Man Of Steel (2013)

 As I have probably already stated somewhere in this blog, I am a HUGE fan of superhero movies. They always have great action, some good humour and quite often manage to include a good story as well rather than just showing off their special effect prowess. However, there has always been something about Superman that never quite clicked with me. Don't get me wrong, I have done my research. I have seen the majority of the films both old and new, I have witnessed the wide range of TV shows dedicated to retelling the story and I have sat through many an episode of the cartoon series. There has just always been something that hasn't impressed me. Something about the character and the story that doesn't quite fit. Having said that, I had extremely high hopes for this film. Directed by Zack Snyder of 'Watchmen' fame and produced by the legend that is Christopher Nolan (Inception, the Batman Series, etc.) this film really has no reason not to be incredible. Let's face it as well, after the last Superman movie, this one didn't have much work to do to be better than that.

 The story begins as most 'new' re-creations of superhero movies do nowadays, with the back-story of the character and how he came to be who he is. This one, however, takes it waaaaay back, and shows the destruction of Krypton and how this led to Superman being sent to Earth. It then shows Clark Kent's younger years and him learning of his powers and coming to terms with them before finally having to reveal himself to the human population when an imminent threat from his home planet attacks the Earth (sound familiar?). I know what you are thinking, and I agree. Originality is not a word that immediately springs to mind with this story, but when I saw this I didn't hold it against it and based my judgement on this movie and this movie alone.

 If there is one defining feature of this film, it has to be the special effects. They are genuinely incredible. Considering that quite a significant chunk is set on a distant planet, there wasn't a single second where it was obvious to me that any of the back drop was fake or anything else that had been CGI'd was anything other than real. This is the kind of standard that all forms of animation should be aiming for nowadays and Man of Steel has kind of showed everyone else up. As well as this, this film has finally managed to find an actor who can play Superman not only convincingly but well. Henry Cavill seems to have been born to play the role and is easily one of the best versions of Superman I have seen.

 Now onto the not so good stuff (and there's more than I was anticipating there to be). One. The story doesn't feel very complete. The writers have missed a huge opportunity to develop characters, include them in more aspects of the story and just generally create a more rounded film. Everyone from Lois to Jor-El (Superman's Dad played by Russell Crowe) seems to have been added on to a story solely focusing on how awesome Superman is. With such incredible acting talent in the cast, it seems like a waste to have made them stand in the background while Superman flies about a bit and essentially levels an entire city. This brings me on to my second point. The first half of this film is really good. It has a great story, good action sequences and a variety of characters for the audiences to follow. However, the entire second half of the film is one incredibly long action sequence with no real breaks or pauses. While some may find this exciting and it is exactly what they want from a film of this type, I am not one of those people. I found that at the beginning it was good but as it went on and on with no breaks or let up, it just got boring. Superman flying into people, destroying buildings and being all superhero-y gets very tedious after a while and it kind of ruined the film for me. Up until this point I had been enjoying it but this need to show off and demonstrate everything that can be done with special effects just brought the whole film down to its knees.

 Overall, it is not the worst Superman adaptation I have ever seen, but it is far away from the best, and it doesn't even come close to being one of the best superhero films I have seen. I just hope that for the next film they step it up, put ego and the need to show off aside and make a good film for the people who genuinely want to see Superman back at the top with the rest.