Recklessly dumb

Rating: 5/10 (1 July 2013)

It's sometimes a bit depressing when everyone loves something, and you can't figure out why.
Man Of Steel is a sensationally impressive movie to look at in the latter stages. The visual effects are truly phenomenal. The action is eye-water-ingly fast and aggressive. The sound effects are equally impressive. This I figure is why people love it so much.
However, Man Of Steel is a terribly poor movie in terms of consistency between scenes, and hopelessly lacking common sense.
I felt the director deliberately lifted elements from other super hero movies/action franchises to try and 'modernise' Superman. We see an Avatar inspired Krypton. He appears to have taken Clark's childhood scenes straight out of Xmen. The loner, wandering job-jumping persona from Wolverine. The (step) dad moral-teachings from Spiderman, including his untimely death right after an argument. The fight scenes reminded me of the Matrix (minus the Kung fu) and his flying ability now looks like Iron Man.
But regardless of this over-familiarity, what bothered me was the way things happen just to move the story forward. A scene when Superman is taken hostage by Zod, for example, sees Lois taken as well, for absolutely no given reason. Of course it turns out that she enables their escape (so that's the reason!).
In terms of the story, I hate that Lois now knows Superman's identity throughout. This means we don't see any clever use of his powers to conceal his secret from her in this movie, nor the mooted sequel.
In terms of the editing, you'll see glaring inconsistencies. Looking through her camera, Lois spots Clark up a crop of high rocks when they're with a team investigating an object hidden deep beneath the snow in the Arctic. She decides to follow him and subsequently climbs DOWN a steep ledge to where Clark has now burrowed into the ice.
During the finale, Superman and Zod begin fighting in a destroyed city where Lois and the others are. They do this thing where they're flying and punching each other until they end up in a completely different city (I assume, since it was untouched by the 'World Destroyer'). Superman kills Zod and needs consoling by Lois... oh here she comes now to give him a hug - how did she get there so quick?
But worst of all, on a world destroying scale (literally) was the black hole they deliberately opened up above a major city to suck the baddies away. Fortunately no civilians were killed (probably because they were already dead no thanks to Superman helping to smash everything up along with the World Destroyer terraform device).
The movie wraps up with a scene so forcefully jammed in that it looked like it come from a different film all together. We come from Superman crying because he'd killed Zod to suddenly witnessing a drone plane crashing in a desert in front of an army truck. Superman then appears to say he doesn't want to be spied on, we then get served the movie's very first attempt at humour when the female army companion says Superman is 'hot'.
So, yes, 5 stars for the visuals and sound alone. I would recommend Man Of Steel to anyone who is very forgiving and/or easily pleased - which seems to be the majority somehow!