Rating of
2/4
Spectacle and Spectacle Alone
Looneymanthegreat - wrote on 06/19/13
Superman is not Batman. In saying that I don’t mean that I think that Superman isn’t as good as Batman, but that I think Superman should not be treated the same way as Batman. I am not a huge comic book nerd, but from what I can tell Superman hasn’t changed nearly as much over the length of his existence as Batman has. Batman has become a very dark brooding character while Superman is closer to his golden age counter part; he’s more of a role-model type. You cannot make a Batman movie starring Superman for these reasons; unfortunately that’s exactly what Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder are trying to do with Man of Steel.
Man of Steel is constantly acting like it’s saying something, but it isn’t. It takes tropes and clichés from Nolan’s and Snyder’s film catalogues and combines in a giant clusterf@#$ of meaninglessness. You’ve got the long (supposedly) powerful speeches from Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the giant CGI battle sequences that go on forever from almost every Snyder film that has ever existed. The movie suffers from a split auteur, two movie makers wanting to make two very different movies. The result is a confused meaningless film; which would be okay, if it didn’t pretend to say something.
This movie (despite it’s rampant flaws) is very watchable, and very entertaining. Man of Steel is fairly well acted and the visuals, editing and action sequences are all stunning. The film is good for the sake of spectacle and spectacle alone; it’s almost worth seeing for the spectacle alone.
