In the end, I didn't love Superman.

Rating: 5/10 (14 July 2013)

The questions that we have for Man of Steel are not complicated. Is it, for example, a good action film? Are the special effects interesting? Here, the answer is 'yes.' There are some great fight scenes and we get to see Superman, with his speed and heat vision, using all his powers in tandem. Christopher Reeve never quite got there. And, we might ask whether Henry Cavill is a convincing Superman. He is. In fact, I think he was perfectly cast because he is handsome and muscular in a way that previous Supermen weren't. Superman, after all, is supposed to be more Herculean than ordinary. And, yes, Man of Steel is an origin story. It's not a new story, but Jor-El is given a far larger role than Marlin Brando. This is perhaps an imbalance. Superman is supposed to feel that his family and people are long gone, distant, and unrecoverable. Instead, Jor-El spends half the movie doing things. But, the real flaw in the film is that we don't seem to care about Superman by the end. Superman is a Christ-figure, which means he has to be the center of the story and suffer a great deal. He over comes on our behalf, but this Superman seems only to win a predictable fight. This is a problem in the writing. A more mature draft would have helped a great deal. Sadly, this is not what Christian Bale did for Batman.