Incredibly problematic if you've got a brain, but enjoyable enough as a popcorn-flick

Rating: 5/10 (17 April 2015)

Man of Steel is intrusive, disrespectful, flawed, melodramatic, loud, needlessly destructive, poorly choreographed, awkward, inadequately paced and really kind of empty.
It's also the best live action Superman entry ever released.
Snyder, Goyer and Nolan got together and they completely overhauled the whole thing. Though they have intermittent moments of faith to the source material (comics) it is clear they wanted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the original series (Superman I,II, III, IV: The Quest for Peace, Returns and Supergirl).
Gone are the crystals of yore, replaced with what doesn't look that unlike graphite. A change that initially aggravated me, but began to grow on me very damn quickly, especially after I saw just how encompassing they were with the technology (see the Moon Nazi meets Space Jockey gasmask above for reference).
Michael Shannon (Bug) is a great General Zod, and though his voice lacks the commanding presence of Terrence Stamp from the original, his character is written much better, and so Shannon is able to take the role to a far superior place than Richard Donner ever did.
When all is said and done, Man of Steel was well worth whatever hurdles had to be crossed to make it. It succeeds as a piece of entertainment, and sets up a pretty great mythos to ground the future in. Probably not for a Justice League film (an idea which has never enthused me) but most certainly for a second Superman film (which I actually rather look forward to).
I did, however, have a multitude of issues, not least being "Why the Hell does Superman mystically find a suit with his house-sigil on an unrelated space ship? More importantly, why is his the only one that has colour?". The most of which however, was the needless destruction. Violence doesn't phase me in the least, but I like to see it done right.
Single punches sending your enemy flying through a couple dozen skyscrapers for 25 minutes straight is not "done right". Especially not when these fights are performed almost entirely with very poor CG. It's like they haven't progressed in technology from Blade II (despite it being released over a decade ago). I know I've said it a million times before, but I obviously need to keep saying it: |||THERE IS STILL A PLACE FOR PRACTICAL EFFECTS IN CINEMA|||
-Gimly