Now the last time that I saw a Superman film was back in 2006 when we all had to endure ‘Superman Returns’ which was only redeemed by Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther. Apart from that it was a complete dogs dinner. Some have said it was more due to the writing than anything else and whilst there might some truth to it the fact remains that it was a bit of a let down. I’ve never been as big a fan of Superman as other maybe for no particular reason but I was quite excited about this one because it was been produced by Christopher Nolan who was behind the Batman films and that is one of things that is clear in the movie.
The casting was one of the things that made this movie so good. Henry Cavill isn’t a name that I was that aware of and I think it was a better bit of casting than Brandon Roth was. I thought he was a more believeable Clark Kent and what I liked about this version of Kent was that how he seemed to be lost and not in a normal job and yet by the end of it he was a reporter at the Daily Planet. Another bit of good casting is that of Amy Adams who played Lois Lane. I thought that a problem from ‘Superman Returns’ is that Kate Bosworth was terrible and just seemed like a whiny reporter and I could believe that she was a journalist, now with Amy Adams I found that she was a really good Lois Lane and whilst there were a few iffy moments I looked over it.
Russell Crowe was very good and I was glad when he kept popping up every so often because he was very good as Jor-El. I’ve thought that when Russell Crowe was good he was Maximus and when he was bad he was very bad. Thankully he wasn’t quite as good as he was in Gladiator but he was very close to being that good. Michael Shannon is an intense yet very good actor. I’m fan of his based purely on his involvement in Boardwalk Empire and as General Zod he continued to impress. I thought that the goatie was a bit of a mistake but apart from that I thought that General Zod was an effective baddie.
It’s clear that this is the first in a reboot because this film does what Batman Begins does and that is the set up the backstory. There was a lot of Krypton in the early stages of the story and I liked how it good it looked because it seemed to give Superman something to miss. The story sees General Zod trying to terror-form Earth into the new Krypton and if I am honest then I cant say that I think it’s a bad plan. Ok humanity would be wiped out by Michael Shannon’s Zod basically scares you into wanting to help them.
The first half is the Christopher Nolan part because its all about set up and trying to create the background to Zod, Jor-El and Superman and then the second half is Zack Snyder because there is a lot of smashing into buildings and being a blockbuster and to be honest they blended in well and I never really noticed a shift in tone and thought that it all worked. As this film is part of the Justice League movie we get the Lexcorp logo on the truck and apparently the Bruce Wayne logo on the satalite (which I didn’t see). Like the Avengers movie it seems like there are links to this Justice League movie but it doesn’t strangle the film and its only noticeable if you were really looking for it.
I enjoyed Man of Steel far more than I thought I would. I thought that like the Batman films it was a nice mixture of realism and geeky comic books. When we get Man of Steel 2 I hope that it continues in the same vain because if it does then this will be another Batman franchise for Warner Bros and that can only be a good thing for Superman fans. The biggest compliment I can pay to this film is that for a non-Superman fan, I enjoyed being in the company of Superman and long may it continue.
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