Too much action spoils the day

Rating: Null/10 (15 June 2013)

In spite of Zack Snyder not being liked by critics in general, he is one of my favourite directors, liked both his Watchmen and 300, one of the reasons being I always found his visual style intriguing. When Man of Steel was announced with Snyder as the director and Nolan producing it, I thought that the Superman franchise was in for a big revamp. I have watched a few Superman films before, not being too much of a fan of the action genre, as expected did not enjoy them as much. With this film I had hope that maybe they will delve deep into the psyche of Superman, which they did to some extent, but the problem was that they did not stop at that. The first half started off in Krypton , with a little bit of the Superman backstory. Then two timelines were interlaced, one showing little Clark Kent inhibited to show his superpowers to the world, and another one showing a grown up Clark starting to show his powers to the world. The best part of the film is in these parts. His conversations with Jonathan Kent ,his father were powerful. Loved them. His discovery about his past and his subsequent conversations with Jor-El were also emotionally charged. The use of Zimmer's background music was probably the best thing about this film. Absolutely Brilliant. Then came in the 'Summer Blockbuster' 2nd half with the explosions and the action sequences, quite reminiscent of a Micheal Bay film. It's a Superman film after all, only an idiot will go in with an expectation that it will be Batman Begins, but still they overdid it and the script took a backseat .I would have been totally disappointed if it was not for the last 10 minutes, which managed to salvage some of the damage already done by the mind-numbing action sequences. It was not wrong for fans to expect a better output from a Nolan , Snyder collaboration .Although the best Superman film till date but clearly falls short of expectations, and yes there was no need to make this into a 3D film.