Man of Steel, released on June 14, 2013, caught my attention solely because I saw Christopher Nolan’s name. As a huge fan of Nolan’s fantastic older movies, like Memento, and his recent groundbreaking Batman trilogy, I was completely ecstatic that my unworthy eyes would get a chance to glimpse at Nolan’s awe-inspiring genius once more.
I was thoroughly disappointed. As it turns out, Nolan was barely involved in the production of the film.
Though I was honestly hooked by the choppy Memento-esque beginning, I soon realized that it wasn’t headed anywhere. The choppy scenes dragged on for too long and showed that the movie took itself way too seriously.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic intro to the movie. There just wasn’t any substance to back it up. If the movie was completely deep and serious throughout, the beginning would have been fantastic. Sadly, it wasn’t.
The plot of the movie was a random compilation of footage with varying moods that just felt awkward. It just seemed to jump from one thing to the next, while expecting audience members to feel emotionally attached despite not giving them any reason to feel anything except awkward and disappointed, or, at best, ambivalent.
“I thought it was really weird how Louis Lane was able to identify Superman and find him so easily even though she didn’t even get his name when he saved her. I also don’t really get why they were deeply in love after only having two conversations ever,” junior Zach Glenn said.
In my opinion, Zack Snyder, the film’s director, was simply aiming to fore fill every single cheesy action movie stereotype possible, which leads me to my next point.
“There was too much pointless fighting. The movie tried too hard to be like Superman 2 and failed,” junior Nico Waingortin said.
The excessive fight scenes and overdone explosions were just silly. The entire half of the movie was just climax-less violence.
“I feel kind of like the director just filmed a bunch of really cool explosions and then realized he was almost out of budget money and time and ended up filming the rest of the movie as an afterthought,” junior Colton Thomas said.
With all of this harsh criticism on the table, I’ll give the film a little praise. If you enjoy seeing cool explosions and awesome CGI effects, watch this movie.
The music for the film could have easily been iconic of the plot wasn’t awful. The acting, for the most part, was slightly above average.
If you want to be left with provoking thought or a new outlook on life, look elsewhere. Being generous, I would give this movie 2.5 stars out of 5. If Snyder had put something which even vaguely resembles a half-decent plot with character development between the movie’s intriguing choppy start and its action packed ending, it could have been a great movie.
