Another oversized carton of overpriced popcorn

Rating: 5/10 (4 May 2014)

The first 21st-century wave of superhero films, though excellently (even beautifully) done, were about twenty minutes too long: Spiderman, X-Men, Hulk, Batman Begins. They have long been superseded by films which are fifty minutes too long: Spiderman 3, the Dark Knight movies and now Man of Steel. If as a young adolescent, you enjoyed comic books which took twelve minutes to read, you probably thought, "if they could only make movies like this!" As is so often the case, getting what you wish for has turned into a curse: that 12-minute dose of high romance--that you spent the rest of the day thinking about while you did other stuff--has turned into a two and a half hour ordeal that you spend the rest of the day trying to forget. In this latest version of the Superman origin story, the planet Krypton is transformed into a (strangely colourless) wonderland where babies are raised in underwater reefs, Superman's dad Jor-el flies around on a giant insect, and we are treated to every second of mother Lara's delivery pains. But the essential story, mass-distributed since 1939, is old news. Fortunately, if you have waited, as I did, to see Man of Steel on the Movie Network, you can fast forward through all this to get to Superman/Kal-el arriving on Earth—although you will pay for it, as I did, with some confusion as to why although the bad guy, Zod, ends up searching for Kal-el for 33 years, the vessel that becomes the Fortress of Solitude has been in the ice for 18,000 years, etc. The cast is first-rate, though Russell Crowe as Jor-el seems more at home spouting reams of solemn exposition than does Michael Shannon as Zod—though to cut Shannon some slack, it's hard to imagine any actor getting into a character who's such a cosmic sourpuss. When Superman saves the world, only to find that Zod is still left and spoiling for revenge, it gives the viewer not so much a shock of horror but a moan of anguish that the movie is not going to end, or even lighten up and give us a denouement with a few jokes, but continue for another seemingly endless CGI fight sequence. The fun denouement does arrive, though it's all too brief, and when the production credits start to roll, after the obvious talents of Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer, we have to wonder just which of the many producers were responsible for turning Man of Steel, with all the talents behind it, into just another oversized carton of overpriced popcorn.