Movie Review: Man of Steel

Man of Steel (2013)

I reviewed and rewatched the rest of the... what was it they call this set of DC movies? The DC Extended Universe? A couple of times. Even if sometimes it's just to rewatch the action scenes, or when they happen to be playing on the TV. But I've never rewatched Man of Steel since 2013.

And... and I don't know. For all of its faults, at least Batman v. Superman isn't boring, y'know? And I'm not just talking on the merits of whether a superhero movie must have a certain quota of action scenes or whatever, but this movie and its 143-minute runtime really got me really tapping my foot impatiently at many times during its first act. 

There's a bunch of things that this movie does right. The casting is pretty spot-on -- Cavill's pretty great, Adams is pretty great, Crowe is clearly enjoying himself, Shannon is fun... The soundtrack is great. There are a lot of nice shots, and the special effects is A+ even if the climax does run for a bit too long. The fight in the small town with trains and fighter jets flying around is pretty phenomenal, and the effects showcasing Kryptonian super-speed is pretty awesome. Also a fan of the display of the conflict on Krypton.

Otherwise, though... it runs for over two hours, with very little to show. At least Zack Snyder's Justice League and its mammoth 4-hour runtime had the excuse of telling the multiple different stories and the worldbuilding of the whole Apokolips and Mother Box thing. Man of Steel's exposition is actually relatively concise in its Krypton-centric prologue and a later villain monologue on General Zod's part. So for the most part the movie just sort of feels kind of bland. I think the movie tries to do too much -- it clearly wants to be an origin story of Superman, it needs to have a plot where Superman fights a villain, and it also wants to distance itself from the previous DC projects. And honestly, I feel like it tried a bit too hard and what we got is an hour and a half of just the origin story, before we get to the Zod-invasion story honestly rather abruptly. 

The movie is also sprinkled with a lot of flashbacks, not all of which are relevant, and when they're interspaced between the relatively slow scenes of Lois Lane trying to investigate the mysterious reports, or Clark/Kal trying to figure out his destiny... it's not the most interesting part of the movie for sure. I do think the first act could've used a fair bit of trimming, because some of the flashbacks do feel redundant, and I'm still very iffy on the honestly preventable and questionable way that Jonathan Kent dies in this movie. 

The cast of this movie is pretty great, too, but at the same time watching the movie just feels... exhausting. For all my complaints about the slow start of the movie before the plot goes on, Superman himself doesn't get a whole ton of character development. I'm not sure if this was because of studio pressure or rewrites or whatever, but Superman feels kind of confused for most of the movie instead of introspective. He's got speeches from both Jonathan Kent (via flashbacks) and Jor-El (via advanced A.I.) that talk about how he'll be a guide to humanity and a symbol of hope and all that, but ultimately the climax of the movie is a rather typical 'fight the alien invader' climax. And, yeah, he sure is a symbol of hope, but it really does feel like a lot of the more heavy-handed speeches in regards to Superman's destiny ends up being followed up upon only in later movies. Plus, there's still the rather iffy undertones of the movies (that doesn't show up as much in the comics) that Superman's basically just following the orders of his space dad's god complex. On the other hand, Russel Crowe does give us a pretty fun Jor-El, so...

A lot of critics note that this movie 'missed the mark' with Superman himself, though honestly, that's not something that I would complain about too much. Sure, he's a bit more grim and dour, and I don't quite enjoy that as much, but as far as interpretations go, he's still ultimately heroic and he still chooses humanity over his supposed legacy or his homeworld. It's just that the tone of the movie is so depressing at times that it's hard to realize that. 

Oh, yeah, Superman also totally kills Zod at the end of the movie. And the whole 'Superman causes massive amounts of collateral damage' complaint. Both are much-maligned and much-argued-about part of the movie that the internet has dissected far, far more than I am honestly willing to. There are merits to both the 'Superman should not kill and should find another way to resolve this' camp and the 'Superman learns killing is bad in this movie' camp. Honestly, I'm already pretty exhausted after sitting through the movie that I'm just going to shrug and say that they're hardly the biggest problems here.

Honestly, despite the tone of my review, this isn't a bad movie at all! The story is solid if formulaic for a Superman story, and from a filmmaking standpoint it's pretty well-done. And honestly, as far as adaptations go I've certainly seen worse. This is definitely a solid movie, especially to those who like a darker and more serious tone (which I personally don't get for superhero movies, but there's certainly a market for them and I'm happy that some of the superhero movies cater to them). But if we're being honest it's certainly not something that I'll be in a hurry to rewatch any time soon.