Very Mixed Feelings, But Overall a Good Watch

Rating: 6/10 (24 June 2013)

Man of Steel is a very uneven film, but succeeds immensely as good summer entertainment. My general sense is that Zack Snyder bit off more than he can chew, and while his strengths shine through in the in some places, his weaknesses shine brighter in the writing, pacing and tone of the rest of the film. Still, there is plenty to recommend here, because although the film falls short of its own ambitions, they were so high to begin with that even a mild failure is still pretty good.
While the film is clearly very well made in a technical sense, it falls very short of the mark artistically. This normally wouldn't be a problem in a summer superhero movie except for the fact that Man of Steel takes itself very, very seriously as a piece of motion picture art. The focus here is on Clark's emergence as the Man of Steel; the main dramatic force is his discovery and acceptance of his powers and role in the universe. I thought that for the most part this main arc of the narrative was well executed, at least for the first two acts of the film. Again, what sabotages the artistry is really everything else. The script is really pretty bad, and contains some of the worst dialogue imaginable ("We had a child. A boy child."). Michael Shannon is not a good fit for General Zod, thanks to his whiny, over the top dialogue - in fact, he took me out of the movie with his performance, not reaching anything close to dramatic resonance until nearly his final moments.
Superman movies have always had a heavy dose of Christ allegory and imagery, but this time it's laid on so thick you almost expect an usher to come into the theater with a collection plate halfway through the film. Picture this: a 33 year old man, of "miraculous" birth, with a celestial father who sent him here to save mankind, armed with a message of hope and love for all, and facing off against his father's (God's) former ally who would now rather rule in hell (Earth) than serve in Heaven (Zod as the literary Satan). The movie doesn't let up with this allegory for one second. This sort of heavy-handed presentation of these themes is lazy and undermines the film's artistic ambitions. It's almost like they are literally reading the Bible on screen. If you saw someone do that in real life you wouldn't think of them as an artist, would you? The biggest problem with the movie is that it doesn't know when to quit. The action is, as I said before, pretty well staged, but it just goes on. And on. And on. And on. By the final act I was really just not into it anymore. Superman's final battle with Zod reminded me of Neo's battle with Agent Smith at the end of Matrix Revolutions, and not in a good way. Because Superman is apparently completely invincible to all harm (making him the most boring superhero), and so are Zod and his crew, their fights just go on indefinitely, racking up a civilian body count in the thousands, until the writers include some contrivance to end the fight and move the plot along. A big example is that, throughout the movie, Zod's crew has to wear breather masks so as to not be hamstrung by Earth's atmosphere. They fight for tens and tens of minutes on screen, getting repeatedly punched, shot and rocketed in the face, and their masks don't break... until the script says it's time to move on and they just randomly start to malfunction, causing them to retreat to their ship. The way that the action is integrated into the plot is not exactly top notch.
Especially in the final act, the film enters a whole new level of computer effects overload, partially a sign of Snyder's direction and partially a side effect of the bloated action scenes. The worst example is when, in a climactic scene, Superman needs to fly at and somehow disable a giant terraforming machine. As soon as he approaches, the machine produces a bunch of tentacle-like claws made up of morphing ball bearings that extend to thrash at him in the air (by the way - what an illogical and convoluted defense system!), clouding the screen with animation and completely obscuring the action. When this is happening, for a long time I might add, it's almost impossible to tell what's going on or what Superman's plan for taking this thing out is. The scene went on way too long and served only to showcase the effects, which are not even that impressive in this scene. Parallel to this, Metropolis is being completely destroyed in a cavalcade of building collapses, fighting, and general mayhem. In this scene alone, hundreds of thousands of people must have been killed, which is ironic considering that Superman purports to be fighting on behalf of humanity but causes (and is seemingly indifferent to) untold amounts of human suffering. It just doesn't fit with the character, and it's disappointing when this sort of wholesale destruction occurs and is never mentioned again (In fairness, Star Trek Into Darkness did this too). The final act of this movie left me completely exhausted.
However, despite my complaints, I still liked the movie overall. I thought Henry Cavill was great as Clark Kent, and the supporting cast all did a fine job. Again, Michael Shannon wasn't the best pick for this role but that's not to say that he did a bad job. However, the basic pieces of the movie worked for me, and I really did enjoy myself while watching it. It wasn't a game changing comic book movie in the same way that the Dark Knight was (Christopher Nolan's involvement suggests that that was what they were going for), but it was fun all the same.