It's always a pissing contest when it comes to blockbusters. With hundreds of millions of dollars behind them, directors and writers must feel obliged to go 'bigger' to earn their keep. In the last year or so, the industry standard of 'bigger' seems to refer to the level of destruction you can bring to a city. Whether it be with gigantic robots or with superheroes who just don't give a shit - the box-office is overflowing with city-dwellers in constant fear for their lives. But as Man of Steel has shown, going big needs a human scale. Guillermo del Toro is one of the only directors of late to actually imbue his on-screen spectacle with a legitimate scale. Despite Pacific Rim's gleein shattering glass and crumbling buildings, it's somehow avoided the recent furore over blockbusters exploiting 9/11 imagery as a shortcut to scale. Writers from around the web have chastised Man of Steel for this sort of callous referential behaviour and its seeming inability to remove itself from the well-worn images of fleeing citizens covered in debris.
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