{"id":2051,"date":"2015-12-02T16:05:49","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2015-12-02T16:05:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:05:49","slug":"man-of-steel-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/2015\/12\/man-of-steel-review\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Man of Steel’ Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With the next and second installment of the new DC Cinematic Universe coming soon in ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’, I figured I should go back and do a review for the first installment ‘Man of Steel’.\u00a0 Although this first blockbuster entry into the upcoming DC Cinematic Universe was stuffed with explosive special effects and a very intense plot and origin to Superman, pretty much everything else was lackluster.\u00a0 The actors cast in their respective roles were all very good, but the drama was a little over-done, even for a comic book adaption film, and the ending ruined the entire movie, being too radical, and at the expense of the titular character as well.\u00a0 Plain and simple, director Zach Snyder is good at making explosive superhero blockbusters, but his skills don’t extend far beyond the action sequences, utterly failing in portraying correctly Superman’s origin and persona, for instance.\u00a0 While ‘Man of Steel’ was appealing to the eyes and was a good action, superhero blockbuster, the movie decimated the character and persona of Superman, despite Henry Cavil’s commendable portrayal.<\/p>\n

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What I Didn’t Like About ‘Man of Steel’:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Too Many Flashbacks<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Having flashbacks in a film is okay, as long as there aren’t too many and they are done right.\u00a0 ‘Man of Steel’ seems to miss this concept completely.\u00a0 They have completely way too many flashbacks, about four or five, explaining Superman’s origin over the course of the first half of the movie through several flashbacks.\u00a0 Not only were there too many, but they got confusing.\u00a0 A scene would switch to a flashback without any notice, or really any reason, and at least two were done in such a way that you weren’t sure if the scene was a flashback or happening in present day and what exactly was going on.\u00a0 Honestly, the filmmakers could have avoided this if they just told Superman’s origin all at once and in chronological order of Superman’s life, and avoided confusion among viewers and unnecessary and sudden breaks in the story.\u00a0 It would have made the story-telling of Superman’s origin less confusing, along with the first half of the movie, and made it less abrupt.\u00a0 To say it simply, Zach Snyder needs a lesson in how to and when to use flashbacks.<\/p>\n

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Too Much Wasted Time In The Beginning<\/strong><\/p>\n

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‘Man of Steel’ was excessively and unnecessarily long.\u00a0 For a 2 hours and 23 minutes runtime for a movie that is an action, superhero, sci-fi film, the first 1 hour and 30 minutes, roughly, are filled with no action or explosions except during the opening scene.\u00a0 The first 90 minutes just shows a choppy, drawn-out telling of Superman’s origin story (with many flashbacks of course), deals with developing Superman’s personality and moral compass, and takes an awfully long time to set up the plot.\u00a0 I mean I know this movie is the building block for a whole DC Cinematic Universe but come on still a ridiculously long beginning to a film.\u00a0 ‘Iron Man’ didn’t take this long to get going!\u00a0 By doing this, ‘Man of Steel’ saved all the action for the final 45 minutes of the movie.\u00a0 By taking such a long time to get interesting, ‘Man of Steel’ made Superman’s origin story less memorable and made the movie itself seem really, really long.<\/p>\n

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A Way Too Quick Finale<\/strong><\/p>\n

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After a long, drawn-out beginning, the movie ended with a bang, literally, but ended way too quickly.\u00a0 The two ending fight scenes, with Superman Vs. Zod and Faora in Smallville, and Superman Vs. Zod once more in the final battle in Metropolis, the Battle of Metropolis, were short of mind-blowing.\u00a0 From the whole invasion by the Kryptonians to these two awesome fight scenes, the finale was fast-paced, explosive, and action-packed but could have been even better if it was handled more properly by being longer.\u00a0 It would have been more fitting for Zach Snyder and Co. to make the finale longer than the o-so boring beginning.\u00a0 Instead, the whole finale felt rushed because of the time crunch, resulting in the part where Superman and the military stop the alien invasion getting only a few measly minutes of screentime which in short made it seem like a joke.\u00a0 And the fight between Zod and Superman was the coolest action sequence I’ve ever seen, thanks to the overload of special effects, and could have been longer and even more sophisticated (instead of Zod and Superman just repeatedly punching each other through buildings [yawn]).\u00a0 In short, the finale for ‘Man of Steel’ was exciting but could have been handled better if it hadn’t been so rushed.<\/p>\n

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A Departure From The Comics<\/strong><\/p>\n

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All other complaints aside, the worst part of ‘Man of Steel’ was how it completely derived from the source material and just disregarded Superman’s persona from the comics.\u00a0 The movie’s climax and his fight with Zod makes it seem like he had little to no care for the safety of innocents or amount of destruction he caused.\u00a0 He practically obliterated the entire town of Smallville during his battle there and even more disturbing is the Battle of Metropolis.\u00a0 During his epic fight with Zod, a large portion of Metropolis was destroyed and easily hundreds of thousands of people were killed and Superman made no attempt to bring Zod away from the heavily populated city.\u00a0 This is not the Superman everyone knows and loves that, sure, is powerful, but is the living persona of good, who would take a beating in the name of even saving just one life.\u00a0 Instead, Superman in ‘Man of Steel’ looked like a DC version of the Hulk, who couldn’t care two cents about how many people were killed as a result of a fight.\u00a0 I’ve heard the new DC Cinematic Universe is trying to be dark, but if being dark causes a big conflict with a character’s persona or source material, than it shouldn’t be done.<\/p>\n

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What I Did Like About ‘Man of Steel’:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Henry Cavill As Superman <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Henry Cavill is practically the twin brother to the Clark Kent of the comic books.\u00a0 I know Superman’s personality and persona was destroyed in ‘Man of Steel’, something ‘Batman V Superman’ will be hard-pressed to fix, but Henry Cavill fits the looks aspect of the role superbly.\u00a0 He certainly has the right voice for it, as well as the perfect geeky look of Clark Kent when he dons glasses.\u00a0 In short he is definitely the best possible pick for Superman.\u00a0 The supporting cast is superb is well.\u00a0 Kevin Costner is a very good, down-to-earth Pa Kent and Russell Crowe is the ultimate, believable Jor-El.\u00a0 Amy Adams is also a perfect pick for Lois Lane (minus the red hair) with the right looks for the job and does a good portrayal of Lois’s story-crazy personality.\u00a0 While some negatives can be found with the movie, none can be found with the cast for ‘Man of Steel’.<\/p>\n

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General Zod And The Other Villains<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Michael Shannon was the perfect General Zod.\u00a0 He was intelligent, every bit menacing, and portrayed Zod perfectly as his twisted, evil self.\u00a0 Shannon was also perfect for the role as far as appearance goes but how his character feel menacing just like in the comics helped him to really bring the character to life.\u00a0 His devoted second-in-command, Faora, was also a very good villain.\u00a0 Sure, she was incredibly annoying, and right down nasty, but she portrayed well by Antje Traue and certainly a good henchman style villain.\u00a0 General Zod and Faora no doubt served as good villains and were definitely portrayed better than in Superman II.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Opening Krypton Scene<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Clearly the best and most exciting scene of the movie was the one that took place on krypton, the opening scene.\u00a0 This scene showed Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Superman’s father, fighting Zod who is trying to take over the dying planet, and trying to save Kal-El, and thereby keeping the Kyrptonian race alive.\u00a0 This scene was a jazzed-up, flashy and explosive re-telling of Superman’s origin and actually how it really happened in most tellings.\u00a0 The scene was really enjoyable, getting to see Superman’s parents, and Krypton and even a fight scene on that planet.\u00a0 In addition the special effects in this scene were mind-blowing.\u00a0 While as a whole the beginning of ‘Man of Steel’ was boring and slow, the opening scene certainly does not fit into that category.<\/p>\n

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The Action Scenes And Special Effects<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The last thing I liked about this movie is the fight scenes and special effects, as I have mentioned throughout this post.\u00a0 The action scenes were very cool since you had three scenes with Superman fighting either Zod or Faora, and when you have an extremely powerful super villain and even more powerful superhero duking it out, the supped up fight that usually ensues is pretty cool to watch, especially since such usually result in lots if destruction and explosions which movie-goers love to see.\u00a0 The special effects though were the icing on the cake.\u00a0 I’ve never seen such incredible special effects or a movie that seemed so real from a CGI standpoint.\u00a0 All the characters were truly brought to life and superman in flight never seemed so amazing.<\/p>\n

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Casually looking at ‘Man of Steel’, it is a good movie.\u00a0 There were several well-known and talented actors and all were excellent in their roles.\u00a0 The fight scenes, special effects and plot were all really cool.\u00a0 But looking at it critically or as a comic fan or even noting the fact that it is a franchise starter, you have to say it was good at best.\u00a0 From a slow start and a painstakingly boring and long backstory for the titular character, to a complete abandonment of Superman’s persona, personality and story, ‘Man of Steel’ will remain a controversial movie among fans, but is clear as day a poor franchise starter.<\/p>\n

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  With the next and second installment of the new DC Cinematic Universe coming soon in ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’, I figured I should go back and do a review for the first installment ‘Man of Steel’.\u00a0 Although this first blockbuster entry into the upcoming DC Cinematic Universe was stuffed with explosive special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,103,144],"tags":[69,168,213,197,280,207,47,194,196,195,114,281,282,285,286,284,204,279,111,218,160,97,205,283,198],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-entertainment","category-movie-review","tag-69","tag-168","tag-amy-adams","tag-batman","tag-batman-v-superman","tag-clark-kent","tag-comics-2","tag-dc","tag-dc-cinematic-universe","tag-dccu","tag-entertainment-2","tag-general-zod","tag-henry-cavil","tag-jor-el","tag-kal-el","tag-kevin-costner","tag-lois-lane","tag-man-of-steel","tag-marvel","tag-marvel-cinematic-universe","tag-mcu","tag-movies","tag-perry-white","tag-russel-crowe","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions\/2138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabafamily.net\/joshua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}