I am not a Superman fan. I just want to point that out. The idea of an immortal superhero just doesn't sit well with me. The whole point of a superhero movie, is to see the hero face a challenge, to take on a very dangerous foe. If the superhero is immortal, which is basically what Superman is, there's no challenge. Even before watching a film or TV show, or reading one of his graphic novels/comics, there's no suspense, there's no tension.
Alright, I know Superman isn't exactly immortal or impervious, but he might as well be. Hell, his powers got so great that after 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' they rebooted his powers and made them limited. And his ONE major weakness is kryptonite, the rarest material known to man. Which for some reason everyone has.
Anyway, the film. Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) always felt like a loner. Learning from an early age that his parents (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) are not his real parents and that he came from another world, Clarke goes to learn who he truly is. However he gets more than he bargains for when General Zod (Michael Shannon), a ruthless warrior from Clarke's homeworld, comes to Earth.
The film is weird. And I really do mean that. The opening scene is Clarke's father Jor-El (Russell Crowe) trying to stop Zod from claiming the codex of Krypton. And I really wanted to see more. I wanted to see more of Krypton's last days than the actual film. They better be doing a prequel, I don't even care if they reuse footage from this film.
After that we get a really broken up film. It fast forwards to his adult years while flashbacking to his childhood, which really didn't work. We're thrown into the deep end, we don't learn everything we need to. We don't care enough about his childhood because it's shown through broken up flashbacks, and we don't care about his adulthood because we've learnt virtually nothing about him.
And then, Zod just disappears for a while. When he turned up again I was feeling that the film had forgotten about him. Again this falls with the flashbacks to Clarke's being a side attraction. Now, if the film did the flashbacks first, occasionally cutting to Zod, this would have been alright, we'd have learnt about Clarke and we'd remember the threat of Zod.
Actually, thinking about it, this isn't really the same Superman I've heard about. Okay, I'm not a fan of Superman so I didn't really pay much attention to his comics and such. I've only really connected with him because he appeared in the animated 'Justice League' TV series and a few Batman crossovers. However, I always felt that Superman, unless incapacitated, would seek to protect the people of Earth. Here, I got the impression that he couldn't care less. Most of the time anyway. I mean, during the fight between Faora-El (Antje Traue) and Nam-Ek (Uncredited)
No, not Namekians. Though I get the connection.
Superman tells people to get inside buildings, and five seconds later he's throwing the bad guys THROUGH those same buildings. He even says he doesn't know if humanity is worth saving despite meeting good people like Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and his foster mother and father.
Speaking of Lois Lane, Amy Adams' portrayal was alright. I liked how they changed her from the stereotypical damsel in distress to a more hands on individual, but why she was at certain places boggled the mind. Did the military officials General Swanwick (Harry Lennix) and Colonel Hardy (Christopher Meloni) really feel she was so important to take her everywhere? Adams' acting was pretty good, but nothing spectacular.
Now, I did like Superman...Clarke Kent...Kal-El...whatever you want to call him. To see him looking for an identity, to try and find out about his past. And then he finds it and starts talking. A lot. Henry Cavill portrayed a great mysterious Clarke Kent, but as Superman he falls below the mark. Oh, and a nitpick here, one that has been around for ages but despite loads of people seeing Superman up front, they STILL can't identify him when he puts glasses on!
In fact I felt more connected to most of the supporting characters, General Swanwick, Colonel Hardy, the newspaper editor Perry White (Laurence Fishburne). The problem is we don't really learn much about them; and for good reason, this is a Superman film after all. There are however some truly great performances. Russell Crowe as Jor-El was truly outstanding, he dominated the scenes he was in, he was certainly better than Cavill. Michael Shannon delivered an equally imposing performance as Zod, though he did lose that in one scene when he delivered the same line of dialogue four times. Kevin Foster meanwhile also gave a powerful performance as Jonathan Kent, the devoted father who put others before himself. Then, Antje Traue gave a surprisingly great performance as Zod's devoted lieutenant Faora-El. Speaking of which, her and the other Kryptonion armour look superb. It looks imposing and menacing, intimidating,
unlike the original which looks like a bathrobe.
In fact, I love the new armour, I want one.
The effects in the meantime...are fifty-fifty to be honest with you. Most cases, if not all, they look fake, particularly the satellite in space and whenever Superman flies. Despite this however the action scenes look brilliant, particularly Zod's coup on Krypton and the fights between Zod's forces and Superman. That being said the flying scenes, and every single other scene in this film, would have been so much better if the Goddamn camera wasn't shaking the entire time. I wouldn't moan about it much if it was just for action scenes, but it's literally every single shot. Why? Why did they do this? Was the cameraman drunk? Why would they do this? It isn't clever it disorientates the viewer!
So. A guy who doesn't like Superman reviewing a Superman movie, so it's safe to say I didn't enjoy it right? Not necessarily. Yeah, after reading this review you'd probably say I hated it, but in actual fact it's the opposite, I really enjoyed this movie. I think it was more the action scenes than anything else, where they pretty much held nothing back, it was pure entertainment. This had the popcorn movie element that was missing from 'World War Z'. I enjoyed it more than 'Iron Man 3' and may even day say the climatic battle is even better than 'Avengers Assemble', even if it had a poor climatic choice, you'll know it when you see it; but I will still say that 'Avengers Assemble' IS still the better superhero film since it actually has characters we care about. As an origin story I did enjoy it more than 'Batman Begins', but still prefer 'The Dark Knight', personally. I certainly won't be hesitant in seeing more Superman films after seeing this. I'd definitely say go and see it.
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