Man of Steel

[elfneedsfood]

This movie was better and more interesting than the Superman comic has been in years. It's also the best Superman movie ever made by far. It was pretty incredible.

[MechDeus]

I liked it a lot. The levity bits were pretty awkward.

[Dolemite]

Good, but not great. Avengers was much better (as well as some of the other upper-tier Marvel movies)...I know that Avengers had some plot holes and whatever, but I didn’t care because I liked it so much. I liked Man of Steel, but I was already nit-picking it when I was walking out of the theater.

Man of Steel represents a quantum leap of quality for Snyder over Sucker Punch, but only because Sucker Punch is one of the biggest pieces of shit ever made in the history of everything.

Not really in the mood to type out anything in-depth, but I AM in the mood to throw random points and observations.

The dude playing Supes was really good...probably the best thing about the movie. Didn't make me think of Chris Reeves at all. Very likable, looked the part, held his British accent in check like a pro. Great job, and he’s what holds the movie together in it’s weakest moments.

The whole opening scene with Krypton completely sucked because everything about it was SO FUCKING RUSHED. In rapid-fire succession: Kal is born, Jor-El says Krypton is doomed, Zod stages his uprising, Joe-El steals a freaking skull and goes flying through the air in a dragon around exploding fucking spaceships, launches Kal, is killed by Zod, Zod is tried and sent to the Phantom Zone, Krypton blows up. Not one quiet second to get you to know who the fuck any of these people are...if I wasn't familiar with the comic and had seen the old movies I would have had no idea whatsoever what the hell was going on.

Kryptonian tech was actually pretty cool-looking, except for the stupid T-1000 viewscreens.

Luckily, the pace slowed significantly one Kal reaches Earth and concentrated a tiny bit more on establishing Kal/Clark's character; I found these scenes to be actually somewhat charming and entertaining. It wasn't deep or anything, but it was a hell of a lot better than the clusterfuck Krypton was.

I also liked how they skipped the usual linear origin story in favor of showing his upbringing via short little flashbacks. It made going through his story less of a chore than it usually is in reboots.

I liked Russell Crowe as Jor-El. A lot , actually.

Why bother hiring a real actor like Larry Fishburne if you’re not going to give him a fucking thing to do?

Christopher Meloni’s role was bigger than I thought. Probably my second favorite thing about this movie. Dude’s awesome.

Pa Kent’s death was retarded. He RUNS BACK INTO A TORNADO to save the family dog when Clark could have done it with zero personal danger. And he COMMANDS Clark not to rescue him when he probably could have done it faster than anyone could have seen. Just so stupid. Also, they stole the same exact scene from Rami’s Spider-Man when Peter tells Uncle Ben that he’s not his father and then Uncle Ben dies five minutes later. You just knew Pa Kent was a dead man the second Clark belted out the "you're not my dad!" line, and yup, he was. lol.

Amy Adams is cute in a non-Hollywood, realistic kinda way. I mean, she’s got some wrinkles and creases going on instead of flawless, porcelain skin. I almost couldn’t believe such a non-perfect person could have been cast in a major movie like this. It was actually refreshing. *EDIT* Shit, she's 38. Had no idea.

BTW, I dug her investigating the urban myths that had sprung up around Clark's comings and goings over the years. That was kinda cool. I also don't mind that she knows his real identity.

Other than maybe some development for Supes, pretty much everyone was flat, one-dimensional, and pretty much soulless. But I expected that, so whatever. Still, would it hurt to raise the bar just a little? That said, Snyder is still very much a “visuals” kinda guy. Characters obviously come second.

And yeah, the fact that Superman was obviously responsible for killing probably thousands and thousands of people during his various battles is just something that I can’t get past. Metropolis is basically Manhattan for all intents and purposes and the segment with the “World Engines” or whatever the fuck they were called only took place over a short amount of time, probably no more than a few hours (at the very most...probably less). There’s no way a city of that size would have been evacuated in that span of time and, as evidenced by many, many shots during the battles, Metropolis was obviously still packed with people. All those buildings Supes and Zod destroyed HAD to have had people in them, and those people were fucked. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was watching. I mean, the fight itself was pretty rad and all, but Supes is a mass-murderer, plain and simple. Of course, this wouldn’t occur to Snyder, who’s just concerned with getting to the next pretty shot.

Why is Lois Lane in the right place at the right time every single time something went down? I mean, every single time?

Superman yells a lot.

I was praying they wouldn’t go with “Clark Kent, Mind-Mannered Reporter” at the end. But they did. Fuck.

I liked how they represented Supes’ powers- the flight, speed, punches, heat vision, the combat, all that stuff was cool. I also liked how they showed him trying to come to grips with his powers as a kid. I feel this movie has come the closest to really portraying the Superman of the comics.

That said, I also liked how they showed Zod freaking out a little as he was acclimating to his new-found powers on Earth as well. Nice touch. Michael Shannon was pretty solid as Zod, despite his little fairy lisp.

I’m getting very, very tired of every superhero movie having to be a bigger balls-out spectacle and cause more insane, widespread destruction than the last one. I’m getting numb to it. It felt a bit more organic to the plot in Avengers because they build up to the crazy shit at the end, whereas in Man of Steel it was just EXTREME DESTRUCTION from the opening onward with little-to-no build-up. Fuck, they basically destroyed Smallville AND Metropolis in this movie, how do you outdo that in the sequel? Supes’ll have to punch the fucking planet in half in Man of Steel 2 to even begin to compare. It’s getting old.

Woah, typed out more than I thought!

Again, good but not great movie packed with a lot of cool action, Hollywood summer blockbuster clichés. Missing the humor of the Reeves movies, but the action is obviously much better. Overall, fun but not really all that memorable, but I also must point out that I’m not the biggest Superman fan on the planet.

[George]

Can we talk about how Supes' chest hairs were sticking out from the neckline of his suit? I simply could not ignore it for the whole movie.

[Dolemite]

This review pretty much covers how I feel about the movie, but I feel this dude was waaay more harsh than I would have been. Despite the problems Man of Steel had I did kinda like the movie.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/62877

BTW, didn't really notice those chest hairs, lol.

[Anthony]

I am a superman fan these days, and I rather liked the movie!

I agree it's not as good as Avengers, but that is pretty much the best superhero movie out there...

I think it is at least on par with pretty much everything else though. It really was fairly good.

My nitpick is there is more Russel Crowe than there is Kevin Costner. I always liked the whole grew attached to his adoptive parents thing, I barely felt that at all when I watched this movie.

[Will]

I'd give the movie a 8/10

It finally delivered the Superman action people have been wanting and that Superman Returns just never delivered, however it does have problems like as mentioned the collateral damage parts and Lois just not feeling like anything close to a strong character which is a shame because a lot of the other media Lois roles (Terri Hatcher in Lois & Clark, Dana Delany in the Timm Animated series, Erica Durance in Smallville) were all better and stronger depictions. Also how hard would it have been to just darken her hair?

Anyway, Zod was good, Faora was really good, Jon and Martha Kent....didn't really have much problems there.

[Bacon McShig]

I’m getting very, very tired of every superhero movie having to be a bigger balls-out spectacle and cause more insane, widespread destruction than the last one. I’m getting numb to it. It felt a bit more organic to the plot in Avengers because they build up to the crazy shit at the end, whereas in Man of Steel it was just EXTREME DESTRUCTION from the opening onward with little-to-no build-up. Fuck, they basically destroyed Smallville AND Metropolis in this movie, how do you outdo that in the sequel? Supes’ll have to punch the fucking planet in half in Man of Steel 2 to even begin to compare. It’s getting old.

Yeah, uh, what was up with the Space Superjail for Wayward Kryptonians being equipped with apocalypse-grade terraforming death engines? That seems like a rather glaring security snafu. Lot of stuff in this movie that begs the audience "Boy, it'd be great if you please didn't think about this a little bit!"

[sedition]

they picked that up at an abandoned outpost.

[Anthony]

I think this movie would have been more cool if they started destroying metropolis because Clark didn't turn himself in. And he released the importance of self sacrifice from it by losing Lana Lane or something like that.