Why so serious, Superman? It doesn't suit you.

Rating: 1/10 (14 July 2013)

Man of Steel left me with such a bad feeling that I had to immediately rush home and re-watch Superman III. The campiness of Superman III was just the right antidote to the disturbingly serious and violent tone in MoS.
MoS deserves a lot of credit for being much more original than most series reboots. Despite the re-use of General Zod as primary antagonist, MoS feels very different from Superman II or indeed any of the Christopher Reeve films.
Lois Lane is a strong, 21st-century woman. No longer the primary target of Clark Kent's deception, she is now simultaneously the first discoverer of Clark's secret (or, at least, the nosiest), then the revealer of Superman's presence on Earth, then his spokesperson, and finally his salvation of sorts. Nice twist, but it ends up a little fatiguing by the end - Lois appears in so many scenes in so many different roles, it's kind of hard to get attached to her character. Still, Amy Adams is just so darn likable.
And the in-depth exploration of Krypton's technology and societal structure was very interesting. General Zod's role as protector of Krypton added a compelling facet to his personality and motivation, but by the time he got around to mentioning it, I was already suffering from "hyper-kinetic special effects overload" - and the movie was almost over.
Showing Clark's childhood in flashbacks worked well also. Rather than being disruptive or confusing, it actually helped the pace of the movie. Or was it just a trick designed to add some emotionally appealing scenes to an otherwise soulless "post-reveal" story arc?
Henry Cavill was an excellent casting choice - as good for this era as Christopher Reeve was for his. Henry just looks the part, and he played it well.
So why is this movie so disturbing? Why don't I have the slightest desire to see it twice?
1) The effects are, overall, too phony-looking. I knew it was a bad sign when, early in the film, the big oil rig disaster looked like some sort of video game cut-scene, with a helicopter leaving the platform at about 400mph. It only got worse, from the ridiculous twister that unnecessarily took Pa Kent's life to the Independence Day-like "fill the screen with computer-generated planes flying at Mach 7" air battles.
35 years ago, Warner Brothers at least had the decency to hang Christopher Reeve off of steel cables to make me believe he could fly. I can't tell if Henry Cavill ever had to step away from the green screen. To be fair though, I don't think we ever saw Chris Reeve shirtless. Mr. Cavill, on the other hand, must have been working out next to Tom Hardy at the "DC Universe Gym", because he is ripped. Unless that was an effect too...
2) The 3D-centric nature of the effects is maddening: everything must move ridiculously fast directly away from or toward the viewer. OK, directors of Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Man of Steel, we get it. You have this "new" ticket-price-jacking technology and you and the cinema owners are determined to milk it. So now all big-budget action sequences have to be rendered unwatchable as a result?
3) The movie is almost entirely humorless. There is one good laugh near the very end and a few failed attempts in between, but there is nothing funny about it. OK, so this Superman has gravitas. Like I said, points for originality, but not a movie I'd want to watch again.
4) Sure, Kevin Costner seems like he'd make a great dad, except for that time he told you that maybe you should have let all your elementary school pals drown (Uncle Ben Parker he ain't!). I know, it's just a setup for his big dramatic death scene, but that also seemed unnecessarily contrived. And I know, both events drove home how important it was for Clark's powers to remain a secret until he understood their purpose, which was key to the story arc. Still, both scenes were creepy.
5) An extended sequence near the end seemed exploitative of the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse. Before seeing MoS, I assumed that other reviewers complaining about this were being overly sensitive. But after seeing the big "Terra Forming" scene and the number of buildings that Superman and Zod destroyed, I felt like I was watching some sort of fetish film for demolition freaks. It really was over the top. I guess a realistic depiction of building collapse will always draw parallels to the WTC, but it seemed to just keep going and going... I would have preferred them to make the military attacks on Zod and Faora more realistic instead.
I went to see Man of Steel for two reasons:
First, because it could not have possibly been worse than Superman Returns (it wasn't).
Second, because after eventually seeing Watchmen on TV, I regretted missing it on the big screen. So I didn't want to miss the first run of another Zack Snyder comic book adaptation.
I give Man of Steel credit for boldly staking out its own territory in the Superman universe, but Watchmen is the more enjoyable, thought-provoking, and "epic" of the two films. They're both dark and violent, but Watchmen just seems to take its seriousness more seriously.
Maybe this is an unfair comparison because, of the two, only Man of Steel can be critiqued against a 35-year-old classic film series that is much lighter and much more entertaining. But while watching Man of Steel I wondered whether I would have preferred it as the definitive Superman film if it had come first - and I doubted it.