I can remember my first comic book that I bought with superman in it... It was in an action comics and I really liked it.
Now I wouldn't call myself a die hard superman fan, (actually loved supergirl more) but I learned all about him watched cartoons movies read books and even learned kryptonian (I even have a kryptonian tattoo)...
So needless to say I get excited when people talk about superman.
Then the new 52 came out and I tried to like it, but really didn't like the character changes...
And I started to hear about Man of steel being made...
In the year or so that pics and trailers eventually came out, I started to grow in apprehension... I really wasn't sure that they were going to make a superman that followed my childhood liking of him, that he was going to be radically different (like his lack of outside underwear)...
However after seeing it today, I can't help but feel like, I really liked Man of Steel...
We start off on krypton with lara-el and jor-el as she gives birth to baby supes...
Interesting to start off at the very beginning, but with a new twist to the mythos, apparently this is the first natural birth on krypton since, well forever ago... Krypton is full of people born into their professions with the assumption that if you are a scientist you have been genetically created to be a scientist or a soldier (which shows up as a big thing later)...
I found this odd, especially since then my brain says, what about his cousin Kara-zor-el? But with most Nolan superhero movies you just don't worry about shifts in things... like all the batman changes...
Okay moving on...
we see the error of Kryptonian ways as we find out they have all but destroyed their planet by drilling and such (environmentalist message? maybe) again another shift since part of the problem was Kryptons sun, Rao was the reason (partly) for krypton's destruction... which at this point I am bogging my review down with my fan geeky-ness so why don't you just read, "the Last Days of Krypton by kevin J. Anderson, it's a really good book and fills you in on all the stuff that happened on krypton when it died... which brings me back to the movie... I didn't mind having General Zod be all take over krypton for it's greater good, since that happened (sorta) in the book too...
anyway, Kal-el gets sent off Zod and his followers get send into a phantom zone of sorts (weird version) and then we are now off to earth...
Where superman is now an adult with a beard on a sailing boat... okay... why? well so he can save some people and get nocked unconscious by an oil rig falling on him (what? okay whatever) SO we can have a flash back to him as a kid...
I guess people really like flashbacks cause we have a lot of nice flashbacks that kinda tell why Clark Kent is the way he is...
Well sure I'll go with it (I think the way they did it made the movie longer than it had to be if they had just told that story with out the flash forward, flash back etc... but whatever that's a director's prerogative)...
Moving on he finds an old kryptonian ship under the ice and he gets to talk to dad (who somehow got part of his consciousness uploaded to a key codex thingy not sure how, or when that happened since we saw none of that happen at the beginning but whatever)...
Then at this point the plot happens.
Zod and his army show up in a space ship and threaten earth if they don't give up Kal-el...
Which earth hasn't heard of him yet, but after consulting a priest about faith Kal-el turns himself over to the terrans, we promptly turn him (and lois lane) over to Zod... I think they explain why they take lois in about 1second (it was to find the codex thingy that Jor-el stole which apparently has all of krypton's genetic codes in it, just in case she knew where superman had put it)...
stuff blows up, lois shoots kryptonians with a gun she picks up... superman saves her...
Zod threatens Mrs. Kent...
Superman (while being shot at by the military) starts fighting zod and two of his minions, which destroys most of Smallville...
I'm going to take a second to talk about the kryptonian weakness in this movie...
Can anyone just tell me what superman's only weakness is?
...Kryptonite...
Rocks from his planet...
Well not in this movie...
In this movie the atmosphere of Krypton is his weakness (cause he grew up on earth) and for the other kryptonians the atmosphere of earth is their weakness...
weird... but well okay... maybe... not sure that works, if the idea that they get their superpowers from the red sun why would what they breath take away their powers... for that matter, why would a rock? Okay point made I can deal... wait does this mean that if they make a new movie superman is no longer made weak by anything?
Moving right along...
Zod decides to terra form terra into krypton (didn't lex luthor want to do that in superman returns??)
Superman says lets open the phantom zone (in the middle of metropolis) to get rid of the kryptonians while he goes and destroys the terraforming device...
Lots of stuff gets smashed and they succeed in that plan.
Zod was elsewhere so he laments to superman that he was born to protect krypton in anyway possible and now superman has taken his soul by stopping his only chance of having krypton again... and of course is now set on destroying everything, but especially superman...
This is a big twist in superman lore...
Cause superman in a epic standstill where Zod is trying to kill innocent bystanders realizes that he has to kill Zod or Zod will keep harming humans...
So he does... He cries and it's very moving... But Superman made a vow never to kill anyone! In the comics at least... maybe not in the new 52...
Not sure how I feel about that...
The movie ends with superman setting up his secret identity as clark kent (even though he told the military he lived in Kansas his entire life, wouldn't be to hard to find out who the kents are at that point I imagine)...
But cool...
Okay what I liked
The emotion of it was was well played...
The reason for the new superman suit was actually explained, instead of just oh here's a new suit...
(it was kinda the underwear for their kryptonian armour, which superman didn't need, so hey just wear the underwear, which since I was bugged about the loss of his red underwear, I'm more okay with it now, since the whole thing is like underwear now...)
The mass destruction when super-beings fight each other in a town or a city made a lot of sense...
If I throw a punch at you and you are almost indestructible then anywhere you land (or fly through) will be smashed on an epic scale... So it really made a lot of sense...
I remember reading the comic/book where superman dies, he's fighting doomsday and he wants to take the battle away from where people are, but the force of the battle prevented that from being possible (which is part of the reason he died, because he was protecting people while fighting)...
I liked that as far as deep Character development there was only one character developed (perry white, lois lane, the kents, Zod, Jor-el really weren't to deep as far as characters go, except where they developed the only character that was important) Which was
...Superman... which when I thought about a movie that is about superman, I decided that was actually kind of cool...
Seeing a Lex corp logo on a bus...
What I was less thrilled about:
Top of the list... Superman killing someone... maybe they will say that when he did that he vowed never again... but still!
The weakness I mentioned earlier... What is lex luthor going to do to fight superman? put him in a room that's atmosphere controlled? what about batman?
The kryptonian tech was cooler when it was more crystalline and less bug like(?) It wasn't very pretty, but at the same time that went with the story line (krypton was a harsh planet not like earth, so less pretty, but still)...
No fortress of solitude, that we see... he gets a ship (that was destroyed)... but there is a hint at the end that he has a place...
I thought that Jonathan Kent could have been a better man, he really was more of one in the comics... he wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't what I would call a great man...Martha was pretty great tho...
Also wasn't a fan of seeing kryptonian that wasn't the standard kryptonian symbols but there wasn't much of it so... oh well...
Well that was a lot, and I still missed things... (that way if you like spoilers, you still have to see it)
I Recommend seeing it! Not sure how it's doing but I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about it...
But I really enjoyed it!
MAN OF STEEL!
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