Review of Man of Steel (2013) by Conrad S — 04 Mar 2017

This is not a film about Superman. It's about Zack Snyder's insatiable thirst to make once brilliant and interesting things boring. Superman is supposed to be a charming and unrealistic ideal of the perfect man, not a superpowered Batman.

The only way in which Superman and Batman are alike is their secret identities, something Snyder decided to overlook. I can't describe Clark's character because he has none. The same applies to Lois Lane, who is a classic example of the independent love interest, who still has to be saved all the time.

The only character that has a personality is General Zod. Unfortunately, Michael Shannon's over the top performance sticks out like a sore thumb in this monotone movie, and so cannot be taken seriously.

A lot of people defend this film by drawing attention to the exhilarating action. The action is, however, not exhilarating. I don't care about the characters so it has no emotional impact. The hero does more damage than the villain, so I don't care if he wins.

It's all done in CGI, so each punch feels incredibly artificial and meaningless, which is strange, as Snyder seems to be obsessed with meaning. He crams religious imagery into each scene, which would have been good, had he not made the symbolism so obvious and thoughtless.

He insults the audience's intelligence by putting Jesus imagery in the foreground of every other scene as if we wouldn't be able to figure it out had he not done that. The one unique thing, that is sometimes effective, is the cinematography.

He reflects Superman's vision by using a lot of fast zooms, and any smooth and stable shot shows off the well-executed action. Yet, for every stable shot, there are three shaky cams, which take away from the action as we cannot see what is going on.

The soundtrack is ok, but other than that, this is a terrible movie made by a terrible director.