Man of Steel review

Superman is boring, or at least that's my opinion. I like my superheroes to be flawed, to struggle to do the right thing and to be average people who are stupidly courageous. I love Hawkeye, Spiderman, the Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America, Robin (all of them!) more than I like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Thor, any of the X-Men or Superman.

I also like my superhero movies to be fun. I love explosions and fights and epic CGI battles that are as awesome as they are ridiculous, but I want those things to make me laugh and cheer and sit slack-jawed in amazement. I want to come out of a theater laughing and feeling good. The least upbeat of the Avengers series has been Captain America: The First Avenger and even that had feel good moments and humor. I'm not a fan of the Nolan Batman movies simply because they are so dark. (also, no Robin) There was never anything happy or uplifting about the Batman trilogy and that doesn't mean they weren't good, just not what I want in a superhero movie. (Although that whole 'twist' at the end of the last film with "Robin" was horrible and lame and we shan't speak of it any longer)

Which, all that to say, I didn't expect to like Man of Steel. I'm not a fan of dark superhero flicks, and I'm not a fan of the character of Superman. The film was well made, the explosions were...there were a lot of them! I am a big fan of disaster movies too and this sort of ticked both boxes. Metropolis and Smallville were decimated to the extent that I was sure there had to be a retcon moment involved. You know the kind, when things are so bad that they write in a way to fix the problem. Think of the time in Doctor Who when a 1/3 of Earth's population was killed off and their solution was to just erase the last year and make it never happen.

The movie ends with it looking like there's no problem in Metropolis. No giant gaping crater where the center of the city stood, no massive funereal atmosphere mourning the lives lost, not a single scene showing the aftermath. I'm not saying I want an additional 30 minutes of post-fight construction work, or even a scene talking about the cost or aftermath of the destruction...but if they aren't going to talk about it, maybe they shouldn't just show other scenes that make it seem like nothing happened.

I'm glad I went and I did enjoy aspects of this film. It really was very well done and I loved all the Krypton backstory. The scene in the spaceship explaining the history of what happened in all the lovely depression-era art was pretty awesome. Oh! And the Lexcorp tanker truck was fun to see as well. Sure, it wasn't my favorite superhero movie...or even one that I would watch again. But it was an okay way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

For another review that explores the actual character of Superman and problems with this movie, check out this review by Mark Waid, a writer for DC who has actually written Superman comics. Be aware, it's very spoilery.