Man of Steel (2013)

Genre

Action | Sci-Fi

Director

Zack Snyder

Country

USA

Cast

Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Christopher Meloni, Ayelet Zurer, Russell Crowe, Harry Lennix, Christina Wren, Richard Schiff, Michael Kelly

Storyline

A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man (Henry Cavill), he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind.

Opinion

Because of all the excitement for "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice", I thought "Man of Steel" was supposed to be a big deal. So I watched it with high expectations, and I was rewarded with a big let down.

"Man of Steel" is loaded with action and special effects, but never quite takes off mainly because of the writing.

While I would have expected something like this from Zack Snyder, David Goyer ("Batman Begins", "The Dark Knight") and Christopher Nolan really disappointed me, and they made a film that portrays the famous Kryptonian with very little befitting the character - Superman never kills, no matter what.

The film can be easily divided into two parts. The first one introduces Clark Kent, with many significant flashbacks about his childhood, and his two fatherly figures, Jonathan Kent and Jor-El. It also shows what happened on Krypton, and why Kal-El's father had to do what he did. This is what made me think it was all going to work out. This part was awesome, but then shit happened. I mean, part two happened, the whole fighting thing with Zod. What could possibly go wrong with that? Everything. This part is loaded with special effects - 80-90% of the time - and extremely long action sequences that made me yawn God only knows how many times, and made me spend more time checking Twitter than actually focusing on the boring action.

The modern context of the film is to be appreciated though, and Clark's multiple father-and-son tales are beautifully done, but the Lois Lane/Superman romance is shallow.

I've already mentioned special effects and action a few times, and I think they deserve their own paragraph. They tried to compensate the lack of a solid story with unnecessary special effects that will be soon outdated, and action scenes there are just smashing scenes for the most. There is so much smashing going on, the Hulk would have gotten sick of it.

But let's move to the acting. After watching "Smallville" for 10 years, it's quite hard for me to get used to someone playing Clark Kent/Superman other than Tom Welling. But I wish that was the only problem. Since we are talking movies, the comparison between Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill is quite obvious - I'm leaving Christopher Reeve out of this because I'm yet to see his Superman. Anyway, I was saying, while Routh had grace and some acting skills, Henry Cavill has a great screen presence but he's just like a piece of wood. The rest of the cast, oh man. Michael Shannon was great as General Zod, and Kevin Costner did good in the little screen time he had, but Russell Crowe and Amy Adams are completely wasted here.

All of this being said, am I going to see "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" next week? Of course I will, I love superheroes flicks, and I won't miss the chance to complain about it.