Man of Steel (2013)

[Blankments]

Man of Steel is an incredibly fun movie, although it has very recognizable flaws. Cavill's Superman is a joy to watch, despite the "realistic" atmosphere. The rest of the cast works well too, with an engaged Crowe and delightfully hammy Shannon being highlights. The Smallville fight might be one of the best superhero sequences put on film; it's certainly one of the coolest. Unfortunately, the writing is pretty awful, sometime adding unintentional hilarity to scenes. Also, the final setpiece of the film is far too prolonged, and becomes a mess of CGI not interested in the idea of Superman. It becomes too in love with the excess that Snyder has mastered, and the denouement from said sequence is far too short to really bring the film back to greatness. Although suffering from a poor third act, Man of Steel is pretty fun and exciting to see. It's just a shame that we most likely won't get a proper sequel for it anytime soon. C+

[John Marston]

even if I hate BvS, Man of Steel will always unapologetically be one of my favorite superhero movies. 

[MCKillswitch123]

In my quest to prepare for Wonder Woman (it's only 4 days away from now.... GIDDY), I'm rewatching all three DCEU movies.

 

Starting w/Man Of Steel, a movie that I always thought very poorly of. After a more open minded rewatch.... Zack, I'm sorry and my heart's w/you on the horrible tragedy you went through, but your work here continues to grate me. I still don't like it.

 

Now, I don't believe I hate it as much as I used to. Ultimately, it's got some good things to it: 

• The soundtrack by Zimmer is great and epic, gets me really pumped up (and yes, I know, it's more of the same from him, but more of the same from him is better than 90% of a lot of other score composers out there, screw you);
• The visual effects are amazing, they are the one thing Snyder gets most of the time right and here is no different;
• The cast is all good, some one-note'ish performances but I think they all work fine within the context of their characters;
• The action itself, disregarding everything around it (and trust me, there's a lot), is quite cool and the DBZ style fighting works well w/the Kryptonians... let's be honest, grievances aside, the Smallville fight was pretty kick-ass;
• Faora is FUCKING. AWESOME. Such a badass in every way... she's scary, imponent and pretty much unstoppable, but also noble and somewhat arrogantly classy... loved almost everything she did;
• Zod is a decent enough villain too, and his monologues about how Superman was abandoning Krypton in the 3rd act were powerful enough, even if a little hammy;
• There are some individual scenes, very few, that work - particularly Superman's 1st flight, some of his flashback sequences when he's learning to cope w/his powers and, again, almost everything w/Faora.

Yeah, those things... all good. Unfortunately, the core of the movie around all of those pretty little flashlights sucks. For the heavy dose of negatives:

• The script is HOR-RI-BLE. Every single thing the characters say and/or do is either a ridiculous speech about how important Superman is, or just dumb;
• The characters themselves have zero charisma or personality. Zod and Faora are the only distinguishable characters in the film, because everybody else may get one moment or two (Perry White gets to be himself for a few seconds), but then they just become robots who say the exact same nonsense in a loop for 2 hours and a half, completely missing what made the characters of the Nolan Batverse it's clearly trying to recreate so special;
• Superman is a fucking douche. Destroying some dude's truck just cause he dared to bad eye his girlfriend and... not hurt him at all in a bar fight, leaving Lois Lane for dead in the Arctic, ignore millions of people dying (and helping the destruction)... yeah, I didn't really find myself rooting for him, despite all the shit he did go through;
• On that note, my lack of emotional attachment to these characters made the story uninteresting and the mindless destruction/overabundance of action pretty boring by the 3rd act, which, let's be honest, was marred by the worst superheroism ever by Clark Kent, who only brought more destruction and natural disaster-scale death to the people he "loved" than trying to fight Zod away from them;
• The level of product placement in some of this movie gives Transformers a run for its money (though yes, it does work in making the world somewhat realistic, it's also incredibly distracting);
• A bit too many agendas and subplots going on;
• The cinematography wasn't amazing (too much flash-zooming and shaky cam for my liking, that got nauseating real quick), but the coloring was just shockingly bland and subpar, especially given the director, who does a really good job w/making his films look gorgeous (even Batman V Superman, dark as it was, was still a beautiful, very well shot movie)... yes there were some pretty scenes here or there, but for the most part, the movie looked every bit as bland as the Russo Bros. Captain America movies did, and that's not really a good thing;
• Superman killing Zod.... would've been a GREAT, bold and interesting idea, if they had done it under the right circumstances. Instead, it happens under a situation where there were a bunch of other options, and the movie quickly ignores its supposed emotional impact by having Superman blow up a military drone that cost millions of dollars for a petty ass reason 2 minutes later (did I mention Superman is a douche?).

In my perception of a superhero movie, when the characters and the story fail, the movie fails, even if it's not an incoherent mess (part of the reason why I like BVS better - I actually connected w/some of the characters). Sorry guys, but my humble opinion of Man Of Steel is... a very low one. Doesn't get an F cause the cast is good (not great), Faora's 7 minutes of fame are the best thing ever in a Superman movie outside of Chris Reeve's original Supes and Terrence Stamp's Zod, the action (when unlinked from all the bullshit) is very cool and most of the technical component of the film works very well. But terrible writing and characters, and a hero who is not only Godawful at his job but also virtually unlikeable to the point where I almost wanted Zod to beat him and kill all of us humans... not my thing.

 

D+

Edited May 28, 2017 by MCKillswitch123

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Am I the only one who loved the Krypton scenes?

[DAJK]

I don't get the hate personally, but then again, sites like this would be boring if we all had the same opinions.

 

A