Enjoyable, but could have been much more!

Rating: 5/10 (24 June 2013)

I was excited to see this movie - lately superhero movies have been great successes, with Avengers Assemble, The Dark Knight Rises, and Iron Man 3 all impressing me. The trailers for this film, too, did a great job of getting me excited for this film. It's unfortunate then that I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped.
I'll start with some of the biggest positives: Henry Cavill was possibly the ideal actor for superman, and he played the part well. Other lead roles were filled by great actors, and the visual effects were stunning! This is definitely worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.
OK so now for some negatives! I think that too much focus was put on the visual effects, and not enough on the way the film worked as a whole - by putting the effects at the centre of the film, I imagine a lot of people walked out of cinemas thinking "What a stunning film!", but it also means that the film only really worked on one level. I was hoping for at least a little sexual tension between Lois Lane and Clark Kent... it seemed as if a handshake would be more fitting for them than a kiss, and the relationship between the two of them seemed quite forced and abrupt. Also very noticeable for me was the lack of any humour which made the film a little too solemn. I wasn't expecting a comedy, but the film came across as taking itself very seriously, and could have done with at least a little light relief. My final issue with the film was that Superman wasn't the all shining hero that he is traditionally - the end of the film got quite dark, and superman engaged in a fight which would have killed many thousands of innocent civilians. Some might argue that this was beyond superman's control, however it was he himself who initially moved the fight away from his farm in the countryside in order to smash Zod through a city skyscraper. Surely this is hardly superman's M.O.? Additionally, having surely killed many civilians, I found it surprising to see him so affected by the death of just a few who were trapped and killed by Zod's laser vision.
Anyway, enough ranting! I won't say that it isn't an enjoyable film to watch, but it definitely could have been much more - all the parts were there, but they just didn't quite fit.