A couple of things you should know right off the bat.
1- I am not a film critic, I suggest you go to the movies and make up your own mind.
2- There will be light spoilers in this review, but nothing major.
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Imagine if you threw Batman Begins, Transformers and the 1st Spider-Man movie into a pot and cooked it up like gumbo. When you took your first taste, you would get a Man of Steel movie.
That is a good and bad thing.
Let’s start with the good. In 2013, people want some realism, even with their Superhero movies. Man of Steel does a good job of that. They portray Clark in a realistic way as a child, teenager and young adult. A lot of people see Clark as dorky and awkward, but if you really think about it, it must have been tough as a kid having these tremendous powers, not knowing how to control them and trying to keep them a secret.
That was a strong part of the movie, Clark not necessarily being awkward, but gifted so to speak and realizing there are consequences with that gift (you will understand more when you see the movie). Kevin Costner was excellent as Johnathan Kent, I would say his role resonated more with me than anyone else in the film.
The other part I think they nailed was Superman powers. In past movies, Superman sort of cruised when flying, there is none of that in the Man of Steel, everything is EXPLOSIVE movement. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with, similar to the fight scenes in Transformers. There are a lot things going on very quickly, but I found it rather realistic on how an alien with infinite power would move around.
Which leads us to the bad things.
While they did a great job flushing out Clark’s backstory on Earth, the Kryptonian part never really connected with me. It seemed rushed and to be honest the last half of the film overall seemed rushed to set up two huge fight scenes.
How Clark becomes Superman, The Lois and Clark angle, General Zod’s plan, the Daily Planet and pretty much everything in the last half of film just seemed thrown together. I did like the General Zod character overall.
One part made absolutely no sense at all and I am warning you this is a small spoiler. Clark before he becomes Superman saves Lois’ life and disappears. It takes Lois all of two weeks to find all of Clark’s family and friends and ID him as the alien who saved her.
But the Government, FBI, DEA, CIA, Military branches and etc can’t seem to figure it out who Superman is, even though Lois is calling him Clark throughout the entire movie, Clark himself tells the government he lived in Kansas and Zod attacks the Kent Farm.
Details like this are supposed to be overlooked because of the final dramatic fight scene. If you are into action, you will love it, but don’t blink, it is happening so fast, you will probably miss half of what is going on.
Superman just doesn’t have the same personality as a Batman, Spider-Man or Iron Man, but they did the best job they could trying to make you care about him.
If they would have focused on that throughout the film instead of abandoning it half way through, I think it might have been a classic instead of a disjointed piece of film making.
Let’s call it the Dwight Howard of Superhero movies, it was good, but should have been a lot better.