I have a confession to make, and it’s not the one about me wearing my underpants on the outside of my trousers. It’s that, to the day I saw the new ‘Man of Steel’ film, I’ve never seen a Superman movie. Sure, like a lot of people of my age, I watched Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher as Clark and Lois in the anachronistically titled ‘New Adventures of Superman’ as a youngster, but I’ve never seen Reeve or Ruth in action. But, as I imagine is the case for most people, I am familiar with the mythology of the man in the cape.
‘Man of Steel’ casts Henry Cavill as the Krypton-born superhero and, with one eye presumably on a ‘Justice League’ movie, sets up his origin story and starts from scratch. So, we get to see the last days of Krypton, crippled by their very own equivalent of man-made global warming, where the young Kal-El is sent blasting off into space by his father, played brilliantly by Russell Crowe, to start a new life elsewhere to stop them repeating the same mistakes of the residents of Krypton. Meanwhile, General Zod is causing all manner of upset and has other plans for their future before being imprisoned following an impressive opening battle scene.
Naturally Kal-El lands on Earth and grows up as Clark Kent in Smallville before morphing into the superhero we know, saving kids in buses and going from place-to-place to avoid the exposure so feared by his father, who breaks the key rule we know about pets and danger and sets in motion the mantra of the man in steel. But soon Zod is back, threatening the planet, and it’s up to Superman to save the planet.
‘Man of Steel’ has a brilliant opening hour or so. The backstory and history of Krypton is well told and the jumping around of timelines through Kent’s life really builds the character, and “love interest” Lois Lane gets a much more fleshed out role in this piece. Both Cavill and Adams fit neatly into their characters though much of Kent’s human-side is established by a very convincing turn by a young Clark Kent, played by Cooper Timberline.
The tension that builds through the discovery of a buried spacecraft and Zod’s scary and tense take-over of the television network really lifts the film up and Russell Crowe’s turn as his hologram-father is brilliant, with his guidance of Lois Lane one of the genuine more light-hearted elements of an otherwise dark film (the other being a great joke with a building site sign).
Sadly, as the film enters its final third it loses all the momentum that it has set up. The conclusion suffers from the same problems that ‘The Avengers Assemble’ had, in that it ends up feeling like a video game battle with little spark, where the CGI budget has been thrown at the screen rather than plot. The construction drills from the ‘Star Trek’ reboot meet CGI versions of the actors being thrown through buildings, and into cars. It all looks very impressive but ultimately devaluates the build-up and it ends up feeling like a retread of the conclusion to the Matrix trilogy with Neo and Agent Smith’s air-battle, but without the impressive choreography or lighting. In short, it’s a shallow, lifeless ending. It has, for instance, none of the energy that was seen in the building-battle between Spider-man and Doc Ock in the second film of that original trilogy, or the grit of Batman vs Bane in the Dark Knight’s recent third appearance.
‘Man of Steel’, even with its disappointing ending, is worth seeing thanks to its strong first-half storytelling and the tension built through the stand-off between the two cultures. There is a good amount of fallibility put into the character of Clark Kent to avoid him becoming too undefeatable, and the set pieces are always nothing short of impressive. Russell Crowe stands out as my favourite contribution to the piece but there is also great support from other minor characters such as the head newsreader played by Laurence Fishbourne. Henry Cavill fits neatly into the role and the modernising of his costume works, and Amy Adams gets to be more than the typically Lois Lane love interest. Michael Shannon’s ‘Zod’ feels a fleshed out baddie, it’s just a shame he gets lumped with becoming nothing more than a collection of 1s and 0s in the bombastic, but boring conclusion.
With a better written and directed ending this could have been up there with ‘The Dark Knight’. Instead, it’s a well set-up film that nails the history and backstory but reduces Superman to a bit of meat being thrown through more metal and glass, in destruction of Metropolis that must cost a few pennies. It’s not as dark as ‘The Dark Knight’ with some shots of humour, but it’s the fleshing out of the Superman character and his involvement with the human race that really sell the film, and it’ll be interesting to see how they tackle the world’s knowledge of him and his involvement with the military in the inevitable sequel.
(6/10)
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