Had the potential to be great, then Hollywood went CGI crazy

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2013)

I believe I was first introduced to Man of Steel with the original trailer (more like a 20-second teaser than a trailer, of our hero bursting through the sky) while I sat in the cinema anticipating The Dark Knight Rises.
I left the cinema somewhat frustrated that day however, as The Dark Knight Rises was full of plot holes and writing that simply didn't make sense. Simply put; I felt Nolan got complacent after he absolutely nailed Batman Begins and the masterful Dark Knight.
Now we have a reboot of Superman, with Nolan as Producer and action-junkie Snyder as Director. Nolan seems to take up where he left off on the Dark Knight Rises by producing a movie filled with plot holes. I don't want to divulge any spoilers beyond what you will have gathered from the trailers, but to give 1 example, our villain (played by Michael Shannon) & his goons survive the demise of Krypton because they are outcast on a spaceship as 'punishment' for their crimes while the rest of the planet perishes. There you have it, an advanced Alien race living on a doomed planet is able save only 1 new born baby and a gang of crooks, despite having the technology to scope out and evaluate another planet in seconds, then terraform it to accommodate their race. Is this the standard of script-writing we can associated with Nolan now? After-all he served us up the genius plot of Gothams ENTIRE Police Force being trapped underground for 3 months, with no food, yet still able to charge out into the battlefield when Batman sets them free. Like The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel is full of these kind of pot holes that is likely to leave even children scratching their heads.
I did however enjoy much of the first half of the film, Kevin Costner gives the best performance in this movie by a distance in my opinion. His emotional interactions with his adopted son are heartfelt and he plays a pivotal role in shaping Clark's path to finding himself. Snyder strings the background story together pretty well, maybe a little too much use of 'flashbacks', but Snyder's storytelling is actually good here... which is why it's all the more frustrating that he lost control in the 2nd half of the movie.
Once we have the back story in place and Superman gets some answers as to who he really is, well, this movie simply doesn't feel like Superman. He doesn't become the caped hero saving civilians from bank robbers (although we get a couple of instances of his good deeds before he ever dawns the cape). There's no disguise as Clark Kent, no news reporter or phone booths. No feeling of 'is it a bird?' or 'to the rescue'. No adventures. Instead it just jumps into a showdown with the goons from Krypton who have tracked him down to planet Earth (as you will have seen from the trailers). At times I felt like I was watching Independence Day as the US military is rolled out with tanks & fighter jets to protect the entire human race from superior beings threatening our existence.
The last 60-90 Min's of this film is just 1 giant action sequence, loaded to the teeth with CGI, trucks smashing into skyscrapers & Alien light-beams. The Metropolis half destroyed... Superman probably kills a few thousand civilians himself as collateral given the amount of vehicles he uses as bowling balls. I enjoy a bit of action, but this was way too much, and way over the top to the point it just got tiresome and the film starved itself of dialogue, character development and audience interaction. We the audience are asked to endure some horrible one liners such as "they say it's all downhill from the first kiss" in between the brain-dead smashing up of skyscrapers. I was firmly switched off in the last half hour because the director asked nothing of me while he got his kicks.
This action overkill wasn't really what we were sold in the trailers which focused on the gritty & emotional interactions of a young Clark with Kevin Costner over an Enya score (almost Gladiator-esque) - this sold us a totally different tone to the alien-action movie we actually get.
Overall i'm left with a feeling of what this movie could have been with the right director & stronger writing. Perhaps Sam Mendes would have been a better choice given the job he did on Skyfall and the human interaction of Craig, Dench and Bardem throughout while maintaining awesome action set-pieces. Snyder had a great cast at his disposal here he that really should have done much better with. Crowe & Shannon did the best they could with what they had to work with. Costner stole the show. Cavill was a perfect fit for Superman and brought a physical presence to the role of Superman that Bale & Hardy brought to Batman & Bane. Laurence Fishburne may as well have been cut from the movie all together in his utterly pointless role as Editor at the Planet and Adams was wasted in the weakly written part of Lane.
It's perhaps unfair to expect another Dark Knight, given it's standing as one of the greatest films ever alongside The Godfather & Shawshank here on IMDb, but I was at least hoping for a movie on a par with Batman Begins, to really set the tone for another epic series of modern-day comic hero movies from DC. Instead I left the cinema feeling like I just saw 20 minutes of Avatar eventually turn into Independence Day meets Transformers in a piece of film-making that will be rather forgettable in the end.
Maybe at some point in the next 30 years Superman will finally get his day like Batman got his in 2008 in The Dark Knight.