Movie Review: Man of Steel (SPOILERS!!!)

Let me tell you a story.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a really big Batman fan.  Like, a really, REALLY big fan.  I went to the midnight release of Dark Knight Rises and enjoyed every minute of it.  I thought it was amazing.  Then I got home, turned on the news, and learned about the theater shootings, and for awhile, I forgot the actual movie.  To me, the two were inextricably linked, and whenever I thought about the movie, I ended up thinking about the tragedy instead.  Then, over time, the shock faded, and when I began to think about it, I realized the Dark Knight Rises was a pretty horrible movie, and an atrocious end to such a good series.  I realized that the reason I enjoyed it so much in the theater was because I was conditioned to love all things Batman, and had come to expect great things from the Christopher Nolan series (Because Dark Knight is AMAZING).  I wanted a great Batman movie, and so my mind interpreted DKR as a great movie, when it was in fact, a pile of crap.  It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that I believe this will also be the case with Man of Steel.


So, I'm gonna start the review by saying I am also a big Superman fan.  Any time someone describes Superman as being boring, too perfect, or a goody two-shoes, I am the first to jump to his defense.  I love Superman, because I love these books:

Superman: Red Son

Kingdom Come

Superman: Infinite City

All Star Superman

Superman: Secret Identity

Over the past few months, I have been ecstatic over the quality of the Man of Steel trailers.  Finally!  I thought, here is the Superman movie we deserve.  A movie that will focus on his childhood, a movie that will tell an amazing story.  I predicted (probably correctly), that this movie would finally make Superman as popular with the mainstream as Batman is.  I mean, sure, the Superman shield symbol is, and always has been, a staple in American culture and merchandise.  But as for the hero's actual books?  They hardly sell.  He has an image problem.  Due to the vastness of his powers and his squeaky clean morals, it is extremely difficult to write a good story about him without either A) depowering him or B) using an alternate reality/continuity, as with all but 1 of the books above.  Sadly, one of Superman's greatest accomplishments in comics is inspiring his many satiric imitators, such as the Plutonian of Irredeemable or Apollo of The Authority.  In my opinion, the only really great work in recent history that has been done with Superman, as he really is, has been in the DCAU, the animated branch of the DC universe.  

And so, it was with great hopes that I went to the midnight release of Man of Steel on Thursday night.  And I am sorry to say, that once again, I was very disappointed.  

I guess I could write for a long while about all the things I didn't like about this movie, but since that would be a bummer to read, I'll try to just focus on the big problems.  The first of these is tone.

It is my belief, that the Green Lantern movie was such a turd that it even managed to ruin Man of Steel.  Let's look at the recent DC movies track record for a moment.  Their greatest success?  The gritty, "realistic" Batman movies.  Their biggest failure?  That piece of crap up there.  You know, the one that had a more light-hearted, action movie feel.  So, when it came to Man of Steel, they took the dark and gritty route.  Even though, you know, it's Superman.  The beauty of the Batman/Superman relationship is that they are the opposite of one another.  Batman is the night, and Superman is the day.  Of course, Chris Nolan also worked on Man of Steel so, his prints are all over it.  It's as if they looked at Green Lantern and said, "What did we do wrong?  Well, it couldn't have been the writing.  People must just hate movies with a sense of fun. Makes perfect sense."  I also suspect that since they are working towards putting together a Justice League movie, they felt like Man of Steel should match The Dark Knight Trilogy in tone.  Because, you know, it's impossible to put together a successful team movie and maintain the original personality of the characters in their own films.

Ahem.

And thus, Point #1: Superman should not be dark and gritty, especially not in introductory film.  Every character should have some amount of angst, but it should have been handled differently.  

Point #2: Let the man act for goodness' sake!

I really want to stress here that I thought Henry Cavill did a great job and made an excellent Superman.  That is, in the very few scenes in which they let him act.  On top of looking like he just walked straight out of a comic, he did Supes' personality perfectly.  This was especially true in the early scenes where Clark is a drifter, righting wrongs where he can.  The bar scene, where he stands up to a guy harassing a waitress, was spot on.  The way he reacts, his expression, everything was great.  I was also a big fan of the scene where he turns himself over to the authorities, and demonstrates that he is perfectly capable of leaving if he so chooses.  Superman's sense of humor really shines in these scenes.  He has a sense of humor!  And don't get me started on the "love story".  Lois Lane was basically shoe-horned in.  Their interaction was brief and awkward.  I think they spent more time making out than they did actually talking to one another.  It's not fair, and it is horrible treatment of a character as smart and tenacious as Lois is meant to be.  Two scenes out of the entire movie, by my judgement, got Superman right.  Not enough.  What what happening the rest of the time?

Point 3: In a 2 1/2 hour movie, approximately 2 hours was spent on fight scenes.  This is really bad.  

First of all, if the fights had been a prettier, I might not have minded so much.  As it is however, they chose to demonstrate Supes' speed, not by slowing everything else down, but by actually having him, and all of the other Kryptonians he fights moving super fast.  Basically, you're watching 2 hours of a blue and red blur, with explosions and punching noises thrown in.  It was also extremely loud, which made sitting through it hard for me, but that could have just been my theater.  There are 3 final fights.  As in, each of the last three fights seemed like the end of the movie, but weren't.  In fact, it was sort of like one really, really long fight with five minutes of breather and a change of scenery interspersed throughout.  Honestly, the sheer about of loud, fast fighting gave me a hell of a headache.

Point 4: Too much CGI!

All of those fight scenes?  They basically looked like a video game.  They were trying for alien beauty, but it came out fake and ugly.  

And finally, Point 5:  Piss poor pacing.

As mentioned above, they probably spent a grand total of 10 minutes developing Lois' character in this movie.  5 of those minutes were the actual interaction between her and Clark.  For most of that, she was a damsel-in-distress, being saved from wounds, from falling long distances, etc...

The first 30 minutes of the film is an extremely fight filled introduction to Krypton, Jor-El (Russel Crowe did an awesome job BTW), and how baby Supes got to Earth.  These are important elements to Superman's story, but it really didn't need to go on that long.  Compare that to the very small amount of time they dedicate to him mastering his powers, and it just doesn't make any sense.  I think they did a good job with his childhood (aside from the terrible characterization of Pa Kent), but they did it in bits and pieces, flashing back and forth to present day, which really pulled me out of the story.  

All of these reasons, along with many other smaller problems, lead me to believe that the people who are applauding this movie right now will look back in a few months, as I did with Dark Knight Rises, and realize that this is a shit movie.  I'm not trying to insult anyone's taste or intelligence here.  In fact, I have found that I am really in the minority in disliking this film.  I guess only time will tell.