Man of Steel

[Yuki-Anne]

So, what did you guys think? In my opinion, it's one of the least confusing/frustrating Superman adaptations I've ever seen.

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: My biggest complaint (and pretty much everyone else's) has ALWAYS been Lois Lane's stupidity. How is an investigative reporter, paid to pay attention to details, so dull she never recognizes Superman behind the glasses? She gets closer to him than anyone else! So I really liked the way this movie handled it: she already knows, right from the start. Finally, a Lois Lane who isn't completely idiotic.
This is also the first time a movie has explained things well enough that I now understand why Kryptonite and Kryptonian things would make Superman weak. Not having read the comics that has always been a point that confused me. It was always like, "Oh, Kryptonite, my one weakness!" but nobody ever really explained why that would make him weak.

I liked it.

[FreddyCast]

It was the BEST movie I've seen this year. Better than the Avengers, story-wise and action-wise.

[Sammy Boy]

Hmm, perhaps I will buy the film when it comes out on DVD then.

I just didn't feel the that main actor "looked" like Superman. He gave me more of a "flying gladiator" vibe.

[shooraijin]

Yes, me too. I actually rather liked Superman Returns, and the more I see pieces of the film, the more I realize this is a hard reboot and keeps virtually none of the Superman I enjoyed.

[Xeno]

I rather enjoyed Man of Steel. There were a few parts that I felt could have been done a bit better/differently, but overall I think it was worth the money spent to see it. I was always frustrated with older Superman movies because of their lack of having him be that "super" and this seemed to finally pull it off. Though I have to agree with some of the criticisms out there that the movie felt pulled in two different directions because it felt like I was watching two movies back to back (an origin movie and then a remake of Superman II).

[Nate]

I liked it, but I hesitate to say it was a great movie. I'd probably give it like two and a half stars out of four.

First, way too much time was spent on Krypton. I realize they were trying to introduce Zod and set him up as the main villain. Great, I understand that. Still spent too much time on Krypton. Introduce Zod, show him trying to overthrow the council, banished to the Phantom Zone, Superman in a pod, Krypton explodes. Should have been ten minutes, at best.

Second, too many flashbacks.

Third, this is a minor complaint, but I really didn't like the suit. I know that you have to take liberties sometimes with comic book outfits, since what looks good in a cartoon doesn't necessarily look good in real life, but I didn't like the suit looking like chain mail. Someone pointed out that it was basically supposed to be Kryptonian armor, and I realize that, but I still did not like how it looked.

Fourth, and this is my biggest complaint (and apparently the exact opposite of how Xeno felt), this movie made Superman look far too weak. Normally in the first installment of a superhero movie, there's a particular pattern that's followed, and it's followed for a reason. You set up the creation of the hero, you have the hero do heroic things, and then you have the hero get into a fight where they are clearly dominant and seemingly unbeatable. Then, later in the movie, you have the fight where the hero is getting stomped and it looks impossible, then finally defeat the villain.

Man of Steel didn't have that. They tried really hard to set up Superman's powers through him doing things like holding up the oil rig, and flying in the ship, and the like. The problem is that the first thing that happens when Superman meets the villains is get weakened by the Kryptonian atmosphere on the ship, and become so weak that Lois and Ghost Dad have to rescue him. After that, we have our first fight scene where Supes takes on two Kryptonians! And promptly gets his butt kicked. This is bad. This is bad for two reasons. One, it makes Superman look weak and ineffectual because this is the first fight we've seen in the movie, and the hero is losing. Two, it makes the final fight against Zod less interesting because we've already seen Superman fighting two Kryptonians before.

Take a movie like Iron Man, which is really the first movie that came to my head for whatever reason. The first thing Tony Stark does with the prototype Iron Man suit is blast his way out of the prison he was kept in and blow things up. When he gets home and builds the actual Iron Man suit, the next fight he gets into is him taking on some tanks in a village, where he is clearly superior and easily handles things. This builds up Iron Man to look powerful. This makes it more interesting when Iron Monger finally shows up in the last part of the film. We have seen how strong the Iron Man suit is, and so it causes us to view Iron Monger as a powerful villain indeed, since he is able to easily best the hero we have seen easily handle things before. It increases the tension.

Whereas with Superman it's like "Oh he's getting the crap kicked out of him by the Kryptonians. Oh now he's going to fight Zod." Superman is shown as weak in his first battle, so there's less tension in the Zod fight, it's not as interesting since we already saw him getting beaten by the two Kryptonians earlier.

I dunno. It was just bad.

Finally, this movie seemed to want to have the theme of free will vs. determinism for some reason, which is not a theme commonly associated with Superman. The theme of Superman (as with Spider-Man) is "With great power comes great responsibility" (Kenvince Constner even says something similar in a flashback). So for them to throw in a theme that isn't really associated with Supes is kind of weird. Again, on its own it wouldn't be much of a problem, but it just adds on to the other complaints. I just don't see what's wrong with Zod being more or less the same as he was in Superman II, wanting to take revenge on Superman for what Jor-El did, and deciding "Hey might as well take over these pathetic humans" while he was there. Making him this "I must restore Krypton no matter what, because that is what I was created to do!" guy is just unnecessary. It doesn't make him more complex or sympathetic if that's what they were going for.

I did like the ending though. And like I said, I don't hate this movie. I thought it was a good movie! Just not great. I'm more looking forward to the second one, which will be able to skip all the origin stuff and probably feature Lex Luthor.