This could have been a good movie...

Rating: 4/10 (20 June 2013)

...because the beginning of the story is well told, the sci-fi aesthetics is beautifully designed and quite artistic (mind you, clearly inspired by Giger's "Alien" design and Prometheus, but it doesn't present as just stealing) - and there is a lot of stunning CGI and breathtaking action. And I mean *really* a lot. That's the problem. This movie is a good hour too long, and most of this "obesity" consists of overwhelmingly violent, super-human fights, overwhelming demolition of spacecrafts, cyborgs, buildings, airplanes and mountains (!) and overwhelming speed-of-light super-chases. Everything constantly, notoriously accompanied by overwhelming, devastating explosions and with a headache- inducing thunder that completely drowns most of Zimmer's otherwise brilliant score. (Or maybe not. Because probably, underway, he must have realized where the movie was going and just copy-and-repeat-pasted the war-drum/synth-bass track to fill out the last half of the film.)
Costner/Kent do a decent job portraying Kal-El's earthly stepparents, but these sequences of the film are just a bit too sentimental for my taste. There would have been plenty of room for exploring some deeper (albeit hypothetical, but potentially interesting) psychological aspects of "being an alien on earth".
It's all really sad, because I think it could have been a 7-8 movie if some good editors got their hands on it and used the scissors-delete tool generously. Still, I'd say the movie is well worth seeing for sci-fi enthusiasts (like me). But if I'm going to watch it a second time, I'll make sure I have my remote with its FWD button within easy reach!