Man of Steel - Movie Review

Man of Steel
Review by David Edwards (Year 10)

It's been a year since the end of Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' trilogy but he's back assisting Zack Snyder in bringing a more comedic and brightly dressed hero into the dark morbid world that has adopted DC's film adaptations.

‘Man of Steel’ is the first in another expected trilogy, and starts with, well, the start. It follows a younger Clark Kent (played by Henry Cavill), who works as a mysterious freeloader amongst the country, as he remembered his past. However, a few evil dudes from his planet threaten to blow the earth up, if he does not surrender. A conventional plot, however the delivery of it is something to be acknowledged.

The protagonist’s super alias is slowly revealed by a tedious reporter named Lois Lane. Superman fans will know her as Kent’s romantic fantasy, but this feature is hardly touched on during the film. The storyline isn’t very stable until towards the end. The constant flashbacks and age changes quickly get very confusing, and Snyder’s tendency to stay serious for the whole film and use dramatic quotes doesn’t exactly fit in with the comedic personality of Superman.

Zack Snyder was, not surprisingly recruited to do the soundtrack. This is one of the film’s most astonishing features. The OST track is memorable and even made it into the top 100 downloads on iTunes. As well as this, sound effects and visual effects are astonishing. However, the 3D feature was lacking and almost seemed like a waste of money. It had some pretty “that’s cool” moments, but it wasn’t ‘Life of Pi’ standard.

The film does not try its best to mix with your emotions. Snyder made a risk by reducing some of the action for the dramatic quotes, and it’s quite a mixed response. The quotes and overall feel of the film make you feel like you are spectating something quite epic, which should be the case when watching a Superman one especially. However, this means that dramatic death scenes seem to drag on for an unnecessarily long time.

The storyline seems a little bit broken also. It takes 4 encounters with the antagonist for Superman to defeat him – and the ending isn’t what you would expect.

‘Man of Steel’ needs to work. It’s not debatable, but it’s fixable. Hopefully it’s like the Batman trilogy and the first one was the weakest and used more to introduce the character. We’ve already been told, through a lot of little references that Lex Luthor may be making an appearance. Hopefully Clarks’ archenemy delivers more action than Zod, and ‘Man of Steel 2’ marks the best Superman film ever made.