“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith first. The trust part comes later.”
Going into Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, I, of course, like everyone else, was expecting this to be the greatest movie ever made. Or at least the best superhero movie ever made, besides The Dark Knight, which in my opinion could never be toppled (sorry, Bane). And not to say that it was bad; it was incredible. But I just needed something more out of it. I know it was nothing compared to the terribleness of an earlier 1983 attempt of making a Superman flick, but I dunno. Maybe it was just too much CGI. Either way, thank God for Michael Shannon!
We start out in Krypton, where Kal-El (Henry Cavill aka Clarke Kent aka Superman) is being born (like, you even see his baby dick! It’s awkward), and a bunch of shit is going down. A species of way too technologically advanced people face their own doom on a planet that’s in self-destruction mode (sound familiar?). Due to the unsafe conditions, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) sends his son in a vessel to Earth to live his life “normally” (by normally I mean secretly living with unearthly superpowers.)
Krypton’s villan General Zod and Jor-El’s nemesis (Michael Shannon), who has been imprisoned in a black hole for his crimes, finally escapes in the midst of all of the planet’s chaos. Like Jor-El, he is determined to save Krypton, with help from none other than Superman, whom he is actively on the hunt for. “You have no idea how long we’ve been searching for you,” he says. When Zod’s ship lands on Earth and a series of mysterious incidents start to happen to Kal-El, Earth realizes that they are not alone; there is an extraterrestrial living amongst them.
Curious reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) who later comes across Clarke Kent’s superbeing secret that builds up the crescendo of, well, Superman being Superman, is determined to get her story published. Of course the two spark a romance that is never quite defined, but at the end it makes sense what direction the next film might be headed.
Man of Steel was fun; it was one of those “you just gotta” see movies, and the classic Snyder action-packedness had everything to do with that. But could Superman have upped his one-liners a little bit? Probably. Could he have just kept his beard the whole time? I mean, easily. Did I want the super suit to be a little edgier? Yes, maybe. Regardless, the movie sets up a hopeful future for the Superman franchise, and to help make up for those awful movies they made everyone watch in the 80s…
(photo via media-feed)
