My thoughts on Man of Steel

There are spoilers, obviously.  So if you want to see the movie, but hate spoilers, do not read on.  Keep on scrolling.  I won’t be upset, I promise.

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Man of Steel.  This film was directed by Zack Snyder, who was behind 300, Legend of the Guardians:  The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Sucker Punch and Watchman, to name a few.  It starred Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Russell Crowe as Jor-El, along with Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Christopher Meloni, Laurence Fishburne, and Ayelet Zurer.  That’s a pretty promising cast, and I think for a while now, everybody has been waiting for a GOOD Superman movie.  Did we get it…?

Well, I’ll get my complaints out of the way first.  Some of these are nitpicks, I will admit, others I feel are legitimate complaints.  I want it made clear that I am not a comic fan, so I can’t really compare this to the original story of Superman.  All I can base my knowledge off of is the Christopher Reeve (RIP) films, and the animated series from the 90’s.  

To start off:  The first ten minutes, I felt, were WAY too packed, as well as rushed.  Krypton is being destroyed internally due to the council wanting to control the planet’s core, General Zod appears and starts his take over, Jor-el and Lara are busy trying to send Kal away so he can be safe, and Zod is captured and put on trial and banished, and the planet dies.  In the middle of it all, Jor-el dives into the Genesis, which is, for lack of a better term, a giant pool where thousands of unborn babies are being kept in wombs, he takes a skull-looking thing to his home where Lara is waiting, they say their goodbyes to Kal as Jor-el puts the skull thing above Kal and they put him in the ship, just as Zod enters, and he and Jor-el fight, and when Lara sends the ship with Kal away, Zod stabs and kills Jor-el. 

See what I’m saying about it being too crammed?  It just seemed like the movie was throwing way too much at us.  Some scenes didn’t really convey the proper reactions, either.  When Zod stabs Jor-el, there wasn’t even so much as a grunt of pain from him.  His reaction seemed more like “Huh…. I’ve just been stabbed.” And he dies.  Lara doesn’t even cry out.  In fact, several moments pass between the time he falls to the ground and when she rushes to his side.

And when the Council sentenced Zod… Shannon, I felt was hamming it up a bit.  I will admit though, that could have just been a nod to Terence Stamp.  And when he and the soldiers who followed him were encased in ice (again, lack of better term) I was wondering if the actors weren’t trying to see who could make the goofiest face.

Another complaint I have is that the movie jumps around way to much between Clark Kent as an adult and him as a child growing up in Smallville.  Every single time he’s thinking of his adopted father, or a lesson he learned, there’s a flashback.  First example shows up right off the bat.  The ship that he was on crashes, and suddenly we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and the crew is (I assume) crab fishing.  We see that Clark (going under a different name) is on this boat, and they eventually come to an oil rig that is on fire, and he saves the crew on the rig, and holds up a tower before it falls on the coast guard helicopter who’s there to rescue the crew.  We see him (unconscious?) in the water, and suddenly it cuts to Clark as a young school boy, when his powers were starting to develop.  Throughout the film, there are flashbacks, and after a while, it got kinda distracting.

Good stuff:  The cast…  I really loved Henry Cavill as Clark/Superman, and Amy Adams was a WONDERFUL Lois Lane.  I love that she actually figured out Clark was not of this world very early on, because unlike the other incarnations of the character, she actually did her job as a reporter and dug around, doing interviews.  

Both Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, both of who rarely impress me, did in this movie.  Aside from the emotionless death scene, Crowe was good as Jor-el, and Costner was a really great Jonathan Kent.  I also liked that rather than having a heart attack, something that Clark COULDN’T stop, Jonathan died in a tornado, but silently told his son not to come for him and reveal his powers in front of the crowd of people who were huddled under the overpass.  Knowing that it was something he COULD have prevented added to the tragedy of the situation.  

I really liked Christopher Meloni as the Air Force Colonel, and I liked Harry Lennix as Army Lieutenant General Swanwick, too.  Antje Traue was a new face for me, but I really loved her as Faora-Ul.  Really, the only character that got on my nerves was the trucker, and that was only because the moment I saw him, I knew right away that he was gonna harass a waitress/cause trouble.  But he was only there for a few minutes, and walking out to find his truck with several trees jammed through it did make me smile.

So, despite its flaws, I really did enjoy this movie.  I actually liked it more than I did the Dark Knight films.  Granted, two out of three of those aren’t really high praise, but I liked it more than The Dark Knight too, simply because the only thing that film really has going for it when you get right down to it was Heath Ledger. (RIP).

But I will definitely look forward to the films that will follow this new franchise.  

Ciao!