An Old Wine in New Bottle ....... (A Review by my friend DG)

Rating: 7/10 (21 June 2013)

Man of Steel may not be the movie everybody was hoping for after the terrible fate of the Kryptonian in the previous outages , but it surely is not unlikeable either .... The movie starts out promisingly enough, with a vast, lavish destruction-of-Krypton sequence that is impressively imagined and conceived (though some people are foolishly comparing them with the likes of Avatar and Avengers) .... Snyder also chose the cast quite wisely with everyone pretty much bringing their A game, creating drama and examining the characters in great depth, to ensure the audience cares about them .... He abandons the usual facade of Clark Kent immediately allowing for the predicable Clark/Lois/Superman love triangle to be overcome, only introducing the Clark Kent we recognize in the film's final moments .... Henry Cavill is a convincing Superman, Amy Adams a headstrong Lois Lane, though Michael Shannon fails to bring us a menacing General Zod and sadly didn't had the much required screen presence of a Joker or Bane .... The problem is that the sudden, and inevitable, focus on ultra-action means that the interesting aspects of the characters begin to be ignored in favor of a slug-fest .... I'll admit that by the second half I completely lost interest in the story .... The villains motivations were inexplicable which is kinda becoming a theme in blockbuster movies lately but the action scenes got me through it .... It was the first time we got a sense of just how powerful the Kryptonians on Earth , and thats the way it always portrayed in the comics .... It really is cool to see Superman creating sonic booms as he flies or to see one the villains leaping and crashing into things .... There's weight behind it all, it feels physical and there is mass devastation as a result and Snyder surely knows the craft of weaving a visual spectacular though we have seen Avengers Assemble and Transformers do that quite well ... It's impressively directed by Snyder, but, once again, completely misses the point of Superman .... As the two fight, they completely level Metropolis, and rarely does Superman stop to save any of the citizens; he barely gives them a second thought, in fact .... This is getting Superman completely wrong, using him as a fight avatar rather than a character; the collateral damage those two cause in the closing would be entirely unacceptable for the Superman we know and love .... Superman shockingly doesn't struggle snapping Zod's neck at the end and yes, he seemed distressed after he made that choice, but this was just a step too far .... the only thing which kept me from dozing off quite a few times was Hans Zimmer's transcendental background score .... it's really a shame to have such great acting, such great action and little flashes of brilliance here and there just to have it fall down on the single most important aspect of a movie, in my mind at least, the story is the biggest disappointment of all .... Still, I left the cinema feeling somewhat hopeful .... This could provide the background for a really nice sequel .... considering that Superman himself has always been quite a boring character , Snyder and Nolan did a good job , but still Man of Steel is about the strongest man on earth, who can fly and shoot stuff with his eyes ,but it ain't about Superman !