The Best Things About "Man of Steel" Are The Effects And Kevin Costner... Characters? Not So Much...

Man of Steel (2013)

I was not really terribly interested in seeing "Man Of Steel" until I saw a clop from one of the fight sequences on Youtube. there's a female evil Kryptonian working for the villainous General Zod who seems kind of cool and we get to see her throw Superman through a series of buildings, only finally stopping when he hits a reinforced safe door. I found the way the speed, strength and brutality of these extraterrestrial immortals was portrayed so beautiful and exciting that the cheesy yet well-delivered lines in that scene failed to put me off. I felt disinclined to miss the film, especially considering that I don't always agree with the popular opinion on films. (And heck, opinions aren't wholly negative. While only 56% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked the film, it has a score of 7.4 on IMDB right now.)



Another reason why I was interested is because of the director Zack Snyder. I've generally enjoyed most films of his I've seen. I think "300" is beautiful and engaging even if a little silly and I love everything besides the Queen of Sparta scenes in that movie. I actually prefer Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" remake to the original (which I've always felt was by far the worst paced of Romero's initial zombie trilogy). On top of that, I think the director's cut of "Watchmen" is one of my favourite superhero movies of all time (even if this genre isn't exactly brimming with masterpieces). So overall I've been a bit of a Zack Snyder fan and the only films of his I haven't seen are the cartoon about warrior owls ("Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole") and the glorified music video ("Suckerpunch").



As I sat down to watch "Man of Steel" I had mixed feelings about the opening. On the one hand, Krypton is now a fantasy wonderland with "Dark Crystal"-esque animals wandering around and some liquid metal technology all over the place. It's fairly pretty, but Krypton ends up feeling less like less a mysterious and allegorical location like it seemed to me in the original "Superman" movie and more like a real place. The additional background information provided about Krypton this time around makes it all the harder to accept the bizarre political situation going on there, which has now been made more convoluted than ever.
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