Review: Man of Steel

  

 

    I got this out a little later than I had hope to, but Father's Day slowed me down, but nevertheless here is my review of one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year, Man of Steel. Like everybody else, I went into this movie expecting to be swept off of my feet with the best Superman movie ever made. I expected to give this movie very high praise and a 4 Star review, but in the end I was a little let down by Zack Snyder. Now, I don't mean that this was a total bust because it wasn't, I still enjoyed the movie, but not as much as I thought I would, there were several things that let me down.
    We all pretty much know the story of Superman and his origin, and that is what this film was about, just a re-imagining of it, so I'm not going to go into details on the plot. First, I'm going to tell you what hurt the movie. So, first was the pacing, the movie is told in flashbacks several times, but you're never confused because you can tell which scenes were flashbacks. What hurt the film with the flashbacks was that some of them didn't seem to fit in place during the film when we go back in time, they hurt the pacing. A couple times in the first 45 minutes to an hour I found myself a little bored, hopping it would start to pick up. The flashbacks hurt the film the most and a I think it would have been better if it was told chronologically with maybe a couple flashbacks.
    The next things are how we find out something and how they used Lois Lane, played by Amy Adams. Again, this is an origin story and those can be hard to tell, but some thing's we find out in the first half of the movie didn't seem to make much sense. I found myself asking "how did he get there to find that particular object?" The film was a little jumpy at times when it came to those aspects. Next, is Lois Lane, I didn't think she was used very well because she just shows up in a helicopter at a location, that I'm not going to tell you, and meets Clark there and then something bad happens. After that she goes on a search to find out more about this man she met, which is just a couple minutes of short cut scenes, not much explanation. And Amy Adams overall didn't seem like a very good Lois Lane, and I like Amy Adams, but I never felt she embraced the role as good as she could have.
    However, that being said there were still things that I did enjoy about the film. The first was the acting of Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon. All of these actors really did a fantastic job, they probably saved the film from being terrible. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane both give us heartwarming performances as Jonathan Kent and Martha Kent respectively, one scene in particular that I did like involved Jonathan saving people from an oncoming tornado, which was very good. Russell Crowe gives us another very good performance as Superman's father, Jor-El, we see him several times through out the film alive and after the fact. Now he's no Marlon Brando, but I really did enjoy his take as Jor-El. Finally we have Michael Shannon as General Zod, who really stole the screen, I thought he was the best in the film and the best actor the play Zod. A great and frightening performance from Michael Shannon.
    The next thing that helped this film out was the Visual Effects and the fight scenes, which all take place in the last 45 minutes to an hour, except the opening scene. This is a beautiful film when it comes to the Visual Effect, of course that is what Zack Snyder is known for in his other movies, 300 and Watchmen. The first scene take place on Krypton, which is a new take on it and it is Visually brilliant. Once Zod attacks Earth the effects really come into play and take over the movie, but I believe for the good. Obviously the effects help with the fight scenes, which are also fun and exciting at times, maybe a little much in some parts because one keeps going and going, just tearing up building after building with a lot of camera movement. But overall, great effects and fight scenes.
    In the end this was not quite the Superman movie we wanted to see and I believe with just a little better editing it might have been better, the pacing was the big thing that hurt the film and the character development with Amy Adam's Lois Lane. I really wanted this film to join the 4 Star ranks of superhero movies such as the 1978 movie Superman: The Movie, Spiderman 2, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, if you consider Batman a Superhero, and The Avengers last year, but it failed to do that. Although it was not a complete bust, because it was a new origin story and those are hard to tell sometimes and I think Man of Steel 2 will be better. I was hesitant to give this film 2.5 Stars, I really was torn between 2.5 and 3 Stars, but it had enough of what was left to entertained me a little, so I settled on 3 Stars, which is less than what I expected to give this film in the first place. And let's face it, I missed the original Superman theme by John Williams, although Hans Zimmer's was good, just not as good.                   
3/4 Stars.