TL;DR –. It’s a generally sound foundation, even if it falls apart a bit at the end.   

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-Credit Scene.

Man of Steel Review –

As the DCEU came to an end, I found myself with some unfinished business. I had watched and reviewed every movie in the franchise, bar one, the film that started it all. Well, it is time to fix that oversight as we jump back into the opening salvo of the Snyderverse, a foundation that might not have ever reached its intended zenith but is still worth exploring.

So to set the scene, we open with Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) in hard labour as her husband, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), looks on. It is a healthy child, something to celebrate if it was not so dyer. For you see, Kypton is falling apart, and just when things are at their worst, Zod (Michael Shannon) makes a move on the throne. But while there is still hope, Jor-El makes his escape and makes it home just in time to launch his lifeboat and save his only son. It was a fraught trip, but the pod managed to make it to Earth and land in a little town called Smallville, Kansas, USA.

The one thing I think this film did very well was casting Henry Cavill as Superman/Kal-El. While we would see this more in movies like Mission: Impossible – Fallout, he clearly has the physicality needed for a role like this. You do feel like he could pick up a guy and throw him out of the atmosphere. There are also moments of genuine emotion that get lost in the mix going further. The rest of the dialogue does not give much for the actors to do, bar a couple of big, grandiose moments.

The production design is quite stunning and still mostly holds up ten years later. Part of that is because they spent a lot of time getting the fire simulations to work as best as they could. More than that, using practical elements when they needed helped sell some of the more significant moments. However, there are some rubbery moments in the full-CGI fight sections. It is also helped by Hans Zimmer doing a lot of thematic heavy lifting with his musical score.  

I was fundamentally surprised about just how fast they ripped through Superman lore in the movie. There is no slow build of information. Clark gets onboard that scout ship, and a kindly Russell Crowe explains everything. I think part of this worked because Superman is such a well-known character that you can skip a lot of foreplay, much like Marvel will do with  Spider-Man: Homecoming a couple of years later. But I am not sure if ripping through all that lore is helpful or a hindrance for the general audience.

One of the significant shifts is that right from the start, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) knows who Superman is from almost the beginning of the film. This is a dramatic change from the typical scenario in this universe. Part of this was likely due to Lois not being able to spot Clark, which becomes even more dubious in live-action. But it does lose some of the ambiguity as we advance and makes it even more ridiculous that other people can’t spot the difference.

Where the film stops working for me is in the final confrontation between Superman and Zod. The movie had already had its big climatic moment when others, not Superman, sacrificed themselves to save to the day. This was an exciting twist of the Superman set-up, so everything that follows after that feels anti-climatic, which is compounded upon with all the 9/11 iconography. It does not help that the Zack Snyder multiple endings are present because he does not like end credits, which compounds the issue.

In the end, do we recommend Man of Steel? Honestly, with some time from the original release, I do think there is a lot here that is quite interesting. The question is, did it end up going anywhere? Alas, I am not sure that when we look at the rest of the DCEU it did. If you liked Man of Steel, I would recommend Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Man of Steel
Directed by – Zack Snyder
Story by – David S. Goyer & Christopher Nolan
Screenplay by – David S. Goyer
Based on – Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster
Music by – Hans Zimmer
Cinematography by – Amir Mokri
Edited by – David Brenner
Production/Distribution Companies – Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment, Syncopy, Peters Entertainment & Warner Bros. Pictures
Starring – Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Christopher Meloni, Ayelet Zurer & Russell Crowe with Cooper Timberline, Dylan Sprayberry, Harry Lennix, Christina Wren, Richard Schiff, Carla Gugino, Mackenzie Gray, Jadin Gould, Rowen Kahn, Jack Foley, Joseph Cranford, Richard Cetrone, Samantha Jo, Revard Dufresne & Apollonia Vanova