"It's like, Super........man !"

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2013)

I think in many respects this is the movie we would have got if Bryan Singer had been allowed to go "Wrath of Khan" on his second Superman feature, as he said at the time. But that's the road not taken, so we have Man of steel instead.
Clearly Warner brothers wanted more action and that's what Zack Snyder has given them and the results are entertaining and hopeful for the future.
The second edict appears to have been not to follow the Superman origin story verbatim, to avoid comparisons with Richard Donner's Superman. Flashbacks are used, mostly successfully, to achieve this.
The emotion and understanding that these scenes needed to inject into the movie work very well, (SPOILER-ISH) the ones towards the midway point possibly needed juggling around a bit, but almost immediately Zod reappears at this point, so the whole thing kicks up a gear anyway.
There is a lot of action, particularly after the halfway point, mostly its coherent and exciting, occasionally blurry or just too fast. The cast are all excellent, for me Henry Cavill and Michael Shannon stand out.
Cavill's Kal-El is unsure of himself, but not overly angst ridden, he comes over as reasonable and good natured, in other words Superman. Shannon's Zod, if its important to you, does touch on Terence Stamp's performance to a small degree, but this has more to do with the fact that there are points where his character shouts as the plot requires it and as Stamp's best (and funniest line) involved shouting, it just draws comparison.
The change in origin dynamics negates any worry of audiences getting restless, waiting for the cape to be donned.
(WHOPPING SPOILER!).....(NO REALLY!!) I think what I appreciated the most was after Kal has saved the day and appears to have won the trust of the Humans he has been fighting alongside of, conversely Zod has lost everything and without his raison d'etre, he is purposeless. He had one function and never had the luxury to view that function in terms of good or bad.
In amongst all the battling, the scene where Zod laments this turn of events to Superman, he chooses revenge directly here and forces Superman to make choice, shortly thereafter, in terms of dealing finally with Zod's choice of actions.
At the end of a superhero movie or any movie that ends with destruction, its always nice to find a moral conundrum or denouement like this.
So overall Man of steel was a very good, solid starting point for DC/Warner's for future Superman projects and exploring the DC universe, beyond Batman. Now if we can just repair Green Lantern and for a REAL challenge there's an Amazonian warrior who's been cooling her heels for a while now.