It's not a bird, it's not a plane...I'm not sure what it is.

Rating: 3/10 (21 February 2014)

I went into this film with high hopes; Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner as Superman's dads, Lawrence Fishbourne as Perry White, plus - from the trailers - some of the film set on Krypton, and some large spaceships to boot. It set the scene for more than just the usual one man against an army situation. Yet by the middle it just summed up everything that's wrong with recent reboots of film series. It felt like the writer had read/watched all the previous outings of the caped son of Krypton, had thought up individual scenarios that they'd like to see him in, taken some characters they liked from previous outings, and shoe horned a movie around it. Yes, it looks very pretty, with plenty of big set pieces, explosions, military hardware and long (long, long, long) fight scenes, yet you get the sense it wants to go deeper into the subjects of: 1) People being scared of the different, 2) The ability to have the power to change the world around you without being ostracized, 3) Family bonds (both biological family and social groups) than its Lycra clad, muscle pumped script is capable of delivering, and only allows it to skim the surface of those topics. If you compare this to previous Superman films, such as the ploys in Superman 3 - particularly the ending - Man of Steel goes full out on aggression over subterfuge, resulting in it not even to fitting (especially given how long the fight scenes are in this film are) with itself, let alone with other outings for the son of Krypton. There's no subtlety to the action, or apparent planning by the characters. They've stacked the odds so far against Superman (in technology and numbers of opposition), that they have to contrive the story around him till there's no sense of immediate peril. This results in action happening in the local area, but seemingly only affecting the local area. I mean, given that - as with most films of this ilk - there is a world ending device the hero has to defeat, that device seems incapable of even dislodging a crane tower a few miles away, or affecting traffic outside its immediate vicinity. I'm still wondering who has the most lines in the film (it's probably Russell Crowe), but it seemed like the film was generally light on speech (Lawrence Fishbourne can't have more than a dozen lines!)