Man of Steel Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Man of Steel
Year: 2013
Director: Zack Snyder
Country: US
Language: English 

The superhero genre has had its ups and downs, its masterpieces and the occasional embarrassment which would rather be forgotten about. While films like Spiderman 3, Daredevil, and Batman and Robin have left us groaning in agony, at least pictures like Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy exist to give comfort to super-nerds. Many people have a favourite superhero, not surprisingly Superman tops many fan's lists. X-ray vision, super strength, muscular physique, who wouldn't want to be him? Perhaps the people who saw the terribly cliche Man of Steel.

Henry Cavill stars as Clark Kent/Superman in this picture, which depicts the hero from birth to adulthood while ignoring his melodramatic high school days as examined by the hit television show Smallville. As a young man he wishes to discover what he was sent to Earth to do, as an adult he must become the hero Gotham needs him to be.

Man of Steel is everything Superman isn't, but everything batman is. It attempts to be dark and brooding,as well as giving great effort in attempt to be existentialist but, unlike Nolan's Trilogy, it doesn't have the screenplay or character development to back it up. It's a film with incredible cgi fight scenes and Michael Bay-esque explosions, but not much else. We don't get great scenes regarding Superman's origins, rather they feel rushed and poorly edited.

It's unfortunate that the film is 98% mindless violence and 2% character study, Clark Kent is a psychologist's dream subject but Director Zack Snyder doesn't give a damn about that, instead he paint's superman as a Rambo-Terminator hybrid who violates even his most basic principles. Not even the relationship between Lois Lane and Kent is given a fair glance. Sure the "Superman is Jesus" metaphor makes the film somewhat interesting, but it's cliche, it has been done in almost every superhero movie including Dark Knight Rises.

In conclusion, Man of Steel is easily one of the worst adaptations of the Superman comics. It is certainly a far fall from Christopher Reeve's films in the late 70's and early 80's. Though the trailer makes the picture look like a complex tale about Superman's origins, it is anything but. This movie should be called Man of Steal Your Money. Piss on it! 1/5