*Spoilers* An average action film.

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2013)

If you liked Avengers Assemble, as lots of people seem to, much to my general bafflement, you will probably like this as well. They are both essentially the same film. There's lots of fighting, explosions, buildings getting wrecked and expensive and elaborate special effect set-pieces. There's also a wafer thin apocalyptic story to accompany all of this, and lots of characters that you don't really care about, so if the action isn't what you're there for, you really will be watching the wrong film.
There were two reasons I wanted to see this film. Firstly, the words "Christopher" and "Nolan". And secondly, there's the fact that I liked the Superman films when I was younger. They, along with Indiana Jones and Star Wars, were the films I looked forward to watching over the Christmas holidays.
This film is basically a rehash of the original Christopher Reeve Superman film. The story is much the same as the original, except now we have special effects to bring it all to life properly sort of. The thing is though, spectacular as the set pieces are, there's a curious lack of tension in any of the action. Superman and his nemeses beat each other around towns and cities with reckless abandon, but because they are "Super men" you know they can't really die, so despite the explosions, the collapsing sky scrapers, and the fact that they keep punching each other through walls over and over and over and over and over again, you know that they aren't going to die from this, so you find yourself not really caring. It's just eye candy, but although it looks impressive, I found myself getting very bored of these fights very quickly.
There are some really good parts of this film. The soundtrack and music is chosen well and really gives a "Nolan" feel to the whole thing. Those sweeping epic Batman-esque crescendos echo throughout lending a degree of scale and majesty to what you are watching. No complaints there. The flashbacks to Clark Kent's youth are also quite interesting and lend some depth to the film in the opening stages. We see the young Superman saving people and contemplating the consequences of these actions. This is where the film does actually strike home. These scenes are interesting, and the one where we see his adopted father (Costner) accept his own death rather than let Clark reveal who he is in front of a watching audience, actually do have some emotional impact. This is helped by the fact that Costner acts his part with great aplomb and although he is only in a handful of scenes, he manages to create more emotion in his interaction with his (adopted) son, than probably exists in all the rest of the scenes combined.
The film loses its way completely once Zod arrives on Earth and starts demanding things.The film quickly descends into a cheesy special effects snoozer. Awesome if you like watching explosions, but pretty dull if you want something a little bit more than that. Zod decides he's basically going to take over Earth, and terra form it into a new Krypton and sets about this task. Superman and his human buddies hatch a mad plan to stop them. We then witness this plan being implemented and are treated to, amongst other things, squiggly metal snake things chasing Superman around the sky as he tries to thwart Zod. This particular sequence was just horrible. Squiggly metal snake things?! Like... waaaa?
Then finally we get another epic finale one on one fight between Zod and Superman at the end, the only problem being that its exactly the same fight as all the other fights with lots of crashing through buildings and an appallingly anti-climactic moment were Zod threatens a few Museum punters to provoke our hero Superman into breaking his neck. This scene is so poorly executed its almost laughable.
This is the first film that has had Christopher Nolan's name attached to it that has thoroughly underwhelmed me. I know he didn't direct it and perhaps therefore this is an unfair stick to beat it with but unfortunately it's a bit of a lame duck. The kids will probably love it, but I can't imagine many sophisticated watchers finding much of interest here. So, I'm just going to say it – the original Christopher Reeve version, despite its many flaws, is much better.
Yet again I've been deceived by the hype and the flashy adverts. This film simply isn't very good.