Cheap tricks & product placement

Rating: 2/10 (12 November 2013)

Superman is easily the most well-known super hero of them all. It was in 1978 that director Richard Donner brought him to the big screen and the film saw such great success, it went on to be nominated for 3 Oscars. Superman II was released in 1980 and many consider it to be better than the first. The first two Superman films contained state-of-art special effects and much excitement, for their time. The films were fun, even joyful. In 2006, director Bryan Singer gave us Superman Returns, which unlike his X-Men adaptations, received much criticism and negativity. Singer seemed to be trying to revive the fun and excitement of the original Superman films but with a script that a 5 year old might have conceived. The film was filled with embarrassing attempts at comedy, romance and a story lacking interest in itself. Now we have Christopher "Dark Knight" Nolan's re-imagining of the Superman story directed by Zack Snyder.
Man Of Steel works much like Batman Begins, we go back to the beginning of the story and start all over again but this time it's darker, gritty and more real. With Batman, we had never seen how Bruce Wayne became Batman on-screen before. There were only ever flashback sequences in the Tim Burton adaptations. Bruce Wayne is a human and even though he is a millionaire, the script allowed us to be able to relate to his struggles and want him to succeed in his mission to save Gotham. Superman is an alien who's struggle is whether or not he should use his powers to try to save humanity or stay hidden away from the world and let us work things out for ourselves. It's not a struggle we can easily identify with. The screenplay does the best it can with the source material but where everything goes wrong is in the direction.
Zack Snyder came into the spotlight as a director with his remake of George A. Romero's classic horror film, Dawn Of The Dead. Other than an extremely intense opening sequence, Snyder's version had the production value of a made-for-TV movie and overall, was an insult to the original. His next feature, 300, was an overly praised promotional video for Adobe after effects based on Frank Miller's graphic novel. He did make one excellent film adaptation based on a graphic novel with Watchmen but every film since has gotten worse.
Man Of Steel is completely unbalanced. The special effects are excellent in some scenes and laughable in others. Superman's home planet, Krypton, looks like something out of a music video while scenes of the young Clark Kent growing up are as beautiful as something out of a Terrence Malick film. Some performances are questionable while others are excellent. Henry Cavill and Michael Shannon look great but do not seem comfortable delivering their dialogue, almost as if they are not being directed. Superman's space dad, Russell Crowe, and earth dad, Kevin Costner, both do an excellent job but it's Amy Adams, as Lois Lane, that ends up being the best part of the film.
Man Of Steel suffers because of Zack Snyder's lack of talent as a director. Pointless shaky cam, blinding lens flares and quick zooms all add up to an annoying cinematic experience. Worse of all is the amount of product placement. It's a series of advertisements interrupted by aliens punching each other into and through bad CGI.