Hated it. Donner's vision was so much better....

Rating: 2/10 (16 June 2013)

I truly hated this film. In fact I consider this the worst Michael Bay-esque film that wasn't directed by Michael Bay.
KRYPTON. We begin as with Donner's film on Krypton which is on the brink of destruction because the Kryptonians are harvesting the core for power resources but are apparently too advanced to realise this is a stupid thing to do. We hear throughout the film that they settled all over the galaxy but for some reason can't survive without Krypton so also the settlers all died after Krypton is gone. Fair enough.
I hated the depiction of Krypton. The flying dragon reminded me of Avatar and this unnecessary rip off really sucked I thought. We even got a little dinosaur esque creature thrown in there at some point. This reminded me of the unnecessary Special Edition dinosaurs in the Star Wars trilogy we got. Everything seemed so over the top, space ships everywhere, yet no one survives and the planet explodes with of course Kal-El sent off safely to planet Earth to become Superman.
Lara is quite forgettable in the film and I think they really missed a trick here. Perhaps the mother figure could have played a bigger part in the film as she was totally not used in the Donner versions. But no. Hollywood has not really advanced that much it seems and we stick with 2-D female characters mostly again.
Russel Crowe is OK as Jor-El but doesn't seem to have much chemistry with his wife.
General Zod gets banished to the Phantom Zone (or is it a Black Hole?) but this is done in a large space ship. Yeah space ships. There are tons of alien space ships in this film. Am I watching Superman or Independence Day or Avatar?
The whole depiction of Krypton I thought was disappointing and I longed back to Donner's vision; dignified, no physical fighting, an advanced race who seemed relatively clever but not as stupid as in Snyder's film.
BECOMING SUPERMAN. So we get a bit of back ground story here. We see some gritty stuff about Clark Kent working on a fishing boat. In fact all the grit / real footage was pretty much in the trailer. I thought we would get far more realism as with The Dark Knight trilogy. So where is young Clark I thought? Oh flashbacks. Yeah and plenty of them. They just appear out of nowhere and mess a bit with the pacing I think. So fair enough young Clark saved some kids on a bus, was bullied but couldn't use his powers and saw his dad die in a Twister. So that stuff isn't that bad really. However was it necessary to tell this tale in flashbacks? I think a more interesting movie would have been the simple linear approach as in the original Superman.
Cavill was fine as Superman. The cast really wasn't too bad actually.
FINDING OUT WHO HE IS. This was weird. No ice palace but an old Kryptonian space ship (yes another) that had crash landed on earth (one of the settlers) 18.000 years ago. Some strange computer that attacks Clark and Lois who already meet. Clark Kent isn't Clark journalist Kent with glasses until the very end of the film for some reason - so there is ZERO attempt at disguise here. In addition the world doesn't really get to know who Superman is. There is no "is it a bird, is it a plane" moment whatsoever. Everyone just goes along with everything beng destroyed. I don't quite understand that this was deemed as acceptable in the screenplay.
APPEARANCE OF ZOD AND THE Roller-coaster RIDE. Zod appears out of nowhere after looking for ages to find Kal-El and some thingy he has which allows Krypton to rise again. He dares Superman to hand himself over to Zod with his "thingy" and in return Zod won't attack earth (which he does anyway so he can terraform Earth into Krypton). As soon as Superman hands himself in this film hits a downwards hill on a roller coaster which does not stop for a second. NO breather, nothing. 1 1/2 hrs of constant CGI mayhem, destruction, "action" and violence.
So that's Superman in 2013. No heart, no funny moments and pretty much no humanity. Metropolis is completely flattened and I lost count of how many skyscrapers were destroyed. But somehow Clark Kent (terrible disguise and Lois Lane knows who he is?) has a job at the completely rebuilt Daily Planet in the last minute of the film and someone has tickets for the game. So all is good in the end.
This Hollywood destruction approach in movies is boring I think and there is nothing here that interests me very much. Perhaps 10 minutes of background story of young clark was quite watchable but in reality Donner has done all of this stuff better anyway. What was the point in remaking this film? Money I guess. There certainly wasn't really a story to tell here I think.
I passionately hate this film. Loved The Dark Knight trilogy and that felt very engaging, not much CGI and what was used just blurred into the film better but Man of Steel is a digital animated turkey which I hope doesn't spawn any sequels. Preferred Singer's Superman Returns as well. Waited years for this film and wanted to walk out of the cinema. Can't quite understand why so many here like it but maybe I'm just getting old. You can't entertain me with 2 1/2 hours of CGI I'm afraid, no matter how well it's done.
2/10