Movie Review: Man Of Steel

Director: Zack Snyder

Production Company: DC, Warner Bros, Legendary

Country: USA

Year: 2013

‘Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith first. The trust part comes later.’ That’s what Clark Kent (aka Superman) is told in this film, when debating whether to hand himself over to General Zod to stop him wiping out Earth to create a new Krypton. There’s a strange irony in this, a quote from the first true film in DC’s Cinematic Universe. Here we can see the company itself asking us to take a leap of faith and hope that the film will deliver, that whatever Marvel can do, they can do better. The trust part, in their integrity and ability to create this interconnected series of films, will come later.

Having been sent away from the planet Krypton by his father (played by Russell Crowe), to escape the coup by General Zod (Michael Shannon), Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent grows up on Earth, knowing of his abilities but not aware of the exact nature of his heritage. Upon Zod finding his location, Kent must make the choice between his ancestral people, and those who took him in and adopted him.

Man of Steel is a reboot of the Superman franchise, and a new cinematic origin story for the character. It’s got big hopes, big scale, big budget ($225m), and a big cast. What isn’t big, however, is the ability of the script or the direction. The script was worked on by Christopher Nolan, a divisive but usually skilled individual, especially when it comes to crafting blockbusters. One can usually trust that he’ll deliver a decent script, but he and fellow writer David S. Goyer must have been having an off-day, despite the S in Goyer’s name. For just one example, the dialogue is melodramatic and exaggerated to the point of cringeworthiness.

And then, after fifteen minutes of action on Krypton at the film’s beginning, Zod gets banished from Krypton, before proceeding to vanish from the story entirely until an hour into the movie. The 45 minute gap are constant backstory for Kent, his childhood troubles growing up with powers others don’t possess. This should be very important, but again is ramped up to the point of boredom. It’s the same basic idea used again and again every few scenes; that he’s troubled and won’t fight back, wants to save people, is better, has a true destiny, etc. You forget there’s an antagonist out there which will eventually catch up to him as the plot necessitates. That character development in film is undeniably important, but there must have been a way to interweave it into an engaging routine, keeping up the pace of the film. You can have a film take it’s time, but it can at least keep the audience engaged and entertained whilst doing so.

And then when Zod does appear, there’s about fifteen minutes of dilemma, before a good 40/45 minutes of full on fighting. But this isn’t an entertaining 45 minutes. After a certain amount of time you forget trying to care about what’s going on, or why crashing into a building should matter (it doesn’t, because they’re both practically immortal and indestructable), and forget that there’s any kind of conflict involved at all. At no point in the film do you actually believe that Kent, or Lois Lane, or anyone important to the story, will come to any harm at all, so all kinds of stakes and danger have rapidly evaporated within seconds.

None of this is helped by Snyder’s direction, which adores shakey, hand-held camerawork for no reason, and very obnoxious zooms whilst tracking moving objects/people/spaceships. The cinematography by Amir Mokri is bland and dull, using vast swathes of limited colour palettes (lots and lots of grey and blue) for large chunks of the film, and Hans Zimmer’s score is completely forgettable, even more than usual for a Zimmer score (he did some good ones a few decades ago, but since about ten years ago, they’ve all sounded exactly the same; like someone playing on the ‘synth strings’ setting on a keyboard, one finger at a time). The acting is fine, but nothing stellar.

At the end of the day, that’s is the issue. At it’s best it’s good, and when it’s going wrong, it’s really going wrong. It is an insult to the film-watching public that this film had two hundred and twenty five million dollars pumped into it, and this is what they came up with. It may be a Superman film, but it’s anything but Super.

-Rating: 4/10

-Review by Kieran Judge

-Twitter: KJudgeMental

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