I’ve heard a lot of differing opinions on the new Superman movie Man of Steel and wanted to share my thoughts on the movie with you. This post will be full of spoilers and if you’ve not seen it yet don’t bitch to me about things you didn’t know…

OK?

OK? OK?

Really now, I’m about to talk about the movie…. so this is your last chance!

Here I go…. this time I mean it….

 

Man of Steel – a review by Jamez

First off, I loved Krypton and everything about it. I found it visually pleasing and loved Russell Crowe as Jor-El and not just because he’s so fucking sexy and that accent makes my knees wobble… he just played the part well and I liked it. We were introduced to the villain really quickly which pleased me. I loved the technology on Krypton, the robots were great.

On Earth we jumped forward and backward in time with Clark and I didn’t mind that at all, I heard some people complain that it was confusing – which baffles me, here he’s young, here he’s old… how hard can this be? I found Clark’s struggles with having his powers growing up to be a great part of the story and how he came to deal with those powers over time was easily explained but I didn’t put certain things together until later.

It was nice to see the parts of Clark that were very human – anger, sadness, confusion, compassion for others form into what is going to make him a great hero one day. Those things are in all of us, even Superman, and sometimes can be a struggle to get through. Pa Kent (Kevin Costner) and Ma Kent (Diane Lane) were cast well – I disagreed with Pa Kent’s decision in the end and not sure that was to character, for me Pa always loved Martha and Clark so much I can’t see him just letting go like that.

I liked how he found the Kryptonian ship in Canada but it puzzled me how he found it there… I know we heard the one story on the radio or TV but he seemed to be heading that way all along. We also were introduced to Lois (Amy Adams) up there as well as Emil Hamilton (Richard Schiff)… I’m not sold on Amy Adams as Lois, but honestly it didn’t really matter to me who it was, that part was minimal in my eyes.

I saw absolutely no need for the Daily Planet sub story, I love Laurence Fishburn, but didn’t feel he added to the story as Perry White.

The things I’ve heard most talked about negatively in the movie were the killing of Zod and the long fight scene.

First, Zod. I had avoided any reviews or spoilers as best I could so I didn’t know this was going to happen. A friend points out that a more experienced Superman would have found a different way to stop Zod and that seems pretty logical to me. When it happened I was really stunned for a moment – Superman doesn’t kill is a mantra that runs through my head when I read Superman stories in comics or see him in the cartoons. But I recall he once did kill, I can’t recall the story very well but I know it bothered him immensely and he took steps to recover from that – what I felt the movie didn’t do well was show the repercussions of taking a life and the toll it can take on someone who has a soul, a heart if you will, as big as Superman. It felt like Zod was dead, Supes screamed and then boom he was making snarky remarks to the military guy. Maybe I’ll see the fall out in the sequel, which would make me pretty happy.

Secondly, the big bad fight at the end. So much destruction, is what I heard, was it really necessary? I don’t know. For me it was appropriate – you have a group of aliens hell bent on terraforming the planet and killing all of us who will stop at nothing to do so. There machines were doing a fairly great job of that on there own. I NEEDED a Superman movie where he actually punched things – I needed the fight to be fast and furious with destruction. Again, a more experienced Superman would have taken the fight out of the city, but he had just put on the cape and boots. I don’t know how long this fight scene was but I don’t really think it was much different than the Avengers end fight scene which had just as much destruction and aliens causing chaos. What I did like about the fight was showing how much destruction had been caused – it’s so easy to read these fights in the comics or see them on the cartoons and see just a superhero being thrown through a wall with no one getting hurt and the building always left standing that realism was good for my experience.

I saw it twice in a two day span – the first time was in 3D which I found to be a waste of money – not enough was done for it to be so. The second time in 2D was just as good.

In my opinion, this is the best Superman movie to date (I don’t say “of all time” because time isn’t over yet). I’m a fan of the Christopher Reeves movies, I loved them back in the day. I think Superman Returns was a nostalgic movie more about an actor that looked like Christopher Reeves than a Superman movie, and that’s sad, there were parts of it that I liked and parts that I didn’t. This movie the parts that I didn’t like were minimal and nit picky… one of the last scenes ins a flash back to young clark on the farm outside of Smallville wearing a cape and acting like Superman… which really couldn’t have happened and bugged me, but I can look past that and see this movie for what it was – the Superman movie i’d been waiting for.