Here's a review I made of the movie.
! [h=5]Man of Steel: Wow, was that movie bad. I was honestly not expecting it to be THAT bad. I at least thought it'd be better than Dark Knight Rises just for the sheer spectacle the movie promised. And there was spectacle, tons and tons of it, the problem is that's all the movie was.
! If I had to describe the movie with one word, it's nothing. Literally, nothing. This is such a nothing movie. Superman learns nothing, feels nothing, cares about nothing, his character is nothing as he doesn't exhibit any sort of personality. And people can make the argument that Superman was always one of the more bland characters to write since he's essentially just a boyscout…but the movie even took out those traits that made him so likable, that chirpy attitude, that desire to protect people, that charming charisma, they take out all of that and replacing with constant brooding and angst...because it's more dramatic and dark I guess and the writers think they can substitute that for actual character depth. Nolan and Goyer, for all their boasting on how they're going to humanize Superman, ended up giving us a character that was less than human.
! And this isn't a problem with just the Superman character, all the actors are so bland in this. Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Lawrence Fishburn, Russell Crowe...oh wait Russell Crowe is always bland, okay scratch that last one but these are good actors who've proven themselves to be very good in other moves...but they're so bland and lifeless in this movie. The problem with these characters, aside from their drained performances, is that...they're just not characters. They don't feel like characters, they feel like one dimensional flesh bags that do nothing but spew philosophy after philosophy mostly to do with how Superman is Jesus. Not once, not ONCE in this entire movie do the "characters" have a single conversation that isn't just exposition for the movie, not once did the characters have any dialogue which sounds like something real people would say, something that highlights their distinct personalities, that humanizes them, to make them people that we could connect to on some emotional level. There's not a single "character" in this movie that you can go "fuck yeah, that guy is so cool!" ON THE MERITS OF THE CHARACTER. They do cool things sure, Superman blows up shit and does a lot of shockwavey things, Russell Crowe has a cool scene where he's a hologram that controls the doors on spaceships to take down the bad guys, but there's a huge disconnect in this movie between the actions of the characters and the characters themselves. The events of this movie don't feel like they're being driven by characters with desires, it just feels like there are things in the movie that need to happen as dictated by the script and these walking, emotionless, sock puppets are being forced to drive the story.
! And people will say I'm nitpicking (which I'd have to disagree,having a movie with three-dimensional, likable characters that you could root for doesn't sound like a nitpick to me) and I should just turn my brain off and enjoy the spectacle. But as far as I'm concerned, that sort of mindless spectacle entertainment puts the movie at the level of Transformers. It's okay that the characters are a complete bore so long as Superman punches stuff and looks cool doing it, it's okay so long as there are a lot of pretty lights and laser shows. I'm sorry but I expected more, much more after all that hype on how groundbreaking this film was going to be than just spectacle. And the movie honestly fails for me on that level too. On a purely visceral level, we don't get ANY sort of action in the movie until TWO hours in. Two hours in, we get a lot of hints and teases but we don't actually get to see Superman do ANYTHING of importance to the plot until the two hour mark. And people will go "Well, it's building it up for a satisfying payoff!" And I'd agree but the problem is that the build up was fucking boring (and the payoff too honestly but I'll get to that later). It was just nothing but Superman wandering around being mopey and angsty, not really learning anything or growing as a character. There's just no ARC to this character. This is not helped at all by the completely nonsensical editing the movie had.
! Oh god, was the editing in this movie horrendous. The way it just kept jumping from scenes that had absolutely nothing to do with each other made it feel so awkward and clunky. The movie employs the Lost technique of injecting flashbacks of Superman's backstory while present events are going on, sort of like what they did in Batman Begins. The problem is that the order of these flashbacks are just completely random. It goes from Superman is a fisherman to he's a 12 year old boy to he's working in Russia to he's a teenager saving his classmates from drowning in a bus accident. It's so jumbled around and incoherent, it doesn't allow me to form an emotional connection to the events that are going on and thus I don't care. It doesn't help that the flashbacks don't tie to what was currently going on in the present at all so they lose any sort of emotional weight or purpose. In fact, they flat out contradict them. There's a scene where Superman crucifies a truck of some asshole trucker who was giving him shit...in broad daylight without making any sort of noise somehow (because not punching him but destroying his only way of making a living is taking the high road somehow). Yet immediately before this, we got a scene that hammered into our heads on how Superman can't risk his identity being exposed and he should control his emotions and not succumb to his impulses. And we just got a scene where he completely contradicts that message. Again, people might say I'm nitpicking and that it was just a funny, cute scene and I'd agree if the movie didn't just spend the previous ten minutes bashing my brain with that message. His father died because he didn't want to reveal his powers but he doesn't mind risking exposure if it's to one up some random asshole who's greatest crime was throwing a drink at his face? It'd be one thing if he regretted the impulse later but nope, never mentioned again.
! Now that I touched on the subject of Superman's father Jonathan Kent, I'd like to say that Jonathan Kent is one of the worst father figures I've ever seen in a movie. It's pretty shocking how much they butchered the character even more than Superman in this film. All the characters in this movie pretty much sucked but Pa Kent has a special place in my heart with how inconsistent and vague his character was. His entire character consists of not really telling Superman anything useful. He's always telling him (delivered in the most bland way possible, it's Kevin "Waterworld" Costner playing him after all) "Be careful of exposing his identity, son or then again maybe not, I dunno. You're God's gift to man, son. You need to use that talent, but then again, maybe not, don't wanna risk your identity son." The worst part where he tells his son, who had just saved dozens of children's lives from drowning, that MAYBE he should have let them die. I repeat, he told his son that maybe it was in the cards, that it would have been acceptable on some level to let children die. Not only is this such a horrible thing to say to a developing child, something that could mentally traumatize him, but it just spits in the face of Pa Kent's character. In no other iteration be it comic, movie, cartoon, TV show will you ever find Pa Kent tell Superman, it's sometimes okay to let people die. The writers are trying to inject character conflict into the character but they're doing it in such a forced, ham-fisted way. Again, not helped that the character is as interesting as a sack of beans. The stupidity of letting people die comes to a head where Pa Kent and family find themselves stuck in a random tornado. Oh God, I have so many problems with this scene. The cliche, tasteless forced argument Pa Kent and Superman were having, the fact that a freak tornado just POPPED out of nowhere and no one saw it coming (seriously the exact scene was Pa Kent jumps out of his car and says in a bland voice "Ahhhhhhhh"), people running from the tornado (instead of driving away with their cars) and hiding in an ...overhead pass? You don't hide from tornadoes in an overhead pass, that's the worst place you can go, the enclosed space will act like a wind-tunnel increasing the power of the wind. And then Pa Kent sacrifices his life...for a dog. He's got a family to look after but goshdarnit, he loves that dog. And the stupid part is that Superman could save him at any time but Pa Kent is like "Nope son, don't do it, my time has come" FOR NO REASON. This is a problem Nolan's scripts have always had. The noble choice that look dramatic and cool but make absolutely no sense. The man had a family to look after but they made him die to prove his vague point about keeping a low profile. Even though there were a thousand ways he could have saved him in that situation without being exposed. Like just using his super speed and saving him, gale force winds were blowing impeding vision, people were all stressed and panicking, no one would have been able to tell shit but nope we gotta force that death scene because it looks cool and shit, never mind it not making any sort of sense. And then the tornado just comes and whisks him away, just him not the people in the overhead pass or even the vehicle surround Pa Kent and then I guess the tornado just went away because next scene is present day. It's this sort of hamfisted, pretentious writing that I just despise and is just so unfitting for a Superman film.
! The movie is just so joyless and cold and impersonal. It's more interested in delivering platitude upon platitude of high brow exposition on how Superman is Jesus then actually spending time to develop the characters or give us scenes with any sort of emotional depth. Because to the writers, depth is being dark and brooding instead of having people act like actual people and not soap opera boxes. Not once did I feel ANYTHING in this movie, I just didn't care, the movie never allowed me to care, it was more interested in delivering its hamfisted metaphors and flashy action scenes. And that's really the movie in a nutshell. All style, no substance. But I'm not done bitching about this movie yet.
! The movie had so much filler. The entire Krypton scene in the beginning of the movie was superfluous. We know the story of Superman, even a toddler knows it, it's Moses with aliens, it's engrained into our subconcious. But nope, gotta give it to us again delivered by the most emotionally stunted actors and in the most boring and uninspired way. We got the generic close-minded government council wearing ridiculous hats, we got the generic bad guy popping out of nowhere inciting his coup, we got...Russell Crowe running away from spaceships on a dragon...? Okay that was different. And with all the budget and ability to do anything, the one and a half hour Saturday morning cartoon from the 90's managed to tell the story with much more emotional depth and character. Mostly because it knew better to focus on building up the world and characters and not distract us from the poignant moment of a mother and father giving up their child with a bunch of explosions and laser battles. And then they have Russel Crowe explain the entire scene we just saw AGAIN to the audience. If this movie is one thing, it's pandering to those in the audience who didn't understand anything the first time.
! The entire character of Lois Lane was filler. You could have cut her character out and it wouldn't have changed the film. The one job she had to insert the S symbol into a USB port, she fucked it up and had to be bailed out by somebody else. Her entire role in the movie was to be saved by Superman and yes, I know what you're going to say, that's her role in the comics too but this is supposed to be an update of the Superman mythos that does away with those outdated notions. She was just the object of the main character's affections, nothing else. She was just there because Superman has to have Lois Lane to fawn after, it's in the job description not because the two characters have any sort of romantic chemistry between each other (Actual line from the movie: Lois "I heard it all goes downhill from the first kiss" Superman "That only counts for humans though." Me "Ugh, was that line really in this movie?" They're doing this cheesetastic bullshit in the middle of a mass grave btw).
! My favorite "character" in this movie if I had to pick one has to be Zod I suppose. but only because of how hilarious his scene chewing was (I WILL FIIIIIND HIIIIIMMM said in the most shrieking girly voice imaginable). He was really the only character that seemed to care about anything. However even his character was as one-dimensional as the rest. While his single-minded obsession of restoring Krypton was chilling at times, when it came to carrying any sort of emotional weight, it fell flat on its face. He was just the asshole general character, no better or worse than the hardcore jingoistic jarheads that are just so cliche (see Avatar).
! Now before I get to the climax of the film, I'd like to talk about the technical aspects of the film as delivered by Zack Snyder. I like Synder. I liked 300 and Watchmen (can't speak for Sucker Punch, haven't seen it), he can make some visually pleasing movies as seen in this movie. With that said, did his wrist get broken when filming the movie? Because the fucking camera was shaking so much, it was like watching a tennis match instead of a movie. Zack Snyder for some reason has traded his trademark slo-mo effects for instead a bunch of camera shaking and random zooming in and out of shots. It works for some scenes like when Superman is flying but he does it constantly throughout the film regardless if it fits the mood or not, even when people are just talking, he's constantly shaking the camera. You can claim this is another nitpick but it's legitimately distracting, I'm trying to sit down and somehow emotionally connect with the soulless robots on screen and it's not helped when the camera is constantly shaking in my face. Hans Zimmer music was good but that's par for the course with the guy. I don't want to leave it at just that but there's not much to talk about, I liked the music.
! Now, after all that said, let's get to the centerpiece of my discussion. The ethics and morality at play in this movie. Superman is supposed to be a paragon of the American Dream, a symbol of hope, justice and the American way. He's the guy that puts protecting people, doing the right thing, taking the morally high road above anything else. He's the boyscout essentially. And it's just so weird to see a movie where the writers clearly hate everything Superman stands for. Yep, I'm going to be that blunt about it. The writers either grossly missed the point of the character or just hate him. Well that or, as I suspect, the Nolan-Goyer duo are one note writers that can only recycle their Batman trilogy for their comic book films even if it's completely unfitting for the character. I already mentioned how they took out all those positive traits that the character had and replaced it with a big bunch of nothing masquerading as depth. But Id like to make clear also what a fucking terrible super hero, Superman is in this movie.
! Example. Zod releases two world destroying death machines onto the planet, one in the middle of the ocean and one in the middle of metropolis. Taking out either one would thwart the villain's plans, at least them movie emphasized that it wasn't essential that both be taken out essentially. Now, which one would you think Superman would go and destroy? If you said the middle of metropolis so Superman could protect people from being flattened like flapjacks, congratulations, you're a better writer than the hacks who worked on this film. And then we get to the final fight of this film. I appreciate an epic final battle, it's satisfying and cool to look at. If it were built up properly with a lot of emotional stakes and characters we actually gave a damn about then it's just a mindless slug fest. But apart from that, the collateral damage in this movie is insane. Unacceptably so. Superman and Zod obliterated Metropolis, they were smashing each other through skyscrapers, debris was falling everywhere, countless people could have and probably did die even if the movie chose not to show it (because then, we as an audience would have had to be emotionally conflicted and we wouldn't want that to distract from the mindless entertainment right?). Did Superman give a fuck? Nope. Now some of you are already telling me to just shut up and turn your brain off and enjoy the mindless violence. But I just can't, not just because of the bad writing but because it just goes so against everything that Superman stands for, the entire film built up how Superman was the Messiah who always puts the people first and here he is mindlessly scraping Zod's face through a skyscraper without any thought of who he might be hurting with the debris, not even showing any thought on his part to contain the damage. I'd like to bring up another movie to emphasize my point, Avengers. That also had a war with a lot of implied death. But the difference is that the Avengers prioritized saving civilian lives. Captain America cooperated with the police force to minimize human casualties, we had a scene of him going the extra distance to protect civilians from being killed by the aliens. Did we get that attitude from Superman here? Nope,he was far more interested in scraping Zod's ass through the pavement. He was more invested in his emotional desire for retribution than than his desire to protect people and that just goes against everything the character stands for. He doesn't seem to care and let's face it, the writers didn't. Which is why they had him obliterate Metropolis along with Zod. Never mind the emotional core of the character, an epic fight scene is much more important. This is compounded by the climax of the scene where SPOILERS Superman kills Zodd in another forced contrived scene. On paper, the idea is interesting. Superman living with the fact that he killed someone. But the fact that he killed Zodd to protect one family when he's been killing countless on his little revenge spree just completely undermines the moment. Not to mention how poorly executed it was.He had Zodd in a headlock who was slowly turning his head to kill a family with his laserbeam eyes. Th movie tried to make it out like Superman had no choice. He couldn't have just turned his head the other way or told the family to run who had ample space to do so or knock him out. Nope, had to kill him because the writers wanted Superman to kill a guy. And then he makes a big yelling scene about it, Lois Lane comes to cuddle him and next scene, it's like he forgot it. We never see him suffer the consequences of his actions, you could say they're saving it for the inevitable sequel and my answer is, why did we have to wait for the sequel? Why did the writers take out the one consequence of a consequence-less movie? The fact that killing was a taboo for the character was poorly done because not once did the movie establish that it was a huge deal for him. It just came out of nowhere like a lot of plot threads in this film and left just as quickly. Some of you will say, well he was going to have h to kill him anyway. And I say no, Superman would find a way, the writers could have found a way, Nolan was opposed to the idea of killing by Superman, it was Snyder's idea in fact. But ultimately, just the fact that they didn't try to address core issue about the character in any sort of intelligent way, for me, perfectly summarizes their complete ineptitude in the entire film.
! What else can I say? I thought it was bad film. A movie made on the most misguided of notions with writers that clearly missed the entire point of the character and had no idea what they were doing, recycling the same message of the film over and over and over again with the most boring and bland of characters... It was just a spectacle film and a pretentious one at that and it should have been much, much more than that.[/h]
tl/dr The movie was a boring spectacle film on the level of Transformers with the key difference being at least Transformers knew it was an explotation film and not a pretentious shlock fest that forced Jesus metaphors down our throat. Absolutely horrible experience.