Review: Man of Steel

Can we please just take a minute to appreciate the absolute perfection that is Henry Cavill.

Done?

Good.

Anyway, on with the review!

So it’s taken me about a week to stop fawning over Henry Cavill’s arms (good God they are perfection) and get around to writing about Man of Steel. To be completely honest with you, I’m not 100% sure what exactly to write. I enjoyed the movie in terms of it being suitably action packed and exciting, but I don’t really think the film itself was that well put together. Movies like this can be a real conundrum when you’re attempting to write about them or even tell others about them, simply because, I find, they’re like Marmite; you either love or hate them. Let me try to get a bit technical with this.

The story was slightly sketchy. The flashbacks seen throughout meant that the story was jumping all over the place anyway, seeing Clark (or Kal-El) in different stages of his development and understanding of himself and the world around him. Personally, I found it difficult to connect with Clark’s struggle and felt like I didn’t have enough time to find what I felt was an adequate amount of apathy for him because of this. I found myself removed from the protagonist and not being able to fully take his side because I didn’t understand it.

Now this might have been the director’s vision for the film; to make the audience never feel anything apart from humans watching this alien struggle for acceptance within our world. If it was, it didn’t work. Call me old fashioned, but in a traditional story where you follow one character throughout, I expect to feel for them and grow with them. Not only did Clark’s developmental stages jump all over the place, but when he did settle on who and what he was meant to be, he grew and changed as a character so drastically and so quickly, I felt myself struggling for the rest of the film to catch up with him. In connection with this, I would say the only other bad point about the film was that it moved extremely slowly at first and then far too quickly, and still rather erratically.

Negative points aside, the film in its entirety was quite enjoyable. The acting was heartfelt and honest (whether you could catch up with it or not) and the action scenes were really something else. They really did get the heart racing and I found myself thoroughly feeling sorry for the inhabitants of Metropolis at one point; a real “rather you than me” moment. Clark’s struggle and the deadly determination of General Zod were really powerful.

Overall, an enjoyable film even with its linear and character flaws. I probably wouldn’t pay to see it in the cinema again, but certainly one to catch on blu-ray. 

A very respectable 7 out of 10.