re: The OFFICIAL Man of Steel Discussion and ***SPOILERS*** Thread

Well, here goes nothing. Finally got time to see it, and just got back from it. I'm a huge Superman fan, so here are my thoughts:

This may be the single most frustrating film I've ever seen. I don't mean bad or the film makes me angry, it's just frustrating how they completely blew their loads on this film. That action sequence in the end had no business being in the first chapter of a trilogy, but I'll get to that in my rant later.

First off the casting. Harry Cavill is a great Superman, and finally they've given me the Superman I've been waiting for. Not a blind boy scout but someone with inner conflict on his place in a world of glass, but then the character shits the bed in the worst way possible at the very end, but more on that later.

Michael Shannon is great as Zod and well cast, but he won't come close to eclipsing Terrence Stamp's performance, and even decades from now, that will still be the Zod performance everyone thinks of.

And yet again, they fricked up Lois Lane's casting. I like Amy Adams and I think she's a fine actress, but she is by no means the spunky and bitchy Lois Lane. I mean it's not Kate Bosworth bad or anywhere close to that, but if you were to replace this woman with another name, I couldn't tell she was based on Lois aside from her being a reporter. It makes it all the more perplexing that they passed up Olivia Wilde for it, someone who would have been perfect for the job. Hopefully when they do it again next decade they finally get it right by casting Jennifer Lawrence to the role.

Now, to the movie, the action is spectacular. Finally they got the action in a Superman movie right and don't simply make it about Superman lifting heavy shite. I expect nothing less from Zack Snyder, who if nothing else, can do magic in a fight scene.

But really the film gloriously goes over-the-top in a way they should not have. I know that people have been bitching for decades that Superman has fought Lex Luthor too much and needed a physical equal on screen with him. So they go with Zod (someone we've already had in two films), who should not have been the villain of this film. I don't see why they didn't go with Brainiac, since they could have opened up Brainiac destroying Krypton and just had him use cloned Kryptonians in his arsenal.

Using Zod would in all logic make people loathe Superman in the aftermath. Sure he saved the world, but if he never came to their world in the first place, Zod wouldn't have come, killed millions of people (I don't see how at least a 1/3 of Metropolis wouldn't have been killed), and caused trillions in damage. Seriously, it would be like the president fixing a mistake he made, but at the expense of trillions and millions of lives (not to mention likely almost total economic collapse). Plus Superman was incredibly, incredibly stupid to face off with Zod in Metropolis. All he had to do was fly out into the ocean or the countryside, and Zod probably would have followed him. Instead they keep on going at it at the expense of 150,000 more lives, and Superman snaps his neck to save a mere 4 people.

And yeah, I've got a big fricking problem with Superman snapping Zod's fricking neck.. That is just so out of character, I just had to do a double take. Yes Superman has killed his villains before, but does anyone remember what happens when he does that? It typically goes into a time line of Superman taking over the world. It's basically never the typical canon version of Superman. I guess those 4 people meant more to Superman than the tens of thousands that died in their battle where Superman and Zod are basically just fricking around.

If you're going to do something like this, this is best left for the second and third films in the trilogy, not the first. They should have not gone all out on this film and saved that good stuff for the sequel. Really, they should have gone with Luthor and Metallo. Low enough stakes where Metropolis may be in danger, and he and Metallo get in a big fight, but no where near that damaging as the Kryptonians did. Second one is where you destroy Metropolis and have the people turn against Superman. Am I really supposed to believe that all these people are suddenly cool with Superman when his own people invade their planet almost solely because he is there? At least Luthor in the sequel will have alot of completely justifiable reasons in every sense of the word to hate Superman for the sequels, and I'll probably be rooting for him.

So to summarize it, I liked and hated this movie all at the same time. Got alot right and alot wrong.

*.5/****