Starts off great, stays solid

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2015)

"Man of Steel" from pretty much two years ago meant the relaunch of the Superman franchise. The core character is played by Henry Cavill and I was a bit critical with that casting choice as I would have preferred an older actor, but I guess they have to keep these main actors young, so that young audiences don't lose interest. Still, my criticism was not justified as Cavill carried this film nicely. The movie's director is Zack Snyder and I watched his probably most famous movie "300", but was not impressed at all. The writer is David S. Goyer and he is most known for his work on Christopher Nolan's "Batman" franchise. Fittingly, Nolan assisted him here with the story.
I have to say looking only at the first hour of this 140-minute movie, I may have rated this maybe even an 8. The early scenes with Russell Crowe were really nicely done and the way we watch Superman as a boy and a young adult are excellent too. The way we get introduced to his life and world could not have been much better. Unfortunately, from the moment that Zod and his gang come to Planet Earth, it gets a bit worse. The film loses itself occasionally in references about physics and space and, even more so, in spectacular action sequences and special effects displays instead of further elaborating on the characters. About the cast I can hardly say anything bad. As I said earlier, Cavill impressed me and I have always liked Crowe, Meloni and Shannon. Fishburne, Lane and Costner are okay too with the little they are given. However, I strongly object to Amy Adams as Lois Lane. Or at least the way it happened in here. Adams is a huge movie star right now and I guess that's why they felt the need to write her as many baity and spectacular scenes as possible. I did not like that at all. At times she felt like a second superhero almost and it was pretty cringeworthy, for example the way she was told to come with Superman on the spaceship. And why is she always inside the action in the second half of the movie. She is not a trained soldier, she is not a high government official, she is nothing but a newspaper reporter. Honestly, I would have preferred her to be the way Lois Lane was depicted in these Superman cartoons from the 1940s. I guess they really wanted to include a strong female character in this movie, but the way they did it it turned out to be possibly the film's biggest weakness. But if you love Amy Adams, you will probably have a different opinion. In my opinion, she was a great actress early in her career and I quite liked her on "Doubt" for example, but her recent performances, especially in David O. Russell films were all over the top and not good at all.
Anyway, as a whole I thought this was a pretty good superhero movie and I recommend it. It could have done without some of the action sequences I believe and maybe kept more essential at 2 hours max, but these were not a game-changing factor to the negative side. I guess they really wanted that Academy Award nomination for visual effects. Guess what, they did not get it. Good film with many very talented actors and I am looking forward to the sequels. Recommended.