Man of Steel Crashes with Gravitas (or ironic lack of)!

Rating: 2/10 (15 June 2013)

Steel. Iron, Irony. Gravity. Four words to sum up this movie? Or more likely, to sum up what was lacking in this movie! Despite a brilliant start and much promise, in the end, this movie lacked the very qualities it ironically was aiming to propagate.
It lacked a steel in character and plot in terms of story arc trajectories, much like the ridiculous imagery in the film (tentacles notwithstanding). If that was forgivable because it was still a Superhero film, what truly was tragic here was the unfulfilled use of promising narrative arcs and then failing to appropriately dramatically realize them. There was a sense of poor pacing throughout, and even though the Krypton sequences at the start, were promising, this film crashed. And that's precisely what makes Man of Steel a film that goes from Superhero fantasy, to a filmmaking travesty. If it didn't have elements that could have been done so much better (because the casting for the film is superb) and considering it is Goyer and Nolan, you may not be this disappointed. The plot is basically the same origin story, but, here, there was an interesting angle with the introduction of concepts concerning themes of "genocide", "alienation", "race","ethics", and for the most part, especially in the first hour, these were well done. And that's what so sad about MOS- that the story almost falls apart the way phantom zone does. By attempting to lend realism to the film, the film ends up taking itself too seriously and looking, irony of reverse ironies, campy because it just is not plausible- to the plot lines, I mean. It fails to thread basic common sense elements together and descends into vengeance and gore for the sake of platforming cgi, rather than building upon the Father-Son story or "concept of Kal-el's belonging" and exploring the reasons he loved earth instead of a throwaway line about "growing up in Kansas".these arcs could all have built toward a greater crescendo and given the characters/cast plenty more room to act. In a weird way, it made the new Superman less cool by failing to explore the themes of loneliness and alienation having touched on it, and then suddenly pulling the piece in a less dramatic direction, and toward an action based one. I know fans hated critics' reviews and said it was time for a Superman "dark" or "badass" film, but here, it's just bad film-making and storytelling. The result is the film tries to be both an action Transformers style mass destruction film and also a soaring human (or alien) spirit piece with an emotional core, and really ends up doing neither.
Kevin Costner and Diane Lane break out some decent albeit clichéd emotional core scenes with good delivery, and it is only in these scenes that the great actor that is Cavill, really soars. When he's being Superman, he lacks a certain resonance with the rest of the way his character arc has gone, and it is still a decent performance considering he's dressed as a man in a tight bodysuit and a cape (in fact Cavill is probably the only reason this film will stretch out in the box office besides viral marketing, fan girls and WB hype before being found out in a decade for the travesty it is).
But even Cavill, for all the muscles he flexes and ships/rigs/planes/trains he saves, cannot save this film for crashing like steel. This is entirely down to Zack Snyder and the script by Goyer. They don't push nuance enough, considering the film had the potential to. Instead of exploring more of the ethical dilemma that a supreme powerful being might have to deal with in meting out righteous justice vis a vis the eradication of his own species, or dealing with issues to do with the ethics of harnessing the genetic codes of Krypton in the "Son", the film fails to explore those potential complexities and give the audience more of a reason to support what Kal-El is doing (he is only called Superman once in the film). In fact, the whole plot arc to introduce the topic of genetics and the codex seems like a mac guff in that was completely superfluous, and not super at all. They instead opted to replace it with a silly rehash of the cartoon Superman II mid- Kansas "Super villains vs military helicopter and common folks" mêlée and ensuing mindless and senseless destruction of steel in NYC aka Metropolis and leaving a trail of corrugated iron and post 9/11 sensory in-sensitivities (ironically to try and create resonance with the current post terror generation). They should have taken that hour's worth of footage, and used the time to only use the violence and fighting to further a plot point, or the characters. Superman could have dealt with the ethics of the codex, or, even better, use a secondary mac guff in like even the original Donner-Salkind version had the sense of introducing, by bringing in a Lex Luthor character, taking the chance to trace the codex or an evil agenda in a time of chaos. I mean, I'm not a screenplay writer, but you know, stuff to make the STORY AND PLOT more interesting!