Man of Steel

by Jake Albano

Man of Steel is the newest Superman movie in the franchise, once again rebooting the series. The movie is directed by Zack Snyder, who is best known for movies such as 300 and Watchmen. The movie stars Harry Calvill, as Superman and Amy Adams as Lois Lane. For the most part, the acting holds up and is a strong effort by the actors. However, Harry Calvill was not the best choice for Superman. At times, he would be very bland and sometimes he would just have the exact same facial expression on for scenes at a time.

Now, let’s jump into the actual movie. To start, the movie had awkward pacing. One moment, there could be a huge, drawn out action sequence and the next there would be a melodramatic flash back with calming music and an overall subdued tone. The movie also had moments where the scenes were nothing but CGI, after which it would switch to a non-CGI scene, making the scenes look strange. But overall, the movie looked pretty good. And seeing it in 3D was not at all worth it. There were a few scenes that looked cool, but most of the action scenes ended up being really shaky, blurry, and overall hard to follow. In addition, the action scenes at points are so over the top that they just get boring to watch after a while. Most of them involved Superman getting angry and launching someone into a building, or launching someone into a gas tank to make way for a huge explosion.

Moving on, the main villain in this film is General Zod. Something the movie could have done better, was explain why Superman and General Zod had superpowers on Earth, but not their home planet. You kind of have to infer that yourself. Also, Superman is only said twice in this movie, both times in the same scene. And this made the movie feel more like an action sci-fi thriller than an actual super hero movie. Aside from this, the plot is laid out pretty well but does not bring anything new to the table. It is pretty much your typical bad guy does this, good guy has a conflict, good guy kills bad guy story. And, of course, the movie ends by making way for sequels.

So all in all, Man of Steel isn’t a must see, it would probably be more worth it to wait until it comes out on Netflix, or to rent it somewhere. My final verdict for the movie would be that it is just a typical action movie with no real stand-alone features. It was very mediocre.

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