Man Of Steel: A Very Late Review

It's a good thing I'm not a professional blogger. I'd have to fire myself for neglect. I started this review a long time ago, and I kept forgetting about it. This isn't the first time I've done that. I actually have quite a few posts that I need to work on finishing. Or even starting... I have a bunch of movies I intended to review, but never got around to it, and I STILL haven't actually written my review of The Hunger Games movie. I probably should watch it again to refresh my memory.

Anyway...

Man of Steel was very good. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it was the best live action Superman movie anyone has made so far.

I have always had mixed feelings about all the other Superman movies. Christopher Reeve was a great actor, but his movies were very lacking. They were good for what they were I suppose, but they were pretty badly written. I have always hated the resolution of the first movie, where Superman flies around the earth so fast that the entire planet reverses rotation and somehow this causes time to flow backwards bring Lois back to life and repairing all the destruction. Aside from how stupid that is in and of itself, it begs the question, why didn't all the destruction just happen again? All he did was turn time backwards. Why did that fix everything? It just made absolutely no sense.

I do like the movies (Sort of, most of them) but there's just moments of absurdity that make me dislike them too. Though don't get me started on 3 & 4. I remember liking 3 as a kid but when I got older I realized it was garbage, and 4, gag. I've only seen 4 once. It was so stupid I don't remember much of it. I think I'm subconsciously blocking the bad memories.

Superman Returns was also not horrible, but I didn't like it either. The special effects were great, the beginning was one of the best movie openings ever, (From the point of view of a huge Superman fan anyway) and I really liked Brandon Routh as Superman, but the writing was subpar, and it was not nearly as exciting as it should have been. And making him have a kid with Lois that he didn't even know about just kind of ruined it for me. So the whole movie is probably near the top, if not at the top of my biggest cinematic disappointments ever. Not worst movies ever, just biggest disappointments ever, because going into the movie, I had extraordinarily high hopes.

But anyway, this review is supposed to be about Man Of Steel, not the last five movies.

To begin with, I will just get out of the way what I didn't like about the movie. My main gripe was with the character of Jonathan Kent. This version was a really weak, fearful man in my opinion. In other versions of the story (My favorites being Smallville and Lois and Clark) he has been a strong, brave role model for Clark, but in this one he's so scared that Clark will be taken away by the government that he even muses that maybe Clark should not have saved a school bus full of children from drowning, because he was seen doing it. Then to top it all off, instead of dying from a heart attack like most versions of the story, Jonathan gets killed saving someone because he won't let Clark save them and expose his powers. And even though Clark could have saved him, he refuses to let him. If I were Clark, I wouldn't have listened and saved him anyway, because that was just so stupid.

Martha Kent was a completely different story. I really liked her, and I'm very glad they didn't do anything to her character that would make me dislike her at all.

As for the other characters, they were all great too. Clark was slightly moodier in this version, but that goes back to my gripe against Jonathan. The fault of Clark's outlook on life goes back to him. Aside from his lack of "Good Cheer" Clark was still a great character. They did not change his character so much that it didn't feel like Superman. Plus, Henry Cavill made a great Superman. He had the look, the build, and the character just perfect to play the part.

Zod made for a great adversary. He was perfectly evil, with a good reason for being that way. I don't like it when a character is just evil for the sake of being evil. (Except for comedy purposes, Dr. Doofenshmirtz) It makes the characters so much more interesting when it is explained why they are the way they are. That being said, I think I still prefer Terrence Stamp's portrayal of Zod in Superman II. As much as I can find fault with the old movies, my complaints are never against the characters, and Terrence Stamp was the perfect Zod.

As usual, aside from Superman, Lois was my favorite character. This probably has a lot to do with who played her. Amy Adams. I think the fact that she was going to play Lois was one of the things that got me most excited for the movie. I've liked Amy Adams ever since she appeared in one of the first episodes of Smallville as a "Fat Sucking Vampire". Yes, I am aware of how incredibly stupid and terrible that sounds, and I know I am in a very, very, very small minority of people who actually liked that episode. It's always mentioned as one of the worst Smallville episodes ever, and I really don't care. :p

One thing I thought I would hate, but ended up not caring about, was how they changed the characters of Perry White and Jimmy Olson. They made Perry black, and they made Jimmy, Jenny. I was against the idea at first, since those are pretty huge changes, but I ended up liking them anyway. Perry, was still Perry, and Jenny just seemed like a new character. So even though I liked Jenny, I'm still holding onto the hope that they might introduce her twin brother in a future sequel. I still want there to be a Jimmy Olson, just as a friend for Clark.

Aside from the cast and characters, the rest of the movie was amazing. It was very extreme. Epically extreme. It was almost non-stop action. One of the main criticisms leveled at the movie is that it was all violence and no humor. And I can understand that. I do like there to be some comic relief in action movies, but it didn't bother me as much as it did some. I do hope that there will be more "Fun" in any future Superman movies they make, but the lack of it in this one did not make me dislike it as it did for some people.

The design of everything in the movie was great. I loved the look of Krypton. It was completely different than all other interpretations of the planet that I've ever seen. The landscape was very bleak, but it still looked cool and unique. And I loved the fact that they even showed some of the Kryptonian animals. I was not expecting that, so it was a very nice bonus.

The Kryptonian droids were awesome. They were some of the coolest, if not THE coolest droids I have ever seen. C3PO has nothing on them. :) the way they moved, the way they sounded, and the morphing effect was just amazing. I was hoping that one might somehow be saved with Clark and become his sidekick at the Fortress of Solitude or something. :p

In conclusion, if you are a Superman fan you should definitely see this movie. Oh, who am I kidding. If you are a Superman fan you'd better have already seen it, because this review is almost a month late! As a whole, this movie was awesome, and I can't wait for the sequel. And the sequel to that, and the sequel to that, and the eventual spin off Justice League franchise. Hey, a guy can dream can't he?