Review of Man of Steel (2013) by Matthew O — 02 Aug 2016

As a lot of people were, I was really excited for MAN OF STEEL. This was going to be a complete re-telling of the origin of Superman, we were moving past the original Superman franchise. We also had a great cast with Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, and Kevin Costner. We also had director Zack Snyder, who did movies like 300 and WATCHMEN, and Christopher was producing it, who we all know what he did. This film had a lot going for and naturally was really hyped to see it.

At first, I really liked this movie. It looked amazing, the action was tons of fun, and I thought they told the origin of Superman really well. I was pretty shocked to see it getting mixed reviews. When this movie came out, I wasn't looking for a flowing narrative or well-written characters; I was looking for action, good-looking visuals, and of course Superman. And that's what I got, so I didn't think that much of it. But, as I watched it more and more, I really started to notice the flaws. The films story really feels more complicated than it needs to be. I think what they're trying to go more in depth and realistic on the story of Superman, and I understand that they're trying to make it different from the other films. But many of the subplots the movie is throwing in don't necessarily go together. The way they go over the stages of Clark Kent's life in the first half of the film, it didn't feel like they were being connected. There's many instances where you think one scene will go somewhere, but suddenly they'll cut to another scene without having anything to do with the previous scene. That makes the film hard to follow. Another thing that was disappointing was some of the performances. I mean, they're not terrible by any means, but they didn't really bring any emotion to their deliveries, or sometimes even too much emotion. Though, I thought Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner delivered good performances. But, I think my biggest problem with the film is that they made the tone feel overly dark and grim. Superman always had a sense of fun and light-heartedness to it, much how like a comic book movie should feel. It's meant to be fun, entertaining, and even a little silly. Here, they took the origin of Superman too seriously and felt very heavy on the drama and the darkness. Again, I understand that they're trying to take a different turn with Superman's story, but the dark tone just doesn't fit.

Though I still really enjoy the action scenes. They took more advantage with Superman's powers to incorporate it with the action. Even though this led to an crazy amount of destruction, unnecessarily so. All the visuals look really neat and are wonderful to look at, which is typical for a Zack Snyder film. And some of the scenes where we learn about Superman does feel like they have an impact on his character. (SPOILER ALERT): Like when Clark's adoptive father tells him that he probably shouldn't have saved the children in the bus from drowning. He didn't want him to reveal his powers as it would cause Clark to constantly be socially rejected from the world. It does bring up some good points and adds something to Superman's character. Or when Superman actually kills General Zod when trying to save innocent civilians from being killed in the hands of Zod. Now, there's probably a dozen better solutions to that situation. But, I understand what they're going for. Superman must decide whether to let innocent people get killed or have to forever let go whatever he has left of his real home. And when he does let go and realizes he lost everything he had of his home, it's quite heart-breaking to see Superman like this as it would stick with him for the rest of his life. I really like it when they create a dilemma for Superman where it can give more meaning to his character as to what he should or shouldn't do, even though these scenes could've been executed a lot better.

MAN OF STEEL is probably the most controversial Superman film we've had yet. People really either seem to love it or hate it. For me, I'm kind of somewhere in the middle. I really liked the action, the visuals, and the thought-provoking moments. But the film's narrative structure, some of the performances, and the overly dark tone really kind of brought it down for me. I guess you'll have to take it for what it's worth and decide for yourself.

Grade: C+.