3 stars out of 5
Humanity is on the brink of devastation, General Zod and his sinister crew are approaching, but we know we are safe when we see that iconic logo: 7-Eleven. Holy crap, the product placement in this movie is over the top: Nikon! Sears! IHOP! For a creative work trying so very hard to be [ahem] super-serious (why so serious?), it’s hard not to be taken out of the action by all the lingering logos.
Otherwise, it’s a perfect movie. NO IT ISN’T! It’s entertaining, there is a lot of cool action and good performances, but there’s a whole lot of stupid shit too.
First of all, it’s confusing. Who is the audience for this? I was 9 years old when the first Christopher Reeve Superman came out, and I understood every second of it. I cheered for Superman. Now I’m a little older than 9, have graduated college, read a lot of books, been a lot of places—and this was very, very hard to follow. Also, not many opportunities for cheering. It’s dark. It’s grim. There’s heavy, serious music throughout.
Some random thoughts:
—If your planet is exploding, why not keep your really bad guys on the planet? You know, where they’re guaranteed to perish?
—A big army squadron has been staking out a large, mysterious frozen item. What is it?? We don’t know! Yet ace reporter Lois Lane just walks right inside it, no problem whatsoever.
—If you’re Superman’s dad, your ghost can float around and offer you advice. But not your mom, because that would be absurd.
I eventually pieced together the plot, and it’s really not bad: Krypton blows up, I think because of fracking. Evil General Zod tracks down Superman on Earth, intending to revitalize some Kryptonian test-tube babies and keep his people alive. Ah, but he will have to wipe out Earth’s population to make it happen!
If only they had trimmed a half hour or so from the movie, and cut out much of the baffling junk. The origin story is actually pretty good; we get a nice sense of how tough things would be for young Clark Kent. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner do really nice work as Ma and Pa Kent. Michael Shannon is fun and menacing as Zod; it’s just too bad they saddled him with a haircut that makes him look like Dwight Schrute. (Also, if you spend 33 years hunting down Superman, you inexplicably end up with a zany goatee.) Henry Cavill is decent as Superman, and Russell Crowe is fine as Jor-El (except in a really stupid sequence where he goofily leads Lois Lane around a spaceship). Amy Adams is not very believable as a Pulitzer-winning reporter; she’s just kind of wide-eyed and happy-to-be-there.
Another problem: The script is terrible. You get a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo like “Release the world engine!” and “Bring the phantom drive online!” and “Looks like some sort of gravity weapon!” And instead of having an easy-to-follow plan to thwart the baddies, they just have army-guy Chris Meloni explain it away with “It’s a viable plan.” There are almost zero light moments in the movie; the only thing passing for a joke is “What if I need to tinkle?” “There’s a bucket in the corner.” Ba-dump-bump!
I may sound like I hated the movie, but I didn’t. There’s just a lot to gripe about. (Why do the bad guys invite Lois Lane on their ship?? Why, after the events in the movie, wouldn’t Superman’s secret identity immediately be revealed?? If you want to show that a planet has been saved, maybe have more than three people onscreen? And why does Superman HAVE to be Jesus? He’s 33, and right after Jor-el tells him that he can save Earth, the Man of Steel goes into the old outstretched-arms pose.)
I shouldn’t be shocked by any of this; it’s a Christopher Nolan production, he of the overly long, dark Dark Knight. Not my preferred style of superhero flick, though I know others dig it. Eh, maybe the sequel will be better. I’ll go see it; I see all this garbage.
Jack Silbert, curator