Man of Still Not Perfect, but Pretty Close

 

As I’ve said before, I’m a much bigger Marvel comics fan than I am a DC comics fan, so a lot of people may see this as a biased review. Maybe it is, a little, but I try not to. As a matter of fact, I go in to most DC movies expecting less than I do going into Marvel ones because I know the stories better for Marvel. I’m looking for specific things. This, though, this is Superman. Anyone who knows comics knows this story, so it’s hard to say it’s a biased opinion.

So what did I think: I thought it was good. Very good. I was not, however, blown away by any stretch and do not feel this is the greatest comic book movie ever made, like I have read some people do. Right now my gold standard is Iron Man 1, and nothing else has reached it just yet. I would say though that this is one of those you should see in the theater, and really on IMAX. It just makes the experience better for this type of movie. This is also no comparison between this one and Superman Returns. This one is light years ahead of it’s predecessor.

The first thing I came away from this movie thinking was action. This one actually had action. Superman Returns was a borefest (even though I enjoyed Brandon Routh) and someone was paying attention to that when they wrote this one. To an extent, though, its also one thing I didn’t like, but I’ll get into that more later. Another thing I immediately thought was Henry Cavill was really, really good. He most certainly has the look needed for this iconic character, and he definitely gave an “alien” feel to the role. The last thing that immediately struck me coming out was how much more madly in love with Amy Adams I am now. Besides being a fantastic actress, she is flat out gorgeous. You can add her to my list of “Actresses Who Could Eat Toast on Film and I’d Still Pay to See It” actresses. Her Lois, as expected, was excellent. Michael Shannon, who plays General Zod, I thought was good as well. Not great, unfortunately, but good. I also loved the interpretation of Krypton. The CGI and thought that went in to designing this world was fantastic. It was most certainly alien, but had enough human elements to allow you to relate to what was going on there.

So you might be wondering why, if I liked all of that so much, why I only felt the movie was good. Well, let’s answer that. Did I like that there was so much action? Yes. However, I did not like how a good portion of it was done. I understand these are aliens, and that they can move as super speed, but I hate action scenes where everything is so close up and SO fast that it’s often times hard to tell what’s going on. I call it “The Bourne Syndrome.” I liked most of those movies, but they had a TON of that. It was very often distracting and took me out of things. I also did not care for the “time skips” that take place at the beginning. The movie jumps around a lot for about the first hour maybe, so much so that it almost made Pulp Fiction seem normal. Another thing I did not care for was the sheer amount of destruction that takes place in this movie. Yes, I know that sounds weird, but follow me here. Someone clearly watched the Avengers and said “we need to blow up and destroy more stuff than they did.” Once the second half of the movie kicks in, at least two towns, Smallville and Metropolis, get damn near wiped off the map. I know that’s spoiler-ish, so I apologize, but I can’t really explain this one without giving that much up. For a character that is supposedly so determined to save humanity, he makes zero attempt to move massive fights from highly populated areas, or to not throw bad guys through buildings where people might actually be residing. There are a few other things I was not a fan of, but they would give up too much more of the movie. 

So overall, yes, I did enjoy the movie, but was it great? Not really. Will I own the bluray when it comes out? Yeah, definitely, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to go see it in the theater again right away. I would certainly go again if someone else wanted to go, but I wouldn’t go on my own. That being said, again, you should see it in the theater. You will lose something without seeing it on the big screen. And with all that being said, I will admit one thing, and it’s somewhat spoiler-ish again, so I apologize. There was no “Kneel before Zod” and there was a very easy spot available to put it in. Major point deduction.

Until next time…

Class dismissed.