Hollow Man of Steel

Rating: 5/10 (20 October 2013)

First of all, I'd like to point out that I'm no comic aficionado; I, like many, was introduced to Superman through the Christopher Reeve films I watched when I was younger. Despite their many flaws, I enjoyed them because of the way he was portrayed and the childlike belief, illustrated beautifully in the 1999 animated film 'The Iron Giant', that he represented all things good.
Other people have covered the various plot holes, idiosyncrasies and problems with Man of Steel – but here are some of my particular bugbears.
Kryptonians are no longer a highly-developed race living on a crystalline, unforgiving world, but a militaristic, neo-historical people doing a bad job of surviving on a dusty rock. The imperial Rome feel and Orwellian politics show a failed society collapsing in on itself for many more reasons than just a planet's instability – and borrow heavily thematically and visually from films like Gladiator and the Matrix.
Gone is the Fortress of Solitude. Gone is Kryptonite. Gone, even, is the logic behind Superman's powers; replaced with inconsistent hokum spanning various combinations of sun, gravity and atmosphere.
Gone too is the feeling that Ma & Pa Kent are kindly, moral folks who try and raise their adopted son right; they have no back-story, you never see them discover his ship or the joy they have in being able to finally raise a child. Jonathan Kent in particular is depicted as a cold, paranoid piece of work with no faith in humanity and no qualms about letting innocent people die just so his son won't get discovered.
Clark's development is told in flashback form, delaying any empathy you might have had for him as meanwhile he stalks the wilderness like an angry bear, stealing clothes, skewering trucks and occasionally saving oil riggers, leaving a trail of clues in his wake despite everything his father tried to bully into him.
The final straw is the flashback where Pa Kent sacrifices himself just to prove a point to his son. It's so selfish, needless and contrived, Clark could've saved him but then what would the plot revolve around? In the original, the sudden, blameless heart-attack Pa Kent suffered moments after reassuring his son that he was destined for great things was poignant and tragic. It acted as a sobering reminder that Clark could not save everybody, and acted as a catalyst for his development into Superman.
Whereas Reeves' portrayal was very human, Cavill is far too resolute – you get no sense of emotion and he looks alien throughout the film. It can't help that the way the film is edited leaves his character undeveloped, plus there's too much conflict around whether he should actually be a good person or not, making him hard to like.
Shannon's performance as Zod is also hackneyed because the character is weak, he feels no responsibility for his actions as he is just carrying out Krypton's flawed role for him. He is also not truly evil, similar to Khan in the recent Star Trek, just a broken product of a broken world trying to do his duty.
The action in the film is so quick, devastating and complex that it is hard to take in – there's no suspense, subtlety or nuance to it whatsoever. Instead of a battle of wills, it's just disaster porn, and it's not scary because it doesn't feel real. A simple, calculated rip of an astronaut's suit in Superman II was horrifyingly cruel, but a train smashing through a building alongside the ubiquitous presence of the military is vacuous fodder straight out of Transformers. The collateral damage alone must've killed countless innocent civilians, but not once do you see Superman remedy this or try and take the fight away from built-up areas.
A lot of the key moments in the film are unimaginative and revolve around recurring coincidences and Superman's ability to overcome things through arbitrary willpower. There's also far too much violence and aggression; Jor-El demonstrates on Krypton that despite being a scientist and an advocate of freedom, nature and ethics, it's much more important to the film that he bests General Zod, a man bred purely for the purpose of war, in hand-to-hand combat. Pathetic.
In summary, Man of Steel attempts to reboot the franchise in a Dark Knight vein, but in so doing removes key elements that made Superman a much-loved screen icon. The gritty pessimism, brooding dark psychology and super-violence don't hold up well because not only do they undermine Superman's unfaltering commitment to humanity and all that is good, but the plot is far too flimsy to support such a realistic approach. A lot of effort is made to try and turn this into an alien encounter movie too, especially with the looming spaceships, scary masks and harrowing worldwide broadcast. It borrows too heavily from other films and comes across as a mess.
The entire thing feels broken and at the end it gets tied up with a big bow despite nothing really getting resolved other than removing every other Kryptonian from Earth. During the film, Superman realises he is from a toxic culture, fights for himself and revenge more than for good or humankind, ultimately has to kill his antagonist with a show of brute strength and aggression, fails to grow emotionally throughout the movie and shows no real regrets or issues from a difficult childhood, and has zero attachment or relationship with anyone that wasn't directly involved in the fight (the soldiers coin him Superman, not the public or the papers).
This could've been a truly powerful, latter-day Herculean fable, an origin story of a child of two worlds and a movie illustrating the virtues of good conquering evil. Despite the awesome score, solid production design, decent casting and wonderful trailer, this film is a hollow shell that only hints at the untapped potential within it.