Amazing VFX, OK Story, Not the Superman You Grew Up With

Rating: 8/10 (19 October 2013)

Visual Effects: A+ Cinematography: A Acting / Character Development: B- Storyline: C
This film was visually stunning, a very ambitious work. As a visual effects artist myself i can say the level of detail and techniques being used are exemplary for this industry and extremely impressive. The dramatic moving camera shots pan through impossible angles and throughout vast destruction, the fast paced movement rapidly escalates in a way that could only have been planned second by second by a very talented art director. In fact i'm sure if it wasn't for recent advances in robotics and motion tracking this wouldn't even be possible.
As far as the story goes, it is only in the final battles that it really feels like a superman movie. So much has been changed since the previous films that its not even really the same thematically, and only when he is fighting Zod mano y mano is when it truly represents the characters. The entire thing has been re-envisioned, Kryptonian technology works differently, his childhood seems much darker, the whole sailor espionage thing seems like a mix of Jason Bourne, the matrix, alien and transformers, but definitely not superman. The suit gets a nice redesign but the Kryptonians are wearing a new high tech armor which looks like the iron man suit. Very beautiful but not what i remember.
As for character development the entire thing was too fast paced and tried to cover way too much to fit into the timeframe. the use of flashbacks is shoddy and awkwardly placed, and i would have preferred they left out smallville or put it into a separate origin movie. There is not a whole lot of room for characters to grow or really even interact, they just get swept up in warfare or explaining things. They leave some important things unexplained, such as why the hell clark is conveniently in a bar where they're mentioning the strange craft or how lois lane was able to travel across an entire demolished city in 5 minutes. Characters are introduced that don't get more than one line yet are supposed to play important roles in Clarks life. It also treats the viewer like they're stupid in some parts. I think the longest dialogue in the entire movie is Jor-El re-explaining about krypton, a story which is already introduced in the beginning. At one point they even try explaining what terraforming is to a clueless girl who's obviously never seen a scifi film in her life.
When it comes to being ambitious, this movie definitely hits the mark visually. Its a great watch even just for the visual effects, however, their ambition is not quite met when it comes to the story. Most of this is just from trying to have such a rapid sequence of events without giving them time to fully express themselves naturally. They REALLY wanted it to be 2 hours long, but this is not that kind of movie. Had they extended this movie out as long as it needed to be to have the proper character development and fill the holes in their story, i'm sure i would have liked it much better.