Chris Reviews Man of Steel

Superman has always been one of my favorites if not my actual favorite super hero. I have always found him very relate-able, sure he is an alien but he was also raised in a mid-western farm town and almost defines what it means to be American. Not only do I like Superman for that, but I also love the more Sci-fi aspects of his story. So all in all Superman is probably my favorite super hero and thus I had high expectations coming into Man of Steel. Did it live up to my hopes and dreams or is this the next Green Lantern? As usual read below to find out...

THE GOOD-

Let me start of by saying that I had a blast with this movie! I think they finally have the ability to do Superman fights the right way. Many of the previous Superman films have been hampered by technology not allowing them to do the character justice but that is no longer a problem. I know some people were upset by the shaky cam fights but I think it gets less and less noticeable throughout the film. The overall visual style of this film is fantastic as well. I love what they did with Krypton and wish I could have spent more time there as it was a visually impressive and unique looking planet. The production design in general was very good and I actually really like the new suite. Now from an acting standpoint there was also a lot to like. The performance everyone is talking about is Michael Shannon as General Zod and he is pretty damn good. There is a certain thing that they put in the plot so that you always know his motivations and I think that was a great idea. Henry Cavill is a strong Superman, he definitely looks the part and while some of the lines are dorky his performance is solid. I also loved the flashbacks to Clark's childhood and thought Kevin Costner was the perfect Jonathan Kent. So overall there really is not a bad performance in this film at all.  

The Bad-

This was a very inconsistent film for me. There were parts of it that I was completely engrossed and loved but other times that it lost me. It did this in a variety of ways. As I said before the shaky cam is a bit distracting, especially in the opening scene where it is happening in every single shot. I was very worried about the rest of the film because of that but it did seem to get better. Another issue I had is with the action, while the sequences were spectacular they tended to go on a bit long and went a little overboard with the destruction. I know the end fight has caused a lot of controversy because people think that Superman probably accidentally killed hundreds of thousands of people in collateral damage during it. While this did not make me hate the film, it did take me out of it from time to time. Then of course there is always the minor plot holes and weird science that does not make sense but those are just minor quibbles that I can forgive.

Summary-

So overall this is a pretty strong movie that has just enough problems to prevent it from becoming a great one. I would probably put this slightly above Iron Man 3 and say that this is the best super hero movie of the year. While it may not have quite lived  up to what I wanted it to be, this is still a great start to a hopefully long new Superman Franchise (It is doing very well in the box office so a sequel is probably a lock).

MY RATING

3.5 out of 5

-Chris "Da Franchize" Hart