They dropped the ball, again...

Rating: 4/10 (9 December 2013)

When I heard about David Goyer telling Christopher Nolan about his "new take" on Superman, I was really excited. I have yet to see a Superman movie that I liked, and I was sure that if anyone could do it just right, then it would be Nolan. He absolutely "got" what is cool about Batman, so surely he could see what's cool about Superman and make the best Superman movie ever, right? Unfortunately, it turns out that the "new take" on Superman is by approaching it as a "first contact" film, about aliens invading from outer space. What a let down. Superman's alien heritage is the least interesting, the silliest, and the most dispensable aspect of his character. While Batman's back-story adds something absolutely vital to his character, Superman's does not do the same for him. Perhaps it might seem to help to give him motivation to help puny earthlings or to give him complexity as an outsider, but actually, these aspects of the character would be there even without the alien back-story simply because a guy who is really really strong and flies and shoots lasers from his eyes is already different and in a position of power over everyone else. He would be in the same position character-wise if he was created through genetic engineering, through nuclear radiation, through an act of God, or anything else. Who cares where he came from? What's interesting about him is here is a guy who is so average and boring, but secretly can do things that make him almost God-like. How cool is that? Think of the people he could save, the bad things he could stop, all while pretending to be Joe Average. What fun you could have with this concept if handled right, and with today's special effects technology! (And by the way, "fun" does not mean "camp". The Bourne films are fun, Mission Impossible films are fun, even parts of Nolan's Batman trilogy are fun, because Nolan has some real fun with some of the interesting aspects of characters and ideas). Unfortunately, this film shows none of the interesting aspects of Superman/Kent's character and just makes it a sort of Star Trek-type film (nothing wrong with Star Trek, but I already saw that last year. Where's my Superman film?). And it is boring to boot. Strangely, even though the film is really overlong at 2.5 hours, everything that happens in it is shown in the 2 minute trailer, so there are no surprises or intriguing developments. After Superman Returns, I had thought that the filmmakers would really try to avoid anything that moved the film into that sort of territory, but the experience of watching Man of Steel gives you the exact same sinking feeling as you got watching Superman Returns. It's hard to believe that someone screwed up Superman AGAIN, but they did. Snyder, Nolan, and Goyer really dropped the ball here.