Directed by
Zack Snyder
Written by
David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan
Based on
characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Despite
the bad press Superman Returns has gotten since its release, I rather enjoyed
it when I saw it. Granted, I haven’t
seen it since then, but I thought it was a perfectly fine revival of the
series. And I was also rather excited to
see the series rebooted with Man of Steel and given a new take. Unfortunately, while there is a new take
here, it’s not the kind of view I was looking for.
When
Krypton is about to be destroyed, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) sends his baby son,
Kal-El, off to Earth. Now grown up,
Kal-El (Henry Cavill) has to adjust to the role of Superman and show the world
his powers when General Zod (Michael Shannon) attacks.
As
usual, we’ll start with the praise. The
special effects are pretty breathtaking.
All of Krypton looks like a visual effect, and when it gets to the
battles, there are plenty of good-looking shots of spaceships and buildings
being destroyed. And there is also some
good acting here. Both Russell Crowe and
Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent play the mentor roles well. The real treat is Amy Adams as Lois Lane,
giving a determined performance that makes me wish the movie had focused on
her.
Sadly,
this is a Superman movie, and Henry Cavill does not impress me. He has a few nice Superman moments, but too
often, he’s reduced to the muscle, and his expressions seemed little more than
mild confusion, which is all I could think trying to read what he’s actually
thinking. But the big problem lies more
on the writing, the fact that the movie simply doesn’t have enough glimpses
into how Superman is. It’s hard to get a
reading on his world philosophy and his personality, which is a shame, since
Superman’s personality is what makes him Superman. Instead, the movie transforms him into the
flying brick archetype, who does nothing more in the fight scenes then just fly
around and punch things. The movie’s climactic
moment hinges on Superman being the savior of the people, yet all we’ve seen of
him up to that point is the big strong guy that seems really obsessed with the
demolition of Smallville and Metropolis, considering how often he flies the
villains into pieces of it. Perry White
gets a better scene of trying to save someone than Superman does. And the final battle scene seems to go on
forever, without enough good moments to make it worth it.
The
movie’s absolute biggest flaw, though, is its constant use of exposition,
flashbacks, and a combination of the two.
Superman enters the Kryptonian ship and activates a 5-minute exposition
scene. Zod explains his plan in an
exposition scene that flashes back to his time as a prisoner. Long after the opening sequence uses up its
supply of flashing back to Clark’s childhood, the movie continually shoehorns
more scenes of it in, and again, we don’t get Clark nearly as much as we get Jonathan
teaching Clark a lesson. It’s lazy
writing, and it’s spread all over the movie.
Man
of Steel is dull and endless. If this is
DC’s answer to Marvel’s movies, then I’m sticking with Marvel.
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