I’m going to spare everybody any obvious Superman references in my opening. No ‘it’s a bird…it’s a plane’ stuff. Nothing about Kryptonite or telling you to ‘look, up in the sky’. This isn’t a time for geeky references. This is a time to hang my head in disappointment that Man of Steel was not the movie I hoped it would be. I had such high expectations for this film, almost all of which were supported and lovingly caressed by a series of awesome trailers. And I’m a huge fan of director Zack Snyder’s previous films. I thought Man of Steel was going to be great. Instead, it’s a mess, from beginning to end.

Your enjoyment of Man of Steel will rest almost entirely, I think, on your tolerance for excessive CGI and fake explosions. Personally, those sorts of movies mean nothing to me anymore. Never once during Man of Steel was my pulse racing, and even Superman Returns managed that much.

Movie Rating: 2.5/5 – Pretty Bad

The worst thing about Man of Steel is the pacing. The film is in love with snap cuts that have no transitional elements whatsoever. One minute Superman is having an important conversation with Lois Lane and some military generals, the next he and Lois are suddenly standing in a desert just staring at one another. Man of Steel never takes any time to cherish a moment or a scene, even when it’s called for. First and foremost, this a Superman movie, but Snyder also tries to make it a movie about first contact with aliens, and that’s fine. It’s a perfectly reasonable plot to give a Superman movie. But the films never fully connects with that theme. You can feel the movie trying to grasp the concept, even flirting with it, but before anything meaningful can happen, it’s straight on to the next CGI explosion or spaceship.

The only thing Man of Steel really has going for it is the acting, which is generally well done all around. Henry Cavill is a generally OK Superman, at least when he’s called upon to act. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are great as Pa and Ma Kent, though Russell Crowe is pretty much just playing Russell Crowe when it comes to Jor-El, Superman’s alien dad. I think after Les Miserables, I’m only ever going to just see Russell Crowe on screen from now on. I can’t imagine him ever inhabiting a character again. And Crowe shows up far too often in this film.

The standouts of the film are Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Michael Shannon as General Zod, the villain. Adam’s Lois is far more than any sort of damsel in distress, though it’s shocking how much leeway the U.S. Military is willing to give a lowly newspaper reporter. And Shannon is just really villainous, though the attempts to make him more than just an evil, snarling bad guy don’t really work. But that’s fine. He’s good as an evil, snarling bad guy.

Join me after the jump for my full review. There will be some SPOILERS, but probably not many.

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