kill a million more”: “A million” is such a large number — and one so easily attained in expensive CGI-laden blockbusters these days — that it's meaningless. A special-effects department can conjure up a million people as easily as they can one. That’s why it’s actually surprising in Fast & Furious 6 when, after the villain begins to run over innocent bystanders in his tank, Vin Diesel barks to his crew, “Take their attention away from the people!” Characters in blockbusters these days rarely ever comment on the titanic amounts of destruction they (and we) are witnessing. We’ve seen buildings smashed onscreen since Godzilla trampled on Tokyo in 1954 (and I have no doubt we will again when the Godzilla reboot is released next year), but now there’s a coldly pornographic attention to detail that implies that the only lessons imparted by 9/11 were technical ones. It’s as if more time and effort were spent on simulating a toppled skyscraper than in telling you why you should care about the people trapped in it. It’s not until the very end of Man of Steel’s third-act battle, where the stakes grow smaller and much more intimate, that Superman truly seems to become emotional about the lives in danger, and that’s a moment that blockbuster filmmakers could learn a lot from: There’s no need to robotically kill faceless millions when a single character in jeopardy will always prove more galvanizing. Instead of trying to top the mayhem in Man of Steel next year — instead of continuing to mine one of the worst days in American history for a series of wowser trailer moments — can we give the pummeled buildings a break and find creative new obstacles for our heroes to overcome? Please, let’s have a summer-movie spectacle we don’t have to wince at."

"Silencing me won't change anything. My son is twice the man you were, and he will finish what we started, I can promise you that."

"Considering that every previous "Superman" movie put the courtship dance between men and women at the heart of its action — particularly "Superman: the Movie", "Superman II" and "Superman Returns" — the fact that "Man of Steel" has a No Girls Allowed sensibility seems like a deliberate creative choice. It's as if the filmmakers want to reassure young male viewers accustomed to the glib swagger of "Iron Man" and the dire self-pity of Nolan's Batman trilogy that Superman is in the same wheelhouse. (Zod's right-hand woman Fajora-Ul, Antje Traue, is a powerful presence, but she's even more desexualized than Lois; her character's main trait is a pathological hatred of men.)"

"What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?"

"Earth's sun is younger and brighter than ours was. Your cells have drunk in its radiation, strengthening your muscles, your skin, your senses. Earth's gravity is weaker, yet its atmosphere is more nourishing. You've grown stronger here than I ever could've imagined. The only way to know how strong is to keep testing your limits. You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders."

"Chris Nolan wasn't there during the production itself, although I'm not sure how much work was done behind the scenes. I'm sure Zack had a phone call or two with him, but this is definitely Zack's baby. He was the man in charge, and we created the character together, as opposed to having too many outside influences."

"You can save her Kal. You can save all of them."

"You're not just anyone, Clark, and I have to believe that you're–that you're sent here for a reason. All these changes you're going through, one day–one day, you're goin'a think of them as a blessing, and when that day comes, you're goin'a have to make a choice: a choice of whether to stand proud in front of the human race or not."

"You'll just have to decide what kind of man you'll want to grow up to be, Clark, because whoever that man is, good character or bad, he's–he's gonna change the world."

"People are afraid of what they don't understand."