Man Of Steel - Movie Review

Directed by Zack Snyder

Alright, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice releases very soon, and as promised (the second list in the left pane), here is my final DC Comics review before the movie releases, and it's the only Superman-related review I have. 

Man of Steel was released in 2013, and is directed by Zack Snyder, most known perhaps for 300. It's the very first film in DC's Cinematic Universe (much like Iron Man was for Marvel's). I'll actually make a comparison to Iron Man later. 

Firstly, though, how good is Man Of Steel as a movie? Pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. Henry Cavill is great as Superman, as is Michael Shannon as General Zod. The latter is great in a sense that his character was just cold and methodically evil, and the former in a way that his character was really discovering himself in this movie, which I think a lot of people seem to take for granted when they say that Superman wasn't Superman in this movie. Although I'll touch on that later too. 

Cinematography really isn't Snyder's strong suit, and this movie suffers from that too. It's really dull, and I don't just mean that because there's barely any sunshine, what I mean is, the colours don't appeal, and really everything seems really bland. Look up at the background of the picture above, and you'll understand what I'm saying. A lot of the movie is set in pretty scenic locations, but the way they look is off the mark, really. 

Story-wise, the story in this movie is really basic in comparison to some other comic book movies, and that's fine. If it complicated itself it would have been an utter mess. I will say, however, that way too much time was spent on Krypton, which could have been used for a lot more on Earth as far as Superman discovering himself goes. But on the topic, the origin story was done really well, with Snyder choosing the flashback route rather than having a large chunk of the movie donated to it at once. Really well done.

The main point of debate, of course, is the third act, in which Metropolis gets absolutely leveled. I'm going to look at both sides of this argument. 

First, the side that's against this. It's understandable why people would say that this is not what Superman would do, because he wouldn't let innocent people die, and so many innocent people died in the third act of this movie. And the scale of destruction in this movie may have been a wee bit over the top. 

The other side of the argument is understandable too. When two gods collide, this is likely what will happen, and it was Zod who caused those deaths, not Superman. Also, this very same destruction directly sets up Batman v Superman, so it can really be thanked. And also, in any case, no people actually died, it's fiction. 

So both sides can be favoured, but I'm going to stay neutral here. The destruction was necessary, but excessive. 

Now as I mentioned earlier, this is the first movie in the DC Cinematic Universe, like Iron Man was for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I have to say, in comparison to Iron Man, this isn't as good. That's mostly because Iron Man is just such an exceptional movie, but also because of the things I've mentioned in this review already. Man Of Steel didn't look that great, and the final act was a little off balance, whereas everything was perfect in Iron Man, at least for me. 

Nonetheless, it's still an entertaining movie that sets up the wider universe, without blatantly being a set-up movie like The Amazing Spider-Man 2. 

On a scale where M is the lowest, and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating: 

Man Of Steel: MIHIR 

 

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice is all that's left now!