Nice Character Work, Really Ridiculous Action

Rating: 6/10 (16 June 2013)

This version of Superman is edgier that the original back in the '70's. The cast is first rate. Henry Cavill is excellent as Superman. The rest of the cast is top notch with Russel Crowe as Jor-El, Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as his terrestrial parents, Amy Adams as a perky but bold Lois Lane, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, and Christopher Meloni as an Air Force Colonel. We see a lot more of Krypton than ever before. The head of the Krypton Council, in denial about his planet's doom, is the most absurd attempt to make something look alien ever. If you think Xerxes in 300 was weird, you haven't seen anything. We finally have something in the "alien for alien's sake" contest more ridiculous than Jar Jar Binks. We get a wild battle scene during General Zod's rebellion, but we never really find out why he rebelled, and for that matter we never really find out why Krypton needs a military at all. The action is so frantic it's hard to follow.
Clark Kent's voyage of self-discovery is very well told in flashbacks, but one weird moment is when his father dies in a tornado. He yells for people to run for an overpass, one of the worst places of refuge in a tornado, then sacrifices himself rather than have Clark reveal his powers. Unfortunately, it looks like he could easily have run for refuge himself, so, why? General Zod is sentenced to the Phantom Zone, from which he escapes when Krypton explodes. Planets don't explode, people. He hunts Clark because Jor-El had stolen the Codex, a memory bank with the DNA of all future Kryptonians. First the virus in Independence Day, now Krypton doesn't back up important files. Apparently Little Old Earth is the only civilization with basic computer savvy. And even though Kal-El (Superman) was the first natural birth on Krypton in centuries, it's hard to believe they've forgotten how to do it old school.
So Zod comes to Earth demanding Superman, and Smallville is pretty much demolished by our military's futile efforts to stop Zod. Then Zod moves on Metropolis. He sets up two gravity generators on opposite sides of the earth, planning to convert Earth into Krypton and killing humanity in the process. This is pretty mysterious since there must be plenty of uninhabited planets he could transform. Zod's machines are wrecked and Zod and Superman slug it out, with each punch sending the recipient plowing up pavement or punching through buildings. Not through a wall, through five or six buildings in a row. Interestingly, gravity doesn't affect them - they travel in perfectly straight lines, which even rifle bullets don't do. Superman finally defeats Zod. He's left lying motionless, though you never kill off a top villain. Since Zod was specifically engineered for combat, you have to wonder how untrained Kal-El was able to defeat him.
Clark realizes he'll need a cover that will allow him to drop out of sight on occasion and turn up in dangerous places, so he turns up, you'll never guess, as a reporter for the Daily Planet. There was no Jimmy Olsen in this film, and there shouldn't be any tension with Lois wondering whether Clark is really Superman, since when he was first developing his powers she tracked his story back to the Kent farm.