I wish I had the ability to lower my expectations for the big comic book blockbusters. When I saw the low metascore and RT score for the movie I started to worry MoS was going to be crap but by the time I was in the cinema, expectation was sky high again.
So, where to start…
Henry Cavill IS superman. They got that right. I do think his acting could do with some work. Although he seemed to improve as the movie went on.
Fishburne as Perry White, Adams as Lois, Crowe as Jor-El all good performances. Actually, Russell Crowe was awesome. Not a fan of Shannon so didn’t care much for Zod. I did like Faora though.
Some of the dialogue was a tad corny at times but not necessarily ‘roll your eyes to the back of your head’ corny.
The scene on Krypton was brief but good and visually stunning, especially Zod being exiled to the Phantom Zone and Krypton exploding.
I guess I like that they didn’t spend too much time with Superman’s origin story since every man and his dog knows it already. Im not sure I like how it was edited though. It did feel a bit strange how he decided to actually become a superhero. There didn’t seem to be much motivation behind it.
Is it possible for a movie to have too much action? I think that might have been the case with this movie. Action wise, this film could easily have been mistaken for a Michael Bay one, with countless explosions and destruction of property. Superman versus the Kryptonians was pretty good but sometimes hard to make out (again Bay-formers like and actually Nolan’s batman-esque) but I’m glad Superman was finally fighting hand to hand with his enemies and not just catching people. Faora beating the shit out of puny humans was awesome.
The CGI was still a bit too cartoony at some points for my liking but if you compare the flying fight scenes to a similar movie, the Matrix Revolutions, they were miles better. The CGI for the spaceships and Kryptonian tech was well done though.
Oh, have to mention the heat vision which I thought looked fantastic.
I’m not sure if we have inferior 3D here in Jamaica but as with countless movies I’ve seen, the 3D was absolutely useless unless the aim of it was to give me a headache.
While it was great to see buildings get torn apart just from the collisions between Zod and Superman like a small atomic bomb was going off, the entire destruction of Metropolis was maybe a bit over the top. I’d like to know who’s gonna pay to rebuild the city. I guess that’s where Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor come in.
The Zod death scene I suppose was kinda unexpected since Superman doesn’t kill but it had to be done. My thought during that scene was more along the lines of ‘could that actually happen?’ As in, would Zod have been able to break Superman’s neck? I figure since Superman had been exposed to the yellow sun longer, he was more powerful than Zod.
Almost forgot the score. Hans Zimmer delivered again as I knew he would and I’ll be playing the score in my car just like I do the Dark Knight Rises one. Right now my favourite tracks are ‘flight’ http://m.soundcloud.com/zimmer-fans/hans-zimmer-flight-man-of-steel-ost, ‘arcade’ https://soundcloud.com/jokerarias/07-arcade-hans-zimmer-man-of and ‘an ideal of hope’ https://soundcloud.com/zimmer-fans/hans-zimmer-an-ideal-of-hope
Like most fans I suspect, I was hoping for a button scene with some link to batman or the justice league or even a future Superman enemy but its really not a big deal because I’m sure a sequel is on the way.
All in all, MoS was good but not great. I tend to over-analyse these kind of movies after the first viewing but once I’ve nitpicked and accepted all the flaws I enjoy them much more the second time.
I actually hated Batman Begins at first but now it’s one of my favourites.
So I’ll give MoS a 7/10 for now but my final judgment, like with most CBMs, will have to wait until I’ve watched it 17 more times on blu-ray.
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