Review of Man of Steel: A Real Dud of a Movie

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This is going to be a fairly short review, at least short for me. After all, there’s only so much even I can say about a movie as bad as Man of Steel. In brief, it stinks. What’s more, it’s so bad that Chet and I shut it off after viewing only an hour and six minutes, and it’s over twice that long. We would have shut it off sooner, but, silly us, we kept thinking it would get better.Trust me when I say it didn’t.     

Man of Steel Cast of Characters

Billed as a superhero film, this 2013 fiasco was co-produced by Legendary Pictures and Syncopy Films, distributed by Warner Bros, directed by Zack Snyder, and written by David S. Goyer. The cast includes:

• Henry Cavill as Clark Kent, aka Kal-El, aka Superman 
• Amy Adams as Lois Lane, reporter for the Daily Planet 
• Michael Shannon as General Zod, the villain 
• Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet 
• Kevin Costner as Clark’s adoptive dad 
• Diane Lane as Clark’s adoptive mom 
• Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Clark’s biological father 
• Ayelet Zurer as Lara Lor-Van, Clark’s biological mother

Plot of the Movie Man of Steel

You already know the plot. The planet Krypton is in self-destruct mode because its natural resources have been depleted (Sounds like another planet I know). Jor-El and his wife put their baby, Kal-El, in a spacecraft so he’ll be saved when Krypton goes kaboom, which it does immediately after the spacecraft is launched. The craft lands on a farm in Kansas. A farmer and his wife (the Kent family) find the craft, and the couple keeps the baby and raises him as their own.

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In this remake of the story, though, you need to forget about what you read in the original comic books and saw in the television series, Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves, that is, if you’re old enough to remember the series. Also forget about the movies from the late 70’s through early 80’s, starring Christopher Reeve.

The first 25 minutes, or maybe it’s more, is devoted to showing us the conflict between General Zod, his minions, and everyone else on Krypton. We also get to see a sword fight in the darkness between Zod and Jor-El.  I thought it would never end. So did Chet. Anyway, we were still watching the movie at this point, mainly because we thought that once Baby Kal-El reached the planet Earth, the story would become familiar. Nope, that did not happen. For one, you really aren’t shown anything about Clark’s childhood except through a brief flashback of him as a little boy using his X-ray vision to melt a door knob and then as a teenager demonstrating his amazing strength by lifting a school bus filled with screaming students out of a river. And forget about Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet. In this movie, Clark is not a reporter but everything from an oil-rig worker to a cook in a greasy spoon to a guy who carries equipment around at the site where a spaceship has been discovered. Apparently the ship has been there buried in ice for a long time, and as it turns out, Jor-El is on the ship, though it’s really not Jor-El but a hologram that tells Kal-El all about his past, or what little past he had on Krypton, which wasn’t much since he was a newborn baby at the time.

Oh, and Chet and I both wondered why the planet Krypton, which is supposedly a highly advanced civilization, with the ability for intergalactic flight, is amazingly backward in many respects. For one, the inhabitants (who happen to look just like Earthlings) dress like characters from Lord of the Rings, and they fight with swords. Not light sabers or laser guns but swords. “Where,” Chet and I asked, “is the advanced weaponry?” What’s more, these Kryptonians, or maybe they’re Kryptonites, talk like people from Medieval England. Plus, they live in virtual darkness. I mean, my word, if they’re so advanced, why haven’t they figured out how to illuminate their dwellings?

Man of Steel Cinematography

The way this movie is filmed leaves much to be desired. The color is pitiful, for one; it's rather "grayish;" and the picture looks like it was filmed with a hand-held camera or maybe someone’s Smartphone. On the other hand, there are plenty of special effects, so if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll be in hog heaven. If, however, you like movies with characters you can care about and to whom you can relate, and if you like an intelligent script, don’t waste your time or your money on this film. Instead, go download, rent, or buy Superman: The Movie (1978), starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, which is a thoroughly entertaining, intelligent, beautifully filmed movie, and, unlike this recent turkey, a definite see-again movie. 

Happiness Is Finding Superman in the $5.00 Barrel

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The morning after viewing a little less than half of Man of Steel, which was all either Chet or I could tolerate, and I don't know how we sat through that much, I wanted to erase all lingering dredges of that film from my psyche before it could do irreparable damage, so I jumped into my Tundra and rushed to Walmart, where I dug around in the $5.00 barrel for a good 30 minutes, until I saw it: Superman: The Movie, starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. “Eureka,” I shouted. “I found it!”  Of course, this reaction elicited apprehensive glances from a passing employee as well as several customers, but I didn’t care. I was happy. No, make that ecstatic. I had found Superman in the $5.00 barrel!

Rating for Man of Steel: Don’t see again even if I were threatened with enduring a colonoscopy, having a root canal, and giving childbirth all on the same day and without benefit of anesthesia.

All right, I know I said this was going to be a short review, but I got carried away. Sorry.