Review of Man of Steel (2013) by Kaizidokiller — 13 Feb 2014

Man of Steel is highly overrated, it's a decent film at best because it's not the definitive Superman movie. Henry Cavill is no Christopher Reeve but at least he's an improvement over Brandon Routh. It's a long-overdue reboot for the franchise but I'm really disappointed by the lack of character development and the movie spends nearly an hour and a half retelling the origins of Superman that we all know to well.

Kal-El is born, Krypton gets destroyed, Kal-El is sent to Earth to save their species, ponders his existence, finds out who and what he is, finds out about his parents and where he comes from, finally has a purpose in life, becomes Superman, saves people, Lois, people generally accepts him.

There's really no need to spends hours telling a story that everyone is already familiar with, even the reboot of Spider-Man got the origin story over and done with within minutes and we got to see all the other characters in action.

This is the problem with Man of Steel, it spends so much time telling this story that they completely forget about all the other characters in the film; even Lois feels diminished. On the other hand, I do like how the story is told.

Whereas most action or superhero movies go from one action sequence to another (which can abruptly interrupt with the story), Man of Steel tells the whole story first before they overload on set pieces and CGI effects.

I just don't understand how at the end of the fight, the whole city looks like an apocalypse and they're able to fix it so quickly. But I'm guessing with the help of Superman, anything is possible. The amount of action is absurd and buildings falling down is so cheesy but I enjoyed every minute of it, especially when Zod uses some machine that can lift up cars and smashes them back down (that was pretty epic).

But obviously, the special effects doesn't any significance to the film. Overall, it's an above-average film. I was a bit disappointed though because we were long-overdue for a Superman film and I really expected better.

Whoever tells you that it's better than the first two Superman films, and even Superman Returns, is lying to you. That's how overrated this movie is because a lot of people would go as far as to say that.

Man of Steel is better than Superman 3 and 4 obviously (because those were terrible) but it's the weakest "good" Superman entry in the franchise.