Man of Steel

Man of Steel

Rating 7 out of 10

Anyone that has seen my reviews knows I like superhero movies.  Superman is not an easy hero movie to make.  Everyone knows the story already and it's hard to put a new spin on it.  I would say for the most part Man of Steel does that.

The movie starts off at that doomed planet Krypton.  They explain how they mined the planet into extinction with only weeks before it explodes.  Superman's father Jor-El (played perfectly by Russell Crowe) is the voice of reason while the head of Defense the evil General Zod (with Michael Shannon giving one of the better bad guy performances) is a little crazy and tries a takeover on the leaders. The effects are as good as you would think they would be.  Dad puts Superbaby in a pod and shoots it for Earth just minutes before Krypton goes boom.

The cast if spot on.  Kevin Costner playing Clarks earthly father.  Diane Lane playing mom.  One of the few things I really didn't like about the early Superman movie was Margot Kidder playing Lois Lane.  With Man of Steel we get the major upgrade with the lovely Amy Adams.  Being an old timer myself Christopher Reeve will always be Superman yet I have to admit Henry Cavill fills the blue tights quite nicely.  He is built like a brick house and has the acting chops to handle the man of steel.

The crazy part is for me when the action starts the movie drops off.  The hard part about making a Superman movie is creating drama for him.  Nothing hurts him.  Shoot him with bullets, burn him with fire, blow him up and he wipes a little dust of the red cape and moves on.  Then you have several bad guys also from Krypton who can not be hurt either.  For me having Superman fight the bad guys knocking each other thru buildings and exploding gas tanks seems anticlimactic.  What's the point?  I'm probably the only one that is concerned with what is probably millions of people being killed in the big fights.  Note to self: if big spaceship full of bad guys hovers over my city don't stand around gawking at it.  Get out of town!

Still, overall I found it an entertaining movie.  Now that the ground has been laid Man of Steel II will probably be amazing.