I saw the Man of Steel a few days ago, and I figured I'd give you my thoughts on it. Spoilers you ask? Derp, yes.


Okay, so I had high expectations for this movie. After the string of good to great Marvel-based superhero movies in recent years - culminating with last year's excellent Avenger's movie - I was really hoping that there would be a DC-derived superhero movie that would just be phenomenal (Dark Knight notwithstanding). And.... this movie just didn't do it for me. Don't get me wrong, the movie was decent, but there were some nagging problems.

One of my bigger complaints has to do with what most movies these days have been doing, which is eschewing better storytelling and character development for big action sequences and explosions gallore (pew, pew lasers!). The Avengers did this best and I doubt better could really be done. Honestly - and I'm no movie buff or art affiicionado - I cared more for a better story direction than how many buildings Superman could plough General Zod through. Namely, they used up a lot of precious screentime over-explaining Superman's backstory (especially his childhood and Dad) that could perhaps have better been used on, say, better developing his relationship with Louis Lane or having Zod more powerfully test Superman's moral fortitude. And that over-explaining left basically nothing for your brain to do and work, which tends to make most movies more boring, at least for me.


Another annoyance was the sort of beating you over the head with Christianity. I mean hell, I don't care if you're a Christian. Woop de doo. But come on, Superman going to a priest to ask whether or not to comply with Zod's ultimatum (and the priest convincing him to do so)? Flying backwards out of Zod's Kryptonian starship with his arms outstretched and feet pointed down to make a cross? He (Superman) having a special birth with regard to his fellow Krytonians? Jor-El telling his son that "You can save them, you can save them all son" and "They are an inferior race. They will stumble, they will fall. But one day, they will join you in the sun"?
Jeez, we get it. The producers seemed to obviously be going for Superman = Jesus vibe (though if you actually compared the two, Supes might not like that...). Oh, and throw in the bit with Zod's female Kryptonian lieutenant juxtaposing Superman's possession of a sense of morality against the superiority of biological evolution? Don't make me laugh (i.e the producers don't seem to understand evolution). For goodness sake, she even shouts "Evolution always wins!!!11". Come on, that's really just pandering to the more fundamentalist of the religious base (Young Earth Creationist & anti-evolutionists (who are nearly always the former as well) especially).
Basically, I don't care if movies have religious overtones if they're done well. But Man of Steel implements them in so vacuous, poor, forced and sloppy a manner that it's just screen-fodder basically.

/mini religion rant


In closing, I'd just like to say that the Man of Steel wasn't a bad movie; it was pretty good, enjoyable. The visuals were superb, Superman was played well and the fight between Superman and Zod at the end was pretty good (though it ended kind of boringly). But given the crap that was the last Superman reboot, I was expecting them to put a lot into Man of Steel, and it just didn't accomplish that for me.

What did you all think about it?