Here's my review. It is incredibly long. sorry.
The movie claims its theme is hope, but does not support that theme well. Superman isn't likeable at all, he's very cold and petty, even.
The action is good, very visual, but nothing really memorable in it. Just, wow those are crazy hits. Amy Adams' Lois Lane, Russell Crowe's Jor-El and whoever that woman was who played Faora are the only great performances in the movie.
Everyone else just doesn't have life or charisma. Michael Shannon's Zod and Diane Lane's Ma Kent come close but are ultimately just decent. Lawrence Fishburne's Perry is a great casting (racists be damned) but he doesn't shine in the role because of very limited screentime, and I was sad he didn't have a cigar in his mouth. Cavill is just unhappy as Superman, and his Clark Kent is practically nonexistent.
The young Clark scenes were excellent. Loved all of those.
! Pa Kent's death was well done because Clark had to trust him and show he did think of him as a father.
But the whole movie just wiggles the lines between okay and mediocre. Nothing is fantastic about it to me. Then comes the dividing line scene that I HATE. Which is what the entire rant in my note is about. Without that scene, I'd say 6.5/10, but with that scene it's a 3/10.
! So, Man of Steel… Man of Steel... I just don't understand it.
I wrote a month or so back about my discomfort with the growing trend of action in superhero movies, in a post titled "Superheroes In Movies Lose Their Heroic Morals In Favor Of Rage, Vengeance and Murder, Or: Why Superman Is Our Greatest Hero And Our Only Hope," and maybe that's why I HATE, and I mean every second of that film as I think back on during this film knowing what is looming near the end, this movie. It certainly sacrifices those morals for that easily bankable triad of rage, vengeance and murder.
! So, I'll call this post about Man of Steel "You Broke My Heart (When You Broke His Neck)."
! Bear with me, this is going to be LONG.
! But, see, comics are something I really enjoy. And I like a LARGE variety of them. I like the comics where the hero will win the day, not take any lives, and be a generally good person. I like the comics that are basically slice-of-life stories talking about everyday events, like about 90% of shoujo romance comics or shonen comedy comics. I like the really grim and dark stories where there is no chance it gets any better, even if you keep hoping that it will (hi there, Walking Dead!).
! But I have that VARIETY. There are a ton of heroes out there and I can have my Captain America and Superman be great role models who will pull through and save the day, and not kill! I can have my Batman and Daredevil be extremely brutal, but also never cross that line. I can have my Wonder Woman and Wolverine go out to save people, but if they need to kill the bad guy, so be it. I can have my Red Hood and Elektra say, "Screw it, that dude is DEAD!" and kill them because, hey, they save people, but ultimately, they're the ones who live in that kind of violence.
! But the movies just have this apparent need to turn them ALL into that style where they kill their enemies. "There was no other way!" some people say. "Really?" I ask. The pages and pages of ridiculous powers that Superman has, to the point where I could go copy/paste from his DC Encyclopedia page and fill this post to three times its length, and he had "no other way."
! I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to LOVE this movie. But I hate it. I hate it with a burning passion. I hate it more than... I can't even finish that statement. I'm so annoyed by this movie 2 days later that I can't even think of a terrible superhero movie. Imagine I said X-Men Origins Wolverine or Green Lantern, I guess, but those are okay in ways. They have fun in them. Man of Steel does not have fun in it. None.
! Man of Steel presents its theme to be "hope." The symbol Kal-El wears upon his chest is Kryptonian for "hope." Within him lies the birthing codex that is the last hope to revive their race. But they have Superman take things for his own, give back very little, and show no regard for anyone except his mother and Lois. And the people of Earth should immediately love him? It doesn't fill me with hope. The idea of the Superman who kills fills me with horror. A recent issue of Injustice follows this line of thought. After the Joker kills Superman's wife and child and the majority of the population of Metropolis, Superman murders the Joker in retaliation. (I don't like that scene either, but it sure as hell makes sense that even he would break. But that is also an Elseworlds tale that is not part of the ground for BUILDING A NEW FRANCHISE based upon the Superman character, like this movie is doing.) Superman lectures Batman for questioning this action, stating the scores of people Joker has killed, and if one life is with that. Batman answers "It always starts with one."
! I believe that. Once you let "there was no other way" into your heart, it is in there, and it will happen again. Think Zod's the most terrifying and difficult battle for Superman? Guess again! There's worse out there. And this Superman would probably kill them too. There's no other way, after all.
The passion and anxiety in the scream that Superman lets out is a powerful scene. If this movie were about the Sentry or Hyperion or Gladiator or any of the other Superman rip-offs, I'd probably applaud it. However, it's a movie about Superman. And it broke my heart when he killed Zod. I barely remember hearing his scream because of a mix of how speechless I was at what just happened and the fact that members of the audience CHEERED at the murder.
! I will repeat that, as it is probably the most disgusted I have EVER been with a wide group of human individuals in my vicinity, a large portion of the audience CHEERED when the greatest paragon of truth, justice and 1940s American morality viciously snapped the neck of his enemy.
! In all of the fights, Superman had already shown a complete lack of care for any bystanders except for Lois Lane and Ma Kent. He launches into a rage and smashes Zod through several buildings and straight into town, causing incredible amounts of damage. In the shots, there are even people clearly in this buildings and at the gas station that Superman crashes Zod into, which is left a burning wreck. Later on, throughout his second fight with Zod as well as his battle with Faora, he is the driving factor yet again actively pushing his enemies through buildings, where we see people falling or becoming trapped. With his powers, he could have easily steered his momentum towards, say, that huge farm fields right outside of town. But no, he puts people in peril. Does Superman save any of them? Not a single one. Not until lovely Lois is falling, does he rescue anyone. Even when he is inches away from a Daily Planet worker that Perry White has been attempting to get out of a large pile of fallen debris and wreckage, he does not lift a finger to get this poor woman, who most certainly was still in mortal danger if that had collapsed upon her, out of her prison, which was caused by him.
! When he finds out that Zod was the man who murdered his birth father, Jor-El, Superman immediately vows vengeance. "You're a monster, Zod, and I am going to stop you." Stop him, he did. Just not how my Superman would do it. Zod threatens a family with his heat vision and looms closer to burning them to ash, when Superman does it. He snaps Zod's neck and leaves him dead upon the ground. Murder. Pure and simple. Even once Zod had fully mastered his newly-gained Kryptonian powers and bragged about the fact that he was born and raised to FIGHT while Superman grew up hiding on a farm, Superman held the advantage the entire battle. He quickly juggles Zod with three punches that send him flying, drags Zod's face through yet another building (because clearly he hadn't broken ALL of them yet), and applies a choke hold on Zod's neck.
! That right there is the moment where it was about to happen. Mark Waid, an incredible comic book writer who knows his stuff about Superman, detailed that when Superman grabbed Zod by the neck, he began whispering "don't do it... don't do it" then stood up and shouted "That's it! You lost me!" when the murder was committed. My experience is actually the opposite. I was forgiving all of the mortal danger and cause-of-battle deaths Superman caused until this point. He hadn't killed them directly, I justified. Superman doesn't kill. No, strike that contraction, it deserves full-worded sentence. Superman does not kill. Period. Then he grabbed Zod in the chokehold. My friend next to me whispers "God, he's going to lobotomize him..." and I think "No! He'll find a way to win right! He's going to launch into flight pulling Zod up before he harms that family, then trap him in a..." Right there. Right there my theorizing ended. Because before my mind could finish coming up with a satisfying Superman-pulls-through-as-the-hero ending to the battle, Superman broke Zod's neck, and with it my heart. And my heartbreak was amplified by the sickening cheers and applause from the majority of the audience and that Superman's pain at taking a life was so quickly alleviated when Lois runs up and embraces him. The only solace was that a group of people also walked out of the theater. I certainly would have, but I was there with a friend and instead sat there speechless and silently mouthing the word "no" with tears welling in my eyes.
! Until that day, I had never cried during a superhero movie. Came close at some really sad death scenes, but this was the one. My friend joked when we saw that Christopher Meloni (of Law & Order SVU fame) was in the film that someone was going to be violated, I just didn't know it would be the very spirit of Superman.