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Man of Steel is a film I went into, not expecting great things based on the reviews I’d read and heard.
Sometimes, it’s good to lower your expectations because when a film turned out to be a belter, such as with Brit flick Welcome To The Punch, it’s all the more enjoyable. Unfortunately, Man of Steel turned out to be mostly an unrelenting pile of incomprehensible bollocks.
The story is familiar. Krypton is about to explode. In a basic moan about global warming and the assumption that an has a direct effect on the planet’s sustainability (which is a load of utter…), after mining the planet’s resources all this time, the core has become unstable and is about to explode. Knowing this is about to happen, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) takes steps to ensure his son, the first naturally-born child in hundreds of years, is safe from all the palava and sends him our way. At the same time, angry prat General Zod (Michael Shannon, looking a tad like Kasper Juul from Borgen) wants to kill everyone and everything and, after an exchange with Jor-El, ends up sentenced to enternity a long way from everyone else.
Of course, this doesn’t last long because about five minutes later, Krypton explodes, frees the baddie and his henchman & henchwoman (Antje Traue as Faora-Ul, page 2), and they can then make plans to kill the new child… when they find him, that is. This takes 33 years and he’s living in Kansas, BTW, which brings us into the present day. Well, sort-of… Despite the lack of a time machine, the plot flicks back and forth between various points in young Superman’s life, or Kal-El as he was christined, which started getting way too random for its own good. I know Christopher Nolan (co-writer and co-producer, this time) can do the necessary when it comes to this sort if thing, but Memento this is not.
Where else does Man of Steel go wrong? Let me count the ways.
It treats its audience like idiots. Without going into detail, the concept of terraforming comes up. Are viewers of sci-fi that thick that they don’t know what terraforming is? Apparently the makers of this film think so, as one army girl says, “Terraforming?”, and may as well have said to her superior, “Can you explain it for those out there watching this film?”
There’s also a glaring lack of humour in the script. This is made obvious all the more when the occasional line is dropped in. One of these lines comes from the aforementioned army girl. It gave me a giggle. The film needed more of them. Why is there hardly anything to laugh at here? (apart from the whole piss-poor effort)
I did drop in a snigger, however, relating to the ‘S’ control key and the fact it’s not quite working properly, when Lois Lane says to Dr. Emil Hamilton (Richard Schiff), “It’s supposed to go all the way in!”
It also goes on way too long. Rarely does any film need to last longer than two hours, these days, and this one, at 143 minutes, could easily lop off over half-an-hour and tighten up the rest. Even when there’s been crash/bang/wallop aplenty, director Zack Snyder doesn’t know when to stop, and has them smashing up buildings that are now derelict! And after Superman & Zod have had a fight, I wouldn’t want to have to pay the insurance bill…
Go to page 2 for my thoughts on the cast.
When it comes to the cast, Russell Crowe is probably the best one here, although Michael Shannon makes for a good Zod, and you don’t find yourself wishing for the return of Terence Stamp because that was from a time 30-or-so years earlier. Cavill has the physique for Superman, but while he’s explained in interviews that, like with Sylvester Stallone toning up to the max in Bullet To The Head, it’s not sustainable, and his chest doesn’t look quite like that now, as it does when he makes his entrance in this movie. And at one point, cavill is even made to look like Reeve for a couple of seconds! I’m surprised I’ve not heard any mention of that made before now.
Amy Adams gets a bit more to do than Margot Kidder did as Lois Lane on her first time around, but even still it’s not as if she has to push the boat out. The rest are fairly perfunctory. They turn up, do their thing, and don’t leave any lasting impression.
The government and army staff are all ‘Doctor’ this, ‘General’ that and ‘Colonel’ the other, but without looking at the cast list, I couldn’t tell you what their characters names are, or even which one was which.
Overall, Man of Steel is especially disappointing because there are times when you find yourself enjoying it, and starting to forgive a lot of the dullness that has gone before, yet it’s only a few moments before things are back to normal and you’re left wondering what has happened. a sequel is, no doubt, on the cards, but based on this film I can’t see myself rushing to see it.
In fact, Superman could end up on Jeremy Kyle at some point: “My Two Dads Were Both Robin Hood & I Come From A Broken Home & An Exploded Planet.”
As an aside, I’m a big fan of 3D films, which is one of the formats in which this film was presented. Another was 3D IMAX, something I also enjoy. And I was going to see it in the latter, but then I learned that it wasn’t even filmed in 3D – it was all added in post-production. I asked on a forum whether the 3D looked good in any way, and was told that while the first 15 minutes is great, the rest barely even touches on it – so I saw it in 2D, and I could see exactly what they meant. Also, since none of the film was actually shot in IMAX, either, there seemed little point on paying through the nose for not much extra in that format.
I saw this film at the Odeon, Trafford Centre, and all Odeon screenings include a clip of Johnny Depp’s new film, The Lone Ranger, due out on August 9th. It looks like a reasonable knockabout comedy… but then such things only really need to last around 90-105 minutes… and this one lasts 149 minutes! Even longer than Man of Steel! WTF?!
Interestingly, they put this clip right after the end credits. There was hardly anyone in the auditorium to begin with. It might’ve been that it started at 6.20pm on a Monday, or also that this was the subtitled screening – which is a great way of stopping a film being ruined by idiots – but how many stuck around to watch this additional film clip? Just me.
Cert: 
Running time: 143 minutes
Year: 2013
Released: June 14th 2013
Widescreen: 2.35:1
Rating: 4/10
Director: Zack Snyder
Producers: Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder and Emma Thomas
Screenplay: David S. Goyer (based on a story by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan)
Music: Hans Zimmer
Cast :
Clark Kent/Kal-El: Henry Cavill
Lois Lane: Amy Adams
General Zod: Michael Shannon
Jor-El: Russell Crowe
Martha Kent: Diane Lane
Faora-Ul: Antje Traue
General Swanwick: Harry Lennix
Dr. Emil Hamilton: Richard Schiff
Colonel Nathan Hardy: Christopher Meloni
Jonathan Kent: Kevin Costner
Lara Lor-Van: Ayelet Zurer
Perry White: Laurence Fishburne
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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