First of all - again, as with STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS -- if it shows up in 70mm anywhere near you - go! Your eyes will be astonished! Actual, real deep dark black on a Movie screen in 2013! And, as a not so coincidental bonus - no hazy gauzy smear in scenes with deep shadows!
Will this reboot succeed where 2006's SUPERMAN RETURNS failed? Yes. Is it that much better of a film? Not necessarily.
RETURNS had a couple of major issues working against it - First, it so slavishly followed in SUPERMAN I & II's footsteps, that it could literally have been called SUPERMAN II 1/2. Second, lead Brandon Routh was so bland that Cavill only had to hit his marks to better that performance.
MAN OF STEEL takes a different tack - for better, and for worse. It changes the trajectory of Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Superman himself's arcs. The story is told with flashbacks and flashforwards. We all know the Superman origin story so it didn't have to repeat every beat - but, it does come back to bite the film in the end (spoiler section below).
Henry Cavill isn't bad as Superman, but, we get precious little of the adult Clark Kent, so that is an open question for the sequel. Amy Adams makes for a strong Lois Lane, and she has a more modern feminist take. It will be interesting to see how the decade age difference will play out in future sequels (hey, it's Hollywood and she is pushing 40). Michael Shannon is solid as Zod, but, I miss Terence Stamp's mischievousness. Russell Crow is fine as Jor-El, despite playing a pretty far-fetched version of the character - even for a comic book movie (spoilers).
The plotting works well enough, but is undercut by two major factors:
1. Zack Snyder. This isn't
300
or a videogame. It would be much more effective if the overlong and over-the-top "action" sequences weren't so unrelenting that they actually become boring after a while. Superman has always been marked as much by his humanity than by his feats of superpowers. The recent Batman trio was distinguished by precise bursts of special effects which artfully combined real physical effects with tasteful CGI. This wasn't nearly as....er...tasty.
2. Christopher Nolan. Superman isn't Batman. Never was. It isn't that Superman couldn't use a little more darkness to reflect the times, but, it shouldn't be as dour and unrelentlingly grim as his take on the Dark Knight. Coming out of Depression era America (a pretty dark time), Superman was a beacon of light and the positive. There really isn't anything in MAN OF STEEL that qualifies as outright humor until one of the very last scenes in a 2 1/2 hour film (involving a female soldier). I'm not saying you had to make it a campfest, but, a little humor wouldn't ruin it, either. And, moviegoers are so inured to ultra-violence that it isn't until afterwards that they even notice that despite the efforts of Superman, they just witnessed mass killings on a global scale - that's if many notice at all. SUPERMAN RETURNS made the mistake of relying too much on John Williams soaring original score, but, Hans Zimmer's very Dark Knight-like score was just deadening (and I'm a fan of his work). I came out of the Donner and Lester (and to a lesser extent, Bryan Singer's) SUPERMAN films feeling exhilarated, MAN OF STEEL just left me exhausted.
In the end, it's not a bad film by any means. And, it serves as a better reboot source than RETURNS, but, there is a lot of work to be done to convince that this is the correct approach.
I can buy that an alien comes to earth and leap tall buildings in a single bound. That said aliens could send ships to terraform a planet. But, it was pretty hard to swallow that a dead parent (Jor-El) could not only send messages to the future, but, INTERRACT with them? No! Not buying that.
More importantly, by skipping the "Adult Clark Kent" part of his life by and large, it becomes difficult to see why Superman would be so beholden to earth and its citizens. Sure - WE know why because we're aware of 75 years of comics, TV shows and movies - but, why is this Superman? He's depicted as a conflicted, if not downright, depressed, young man alienated from everybody but his parents (and, one of those is long dead). When members of his own planet arrive, wouldn't he at least listen to Zod's ideas of saving his own species? Again, WE know why, but this movie gives us no substantive reason to believe that Superman wouldn't at least hesitate for a moment.
And, ENOUGH with the Jesus parallels! SUPERMAN RETURNS was full of them, as well. Yes, it has always been there in Superman ethos, but, it was always just in the background, not beaten over the viewer's head.
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