Not in a hurry to see this again.

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2014)

This movie seems to be very polarizing. People either love it or they hate it. Very rare is the person that can look at this movie, shrug their shoulders and forget about it a few days later. Well, I am that person. Despite the massive SFX budget in this movie, I left it very underwhelmed. There was no anger, no joy, simply a 'meh' and I went on about my merry way.
Why is that? Well, this is a movie based purely on convenience. Nobody has to work at anything, events simply happen because that's just what's supposed to happen at that point in the script. For instance, Jor El jumps off a cliff only to be caught his pet dragonfly that was somehow able to hear him call it above the massive explosions of a military coup. Lois Lane just so happens to see an anonymous grunt walk out into a frozen arctic wasteland, follows them and it just happens to be Superman, not one of the soldiers from the base looking to take a dump in private. General Zod decides that the best course of action to rebuild his race is to commit mass genocide even though he has machines that will change the atmosphere of any planet into that of his home world. HISHE put it best: 'You could have saved your entire race had you decided to colonize Mars!' Or Venus. Or a large moon. Jupiter has a lot of moons. Then he could have simply asked Superman for the MacGuffin in his blood and the Kryptonians could flourish once more. But if he did that, they would have no reason to fight each other. Pa Kent decides that instead of letting a younger, faster (invincible) Clark free the dog from a car in the path of a tornado, he'll do it himself so that he can commit suicide when he injures himself. Apparently this is to keep people from finding out about his powers, but it's ultimately fruitless because 20+ years later, people still clearly remember that one time he pushed a school bus out of a lake.
I won't nitpick like so many others before me have, but I believe those examples above prove my point. Things happen because the writer says it has to happen, not because it makes sense from a characters' point of view. Now say what you want about the climax, but I personally didn't care for the fact that Superman was directly responsible for the destruction of both Smallville and Metropolis in a short period of time. That doesn't affect my score, though. Hell, I could even get behind killing General Zod, but it would really help if that is set up beforehand. As it stands, though, breaking his neck lacked emotional impact for me because just minutes earlier, Superman was throwing his enemies through crowded buildings and knocking down skyscrapers. Murder doesn't seem to phase him much up to that point.
Anyway, the final product looks great and the score was bombastic and impressive. The actors all did very well with the material they were given. It's just too bad that the writing holds the movie back from being really great.