Right film, wrong director.

Rating: 7/10 (16 February 2015)

As a general film in and of itself, Man of Steel just about delivers but not by much.
From the outset the setting of Krypton is just bizarre. The film sets itself out in a an extremely space odyssey esque version of sci fi that if not for a extremely strange S logo on jor els outfit is utterly unrecognisable as a Superman film.
Indeed, the strange setting is more similar to the lizard running scene featuring Ewan Mcgregors Obi Wan Kenobi, or Avatar than any semblance of a recognisable DC superhero.
Onto the main thrust of the movie itself, you can see what Zac Snyder has tried to do in moving so drastically away from the Richard Donner stylisation of Superman and the subsequent utterly awful and boring Superman Returns,
Unfortunately in doing so it has moved the character and setting just too far away from any expectations or previous character base to be able to establish any suspension of belief and thus emotional attachment to the characters.
Obviously the agenda from Snyder was to make such drastic changes and to create a universe through his own process that no one else would be able to mould the upcoming justice league series other than him.
The castings were, well, erratic. Some choices were clearly made just because they could. Im not going to base my amusement of Lawrence Fishbourne being cast as Perry White on a racial viewpoint because as an actor fishbourne performs admirably but it does raise the question was he cast in order to simply raise the clear message that this is not going to be anywhere close to your dads superman?
Cavill as superman is an interesting choice and he has plainly made a superhuman effort to present a far more muscular superman than has ever been shown on the big screen before. However, as an avid superman fan I found it hard not to notice the fact that the guy has curly, almost afro esque hair that is deeply out of place on superman.
As for the new suit, it is terrible. Nowhere near any kind of recognisable material from anywhere in the DC universe. And further in the film it turns out to actually be 'super underwear' that raises all kinds of questions that are probably best left alone.......
Amy Adams as Lois Lane was probably the equal best Lois alongside Teri Hatcher from the 90's series Lois and Clark.
I have never been a fan of the casting of Margot Kidder in the original movies, and Kate Bosworth was a terrible casting choice in Superman Returns.
The sad fact however you look at it is Adams may well end up with the dubious title of best of a bad bunch.
All in all the film ends up being a special effect bonanza which rather than improving the film, actually winds up with too much debris and destruction to be able to follow the plot (such as it is) it feels as though the director has thrown everything and the kitchen sink in so as to make most use of technology available.
Michael Shannon as Zod was good, but this is to be expected as he rarely fails to deliver a believable performance.
Hopefully the development of the Justice league series will improve as sadly Man of Steel was only an adequate springboard that could have been so much better.
It seems apparent that the choice of director here was the wrong one and this may well prove to be a deciding factor in the upcoming struggle between marvels Avengers series and the Justice League.