Too Dark for a Superman movie

Rating: 6/10 (17 June 2013)

Henry Cavill makes a really good Superman. Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Dianne Lane, and Russel Crowe also all do a good job in their respective roles. It's unfortunate, though, that this is the movie that they are acting in, because that's not enough to save it.
First of all, the cinematography is so dark and depressing through nearly the entire film, completely uncharacteristic of a Superman film I didn't see this in 3D since 3D films are usually shown with less than sufficient lighting and generally look inferior to films not filmed in 3D as a consequence. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the dark appearance of the film or if that was by choice. Either way, you have to blame the director for the problem. There's been an incredible change of opinion against 3D recently, and films like this one are a big part of the reason.
Second, the writing is so incredibly wrong-headed, particularly for a Superman film. As others have pointed out, it was dumb to have Jonathan Kent telling his son that it would have been better had he let the children on the bus die. It makes him sound like a monster. It was dumb to have Superman kill. The one thing that EVERYONE knows about him is that Superman does not kill. IT was dumb to make half the movie be about leveling Metropolis. I always knew that the fight scene, which was poorly filmed, and went on entirely too long, was not over every time they showed a building that was not knocked down, because you know it was only so that they could then show its destruction.
As I said, there were a few good things about it. But the writing and the direction were not among them.