Man of Steel

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Clint

Preface, my local cinema gifted me plane tickets and hotel accommodation to fly to Sydney to the red carpet Australian premiere of the film where Russell Crowe, Henry Cavill and Zack Snyder introduced the film, all for being "one of their most valued customers." Not too shabby.

As for the film itself, well I'm a little conflicted about it but overall I think I liked it? I've never liked superman, I never watched the older films as a kid. He character always seemed a bit bland. In this retelling of the origin story they do their best to make him a conflicted character with internal struggles, but he still seems a bit bland to me.

There are some very nice design elements and the fx are suitably awesome. It's an impressive looking film but I don't think anyone was going to fault the film technically. (Aesthetically, I'm a little tired of Snyder's high contrast desaturated colour palettes but I won't hold it against the film.)

The final action sequence is a big spectacle. It's almost numbing though, it seems to never end and the flippant disregard for the horrific collateral damage caused by two superhumans having a punch-out is kind of alarming. If it is something that is part of the sequel, well then that's fine. But as a stand alone it feels irresponsible.

That brings me to another niggling point, I feel like we all know the origin story of Superman and while this is slightly revisionist it's another example of a hero not becoming the character the public know and love until the final minutes of the film. So In that sense I guess Man of Steel is an appropriate title as this is not yet a Superman film.

Michael Shannon as Zod just made me giggle. I love him and hearing him deliver ridiculous comic book lines with all the intensity he can muster was delightful, if not a little silly.

There was a Tornado! Points for.

Henry Cavill looks great with his shirt off. Points for.

I liked they got rid of Lois Lane not knowing Superman's secret identity upfront. She wouldn't be a believable investigative reporter if she couldn't recognise someone with glasses. However I really don't think they should have tried to cram in any kind of romantic relationship between them, it was so forced and did not work at all, save it for later guys, one story at a time. 2 hours and 20minutes is long enough.

There's plenty of nit-picking to be done, (why is their display technology based on shifting geometric metal when they can quite clearly generate a photorealistic holographic Jor-El? Why was there a genesis chamber on the buried ship at the Earth outpost when they clearly state that they abandoned searching the stars before they started growing Kryptonions?) but none of that really matters. It comes down to this: I enjoyed the visuals and the spectacle but I was never emotionally engaged.