Plastic, dry and humourless...A total bore

Rating: 3/10 (17 June 2013)

We are now in the period of a Superhero Renaissance. It begun with Christopher Nolan's dark reinterpretation of Batman in the (overrated) Dark Knight trilogy, and then with the Marvel Project, which culminated in The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America etc. etc.). Billions of dollars have flowed in the cash registers, and now it is the turn of the DC Heroes to have their project.
Man of Steel, a $225 million project, aims to restore Superman in the pantheon of American Superheroes, after the unsuccessful 2006 reboot in Superman Returns. The directorship is placed in Zack Snyder's hands, the man who has brought us 300, Watchmen, and Suckerpunch (these are not good films, by any standard). But wait, Christopher Nolan is along for the ride, as producer and co-writer of the story (Wow: gasps). The result is not good – we have now two consecutive stinkers in the Superhero canon – Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel. Nothing said by any critic, will of course, affect the cash mountains that will be generated by such films. But it is a shame, when an unlimited budget is dedicated to a Superhero film, and we get a plastic, dry, humourless product.
Superhero films can be interesting, particularly when they go along with the cheese and provide us with some humour and fun: Sam Raimi's Spiderman trilogy is a good example – sure it is uneven and unexceptional, but it is funny, and pretty entertaining (as opposed to the new bore in The Amazing Spiderman).
By far, the biggest problem with Man of Steel is its running time: nearly two and a half hours. I guess that would be no problem, if the film was entertaining, for as Ebert famously noted, "no good film is ever too long". But this is no "good film" and it certainly is "too long".
Again, we are provided with a drawn out Origins story, beginning on the planet Krypton and telling us the hero's story from his expulsion by his parents as a baby to Earth, due to Krypton's inevitable collapse, his adoption by two loving Kansas-farming parents, his troubles as a child, blah blah blah. I don't care anymore. Then, when the crunch time comes, we get mass destruction, crashing, metals flying around, and then again, the same thing: it goes on and on. Zack Snyder has an appetite for visual flair, but that is just about it, and the flair is often, not even that good.
Another point is that, many of the special effects-laden sequences seem borrowed from other films. The beginning in Krypton looks like a mesh between Star Wars and Avatar, some of the scenes look borrowed from Spiderman 2 (note the robotic snake arms chasing Superman), or the Matrix (the artificially created foetuses in those weird chambers), and the climax looks like The Avengers (which stole from Transformers, which Transformers borrowed off other boring-ass films). There is no originality here; no author's stamp.
Furthermore, some of the casting choices are bad, but none more, than Michael Shannon as General Zod, which is simply woeful and plainly boring. Russell Crowe is good as Jor-El, but is not given much time to shine. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are excellent, as Kal-El's human parents, but they are given little time. Henry Cavill looks like Superman, but his performance amounts to some grunting and angry flying: Superman is soulless.
At least, with a ¼ of a billion dollars in budget, they managed to design a swanky Superman suit. That is about it.
"I have so many questions. Where do I come from?"