Explosive action but with many plot holes

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2013)

As usual the hype for the Man of Steel like for all other Summer blockbusters was very great and to be honest my expectations were high so I looked forward to see this movie, but it disappoints on several levels. First of all, there was a serious mistake concerning the movie trailers and the last one before the movie had its premiere explained almost the entire movie. They put everything worth mentioning about the movie in a single 2-minute trailer. That was very bad decision from the movie distributors and there were moments during the screening that I felt like I watch an extended movie trailer. As for the movie itself I must admit I liked Henry Cavill as Kal-El. He really looks super and he probably never left the gym in the last two years but it paid off. As for the rest of the crew, Amy Adams was probably a miscast as Lois Lane. She does have interesting screen presence as the curious journalist but there is no chemistry between her and Clark and it is not clear why he should fall for her. Michael Shannon is very varying in his portrayal as general Zod. In some scenes he is a rational soldier and in some a lunatic and fanatic ready to commit genocide, and it feels like the actor is uncomfortable in this role. A more consistent approach could have been better. And there are some bigger inconsistencies in the portrayal of some characters, for example Kevin Costners Jonathan Kent. In the movie as in the trailer he said to Clark that he maybe should have let his school friends die in order to protect his superpowers. Real Jonathan Kent would NEVER said that. He raised Clark with a very straightforward moral and integrity and Supermans main character trait is that he is more humane then the humans, but in this movie it is not so. He even kills his opponent in the end. Some other things in the movie are left unexplained. In the beginning Jor-EL steals a kryptonian Kodex and his wife helps him with it but when the government reinstated itself after Zod's rebellion, she is not put to trial. I had the impression that tampering with this Kodex is a serious crime on Krypton, but who knows? Then Clark manages to find a spaceship from his home-world frozen in ice for thousands of years, but I have no idea how he managed that. But the positive thing is that they avoided Michael Bays mistakes from the Transformers movies. His obsession with the US military is annoying and in his movies they are able to attack and destroy some alien robots which are thousands of years more advanced then Earth. The idea itself that some Earth Army is capable to counter an attack from a space-faring aliens is so stupid and illogical there is no need to explain it further. But in this movie we see that the Earths forces are incapable to defend themselves against the aliens, which is more realistic depiction. The battle between Superman and Zod's forces is spectacular, although it is strange to see Superman hurl his enemies into the buildings where people live and he probably killed hundreds if not more. And the final battle between him and Zod is reminiscent of the final battle between Neo and agent Smith in Matrix 3, but it's OK. All in all this movie was fun, but forgettable.