Note; I am not the biggest Superman fan. Nothing wrong with him or the DC universe he lives in, just not my cup of tea. But I plan on giving spoil free review without being biased to my more Marvel preferences.
Plot is the same, Krypton is going to be destroyed so Jor El and his wife send out baby Kal El into space hoping his life on Earth will be met with peace. General Zod was conducting a military Coup at the time, and is captured with his crew and sent into the phantom zone of the universe. So rather than executing them, they Kryptonians literally just blasted the problem away hoping they wouldn’t have to deal with them again. It’s a story everyone knows and the movie tries to quickly wrap up Clarks back story into snippets placed into the movie when convenient. It’s a story of Clark Kent coming into his role as Earths savior while figuring out his heritage.
I’ll start off with what I wasn’t too fond of in the movie. The movie begins chronologically when Kryptons planet is on the verge of destruction and Jor El is about to send his son to earth. In the DC universe, Kal El is the first natural birth in centuries, rather than being like most Kryptonians who are apparently predetermined a lifestyle (soldier, leaders, scholars, etc) and come from artificial matrix like blobs. The Krptonaisn, especially Russell Crowes Jor El, gave off very Klingon like characteristics. Cold, calculating, logical, elitism, etc. This could be Snyders views on how Krytpon functions as a culture, but aside from the dorky haircuts there were many Klingon like similarities that distracted me from this supposedly different Alien race. The whole first half of the movie was a blur. The plot jammed in so much action, characters, flashbacks, and non sequitur scenes that it made my head spin. It was very busy, as if the production team was trying to be as informative as possible while hardly giving the movie a little time to breathe. Modernizing such an iconic figure head in American culture’s a pretty big task, but you don’t have to jam it down the audiences oculars in order to get the point this is a “modern” Superman.
I am one for explosions, and there are a lot of those. The action and violence is always fun to watch, especially when Superman finally begins fighting the enemies who are trying to overtake Earth to form a knew Krypton. In superhero movies, it’s easy to forget there are significantly more regular joes than super beings. People are going to get hurt, citizen causalities went through the roof in this movie. You could tell the Nolan influence when you saw innocent humans being tossed around like ants when General Zod and his goon squad start wrecking up cities and towns. Seeing the destruction makes it a bit more realistic I think. If an alien military elite is attacking a city, you’re not going to have a ghost town in the picture. You’re going to see regular people get hurt or worse in the wake of the last Kryptons. That being said the action scenes were pretty fun to watch, if anything easier to follow than the 60 minutes of exposition.
The Kents were also given a flair of morbid reality. John and Martha Clark are scared the government will hurt Clark if his superhuman abilities are discovered, and heavily discourage him from ever using them. Leading Clark to deal with a life of ignoring the bullies and overall scummy people in the world as opposed to justifiably beating the crap out of them. The movie gave more explanation on how Superman has the amazing abilities he does compared to the seemingly regular abilities the Kryptonians have on Krypton (no flying, laser beams, etc.) and it gave the audience more sympathy to Clark after seeing him struggle as a child who see everything like he’s looking through an X-ray machine until he can control his powers. Krypton definitely borrowed some Ridley Scott elements, the space crafts and technology echoed to the Aliens and Predators universe, as if every powerful alien race shops at the same Space Ikea or something. On a side note, it was super refreashing seeing Kent fight others of his kind rather than dealing with a man with clinical baldness and a limitless paycheck. That and no sight of Kryptonite. So Man of Steel avoided the awful cliches he’s been forced into since the 80’s. The action gave The Dark Knight trilogy a run for it’s money.
I give this summer blockbuster a 3/5. I enjoyed the more gritty and informative bits, but I didn’t like being rushed through 2.3 hour movie at the same time. The supporting cast was a little 2D, but stable overall. Fans and non fans should having more stuff they like than dislike when viewing Man of Steel
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