Pleasantly surprising and well-orchestrated despite undersold characters.

Rating: 8/10 (30 July 2014)

(Note: Only one viewing so far)
It took me a while to get around to the movie because there was a lot of bad word-of-mouth surrounding it, mainly due to the destructive nature of the last half of the film. I'm also not a huge fan of Zack Snyder's stuff lately. Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how well-paced and orchestrated the film felt.
There were a couple of moments in the film that seemed logically dubious, and a good chunk of the performing felt a little subdued (if your planet is about to explode and you're launching your baby into space I'd imagine you'd be an emotional mess). I wish there had been more, and maybe it's a positive sign that I'm left wishing I could have seen more of the characters and how they respond to the chaos that erupts. On average, though, the cast was great and engaging. Some elements were certainly disturbing, mainly because some of the aftermath looks like the aftermath of the WTC collapse. That's a pretty cold thing to show, especially in conjunction with falling buildings. This is just the ugly collision of realism and an all-out war to prevent xenocide. Although another viewing might expose problems, the scale of destruction in the third act seems unavoidable. Zod sees Earth residents as insignificant and unworthy of second thought. Then you've got, in effect, 4 supermen fighting, plus an armory on both the Earth and Krypton sides. Once it was set up that Zod wanted a new Krypton, destruction became unavoidable. Superman also can't be everywhere at once, he has to do anything and everything to take out Zod. All things considered, the filmmakers had to choose between a story that was logically sound and something more cartoonish that would be more in line with how people saw Superman. They went with the former. That said, the end of the final fight between Superman and Zod may have been redundantly sour. We already know he can't protect everyone, we just saw Metropolis get torn apart.
Some things are easy to predict: The combination of David Goyer, Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder is a solid one, and the Goyer/Nolan dynamic is easy to see. That tells you going in that it'll be a very gritty spectacle, emotionally charged and with very little humor. Which does work pretty well. I do wish there was a smaller cast and more room for the actors to perform, but the film takes a huge cast and, like, half of the VFX industry, and manages to be pretty enjoyable. Enough so that I kind of want to watch it again. Hopefully the next film will let us get closer to the characters, find some room for optimism, and never put high-heels on Wonder Woman's costume.