Superficial story, CGI-packed, good for a 10-year-old

Rating: 2/10 (18 July 2013)

I was expecting this movie for a long time, and I must say I expected more from it. The story-line was disappointing and simple, in the style of most of today's action movie spectacles (such as Transformers II or III, or Battleship...). Acting is also not better than in the mentioned action-movie-type-sort. All of us who had seen the classic character masterfully played by Chris Reeve know that his Clark Kent (but also Superman) is hard to beat in terms of acting and depicting their/his multi-layer personality. The Clark character MUST be clumsy and a bit awkward, it MUST be something opposite to the strong and determined Superman (in order to preserve his cover-identity). Sometimes these two halves of personality collide inside, and no-one has presented this better than the great C. Reeve. This movie is totally missing that bit. The Clark Kent character seems detached, talks little, and is more of a physical character. The director often said that he wanted to display "a new Superman/C.Kent", but they didn't manage to make anything but a crash-smash-boom-bang movie with a week story-line and shallow performance, and muscles seem to be more important these days than acting itself. Also, American directors apparently have to explain everything to their audience, thinking that the audience is perhaps too stupid to conclude something on their own. This was no exception: Lois Lane just had to tell us that C.Kent is a sort of a misfit, someone who was not accepted or understood by society. As if we couldn't see that for ourselves. Not to mention the almost constant reference to Jesus, from 33-year-old Superman, the savior of mankind, to his arms wide spread on several occasions, just like on church icons. The previous movie, Superman Returns, was criticized as a work not as good as the classic movies about Superman, but I must say that Brandon Routh played a much more charming C. Kent, although Superman Returns was also a disappointment in many areas: miscasting (actors way too young considering the context of the movie), a long and boring story, awful K. Spacey (maybe the worst of his parts ever) etc. It seems that today's audience (or at least today's movie directors think so) asks for a lot of explosions and CGI, and a little exploration of characters themselves, and the story apparently doesn't need to be logical, or deep, or plausible, if that is at all possible in these fantasy-story lines. All in all, although by today's standards, the special effects of the classic movie series seem ridiculous, it seems that no-one can beat C.Reeve and M. Kidder in portraying these epic characters. As for the story-line, after you watch the movie (and I say: do watch it), go to youtube.com and find a video called "How Man Of Steel Should Have Ended". This will speak for itself.