Hard one to review

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2015)

The first Superman film came out in 1978, it starred the late Christopher Reeve and was one of those rare films that had a magical quality from start to finish. It was not a perfect film, but it was a film that aspired to, and largely achieved, what movies are all about. It made you stare at the screen in wonder and awe for two hours.
Now, no other Superman film, regardless of how well produced, is ever going to achieve that feeling again. It's been done, and redone so many times since. We've seen better flying effects and we've seen them in both good movies and bad. A guy flying through the air and acting like a quintessential American hero is just not that interesting in 2015. And the more you watch of Superman, the harder it is to believe he is actually under genuine threat from anything. What the 5 preceding films (let's not talk about Supergirl) have established is that there are only three legitimate threats to Superman: Kryptonite, other survivors from Krypton, and his own inner demons. In this film, we see the latter two come out.
Man of Steel is not a great film, but it's a film of great actors and good ideas, and the combination just about works, in spite of these ideas not being satisfactorily laid out or properly realized. Henry Cavill stars as Kal-El, son of the ill-fated Jor-El (Russell Crowe), who is sent to earth to be raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent (a wasted Kevin Costner and Diane Lane). Jor-El stays behind on the dying planet of Krypton to fight General Zod, (the villain of 1979s Superman 2 played here by Michael Shannon), who kills Jor-El, right before being captured and sentenced to expulsion to The Phantom Zone, only for Krypton to explode, meaning that they were far better off than their fellow Kryptonians. So we are in familiar ground with a villain we know from the original series and an identical origin story. Unlike the Spiderman reboot, it's a story we haven't seen for a while, so it's actually called for, and also adds the political dimension of isolationism and population control. I'm not talking this up as high art, but I do appreciate the effort to engage the brain.
It's seeing Superman raised, and the ridiculous death of Jonathan Kent where this movie falls off a cliff. Less "With great power comes responsibility" and more "let me die to cover your own ass." This is hardly the stuff of either believable storytelling or hero building. There are long periods where Kal-el flies around acting all emo until he finds a Kryptonian scout ship where Jor-El tells him he has been sent to Earth to give hope to humanity. A little different from "their capacity for good." Anyway, to make a long story short, Kal-El saves Lois Lane, talks her out of revealing his powers, General Zod arrives with a Krypton posse, wanting to turn the Earth into a new Krypton. Kal-El changes into Superman, and goes off an epic battle with Zod after sending his fellow Kryptonians back to the phantom zone. He is forced to kill Zod and then flies around like an emo again, before taking up a job as a journalist, cunningly disguised as Clark Kent, at the Daily Planet newspaper.
So, for the second time in 12 months here we are reviewing a reboot of a major super hero franchise. My general feel is that Man of Steel, in spite of its faults, succeeds where the Spiderman reboot failed. While the Spidey version was largely uncalled for and made mostly weak changes, this one made changes which make for a more interesting character for modern audiences (though the Jonathan Kent death does kill a lot of good will). Let's face it, Superman is an unstoppable, super human alien, so the only way you can get people to buy into him over multiple films is to create some inner conflict and moral ambiguity. While Spiderman's Parker was dead in the water the moment he took not getting a milkshake personally, I'm interested to see where they go next with Kal-El/ Clark Kent/ Superman.
Man of Steel is not a perfect film, and actually has quite a few problems with it. But it does lay a foundation and give the later films something interesting to work with.