Stain-full Steel

Rating: 3/10 (7 June 2019)

The most recent Superman reboot until the next one comes along, as it surely will, especially now that Henry Cavill has quit the title part. I'm old enough to remember the Christopher Reeve portrayal of old Supes and it was far more entertaining than this. Yet again, the viewer has to sit through another destruction of Krypton prologue with a big name actor in the part of Poppa Jor-El, who with his wife Lara send their newly born boy Kal-El to Earth where our yellow sun will give him "super" powers, also another big-name couple playing Ma and Pa Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) during young Clark's boyhood, before the meat of the story appears, or rather reappears in the form of General Zod, a fellow Kryptonian exiled to the Phantom Zone for an attempted coup and murder of Jor-El. However the problem of pitting two super-humans against one other as the film's finale does make for a really boring match-off as they knock each other into the middle of next week, destroying buildings and cars by the score before an admittedly surprise code-breaking conclusion came literally as the end.
The whole "with great power comes great responsibility" schtick was really done to death as we're asked to believe that our hero would just let old Pa Kent sacrifice himself for the sake of keeping Clark's identity secret, as if life preservation wasn't our hero's chief modus operandi, at least the way I read the original comics.
The SFX were just CGI overkill, not helped by Hans Zimmer's ear-bashing soundtrack. For me Cavill gave me nothing new in the titular role, despite his Mr Universe physique, likewise Amy Adams as a decidedly unsexy Lois Lane and Laurence Fishbourne in his P.C. turn as Perry White. Michael Shannon merely blustered as Zod, although I did think that Russell Crowe passably represented Jor-El although how he ended up getting more screen time after his demise really stretched artistic licence.
With no Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang or Lex Luther either, it did seem as if characterisation lost out out in favour of the old crash-bang-wallop of interminable fight sequences, indeed you knew you were in trouble early on the moment peace-loving scientist Jor-El makes like a ninja when he encounters Zod early on in the movie. There was zero humour either, no real pacing and very little engagement in the story-telling.
Listen I know that a lot of success in comic and film adaptations in recent years has come from re-imagining the character's origin story but this one seemed boring and shed very little new light on old red and blue. By the finish, my eyes and ears were black and blue from the unwelcome sensory assault I encountered here.