Man of Steel

Take the cape from your closet, dust it off and put it on. Superman is back!

I am not the greatest Superman fan. I’ve seen the movies, played some games (not the Nintendo 64 one) and read some comics but the expectation was high as Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy) took the job of producing this movie. It was his approach on Batman that brought superheroes movies to the blockbuster standard way before The Avengers. The impossible even happened when Heath Ledger won an Oscar. Watching the previous movies, either from DC or Marvel, that would be highly unlikely to happen. For the first time the superhero was something plausible. Nolan’s Batman and his enemies were down to earth unlike their previous versions. Joker. Two-Face, Ra's Al Ghul and Bane were no longer a result from “chemicals” and had no magic powers, they all had a reasonable explanation.

Just a few minutes into Man of Steel and I knew that that was not going to happen this time.

For the first time the story of Superman origin was told on a movie and General Zod was obviously the enemy from the beginning. So it’s more like a sci-fi movie with a superhero…that can be good right? Right. I should be expecting that instead of the “Batman” approach since Superman IS an alien from Krypton. My bad…so I’ve made a reboot on my expectations and watched it just trying to enjoy it, even though I was also thinking about the director Zack Snyder and his massive hit 300.

A few things caught my attention.

- The camera was all around, getting dirty and shaking.

- The story was told by constantly going back and forth in time which might be a little confusing.

- Nikon, Nokia and Sears paid to appear on it.

- It looked too much as if they were trying to make it look artistic with the “art angles” used (Superman socks look great by the way, thank you for the close up!).

But none of these things are really important. Let´s focus on the categories that we rate.

The plot is pretty straight forward. No twists or much to think. Kal-El (Superman) is born and sent to Earth before the destruction of Krypton with the “cryptex”, an object that contains the information about all the bloodlines from Krypton. General Zod tries to make a revolution and take the power by force and kills Jor-El, Kal-El’s father, but gets arrested in a prison in orbit of the planet. Krypton get destroyed and Zod escapes and sets himself to discover Kal-El to create a new Krypton with the “cryptex” information. Kal-El gets raised in a farm as Clark Kent until his foster father dies in a stupid matter, he gets caught by a tornado because he stood still instead of running and Kent does nothing even though he used his powers in public previously. So…he saves random people but not his father? That does not make sense.

He then goes away from home on his own and from one moment to the other he is working at a bar and right after he is working in a high security facility of the military. HOW?

He then finds the fortress of solitude which is a spaceship and Lois Lane sees it all. She tries to publish the story but his editor decides that the scoop of the century is a bad idea. Again, it does not make sense.

Finally, General Zod gets to Earth and the action begins. He asks for Earth to return Kal-El and he gets that. He then proceeds to tell Kal-El all the plan to destroy Earth and kill all life on it to create a new Earth which he could have done if he haven’t told his plan to the righteous one and son of the man he had killed. After this point there is not much to tell. A lot of fights and, with the help of the memories of Jor-El, Lois Lane and Superman save Earth and kill General Zod. Sure there are some leaps of faith but it’s not bad.

The visuals effects were somewhat bittersweet. They were ok but not great. Sometimes it looked too much like a videogame cinematic. The ships and space shots look really good but on Earth every explosion looks blurry. Just like in Star Trek, there is a constant glare which is as unnecessary as annoying.

The Superman suit was strange but looked good. The best thing were the Kryptonian suits and ships. The cities were real places and the clothes were normal so there is nothing to say about them.

The sound. The music from the composer Hans Zimmer is not bad but far from his best. More than adequate to an action movie. I remember hearing “Seasons” by Chris Cornell which is a good thing but I cannot recall any other song in the whole movie. The real problems are the sound effects. Being able to hear Superman cough in the middle of a fight against a giant machine called “world engine” and is used to terraform planets is the prime example of the flaws in this chapter. The explosions and destructions did not sounded as I think they should. That sound metal does when it’s bend, the sound of massive things falling to earth and so on…

The performances were also reasonable. The cast had as his main star Henry Cavill, a British actor known for his role on the TV series The Tudors. Even though he is not American that was not a problem, the problem is that for the first 70 minutes of the movie he does not look like an American symbol or Superman but he gets better after that, the problem must have been the script or directing options.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Kevin Costner as Clark’s father, Jonathan Kent, were dull, I expected that from Amy but not from Costner. He could have done much better as an inspiring role model for Clark. Russell Crowe had the terrible burden of following Marlon Brando as Jor-El and he took the role seriously, a little bit too seriously. He is always looking like he is trying to be intense and for that he was just reasonable in his performance.

The enemy General Zod was portrayed by Michael Shannon and during all the movie it seems like he is “spitting” his lines but the facial expression and the way he moved looked right. It might just be me but I do not think he was a good choice for the role. He does not look very military even though he was characterized to look just like Zod from the comics.

This was the first time I saw a movie thinking that I was going to review it and the feeling is much different. I felt that I was taking much more attention to details than before. For instance, I saw a truck with the letters LexCorp on the side which might be a sign that Superman will be back and Lex Luthor will be the main villain. It’s an interesting exercise to do.

In conclusion, the tittle says it all. It’s the Man of Steel but it’s not Super.

Plot - 3/5
Visual - 3/5
Sound - 2/5
Performances - 3/5

Final Score 11/20