Why MAN OF STEEL was Great

Acting is essential to help making a movie good or bad obviously. Acting in Man of Steel, eh. CGI, eh. Not surprised it's not on the Academy's shortlist. Story was fairly generic, even for a superhero movie and as far as the score goes, unmemorable and I really don't remember it. But.... that's just me.

I sort of agree with you on your last 2 points: Zod wasn't a terrible villain, even though they could've expanded and paid more attention to his motivations. Until the very end when he gave his little speech to Kal-el (and I guess the very beginning too, but that was it), they barely even mentioned the whole storyline of how the Kryptonians are genetically bred to fulfill certain roles. That definitely could've been really interesting but they never expanded that at all.

The soundtrack was excellent. No way they could've used the traditional Superman music, so Zimmer invented his own. Definitely a strength of the movie.

As for the story and the action...it worked if you're an action junkie and don't care about the plot so much. For everyone else, the story was pretty terrible.

What was Jor-el's reasoning for sending Kal to Earth in the 1st place? To re-start the Kryptonian race? Because why else would Jor-el put the Codex into Kal's DNA?
If so, Kal failed at that when he basically committed genocide against his own people. Or was it to inspire hope and love to a completely random alien race that he didn't even care about? If so, Kal failed at that, too.

Or what was the point of specifically choosing Earth to terraform and turn into a new Krypton? Why not choose any other random planet? It was never established that the Kryptonian race was so terrible and needed to be killed off, so why couldn't they co-exist peacefully on a completely different planet? Like maybe one of their several scout outposts?

And those are just little "logic" issues with the story. I didn't even begin to cover everything wrong with the characters, their motivations, the completely random and haphazard flashbacks, the incoherent themes, etc etc.

So all in all, nice article. But hardly convincing.

@JJ63: I'm not trying to hate on you. Film is subjective but, if Man of Steel is one of the greatest films you've ever seen then, you must not have seen many good movies in your life.

A great score indeed. I hope Zimmer does the sequel. Would love to hear a new Batman theme put on film against that Man of Steel theme.

Awesome movie, we finally got to see what happens when two god like people duke it out!

And we actually got to see a Superman that actually fights and not just throw things etc......

@EdgyOutsider
Lol, that's rich coming from the dude who thinks Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America are the best CBMs ever.

FYI, I have seen dozens of great movies. My favorites are The Dark Knight Trilogy, Source Code, Inception, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, Classic Star Wars Trilogy, Man of Steel, Spider-Man 2, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, X1 and X2, First Class, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Iron Man.

Maybe you hate all of those too. But I really don't give a f%ck.

Anyways, we've been through this like half a dozen times so I don't see the point of doing it again. And if you are trying to start an argument here, I remember you bashing Man of Steel and Snyder before it even came out. Man of Steel has a great character arc, great action, great acting especially from Cavill and Shannon, great soundtrack, you hate it because a) you dislike Superman and you've already said that. b) because you hate Snyder and you've already said that too.

I think you are blinded by bias but I've never once tried to change your opinion on it the way you do. I've said it a freakin billion times: agree to disagree.

@JJ63: Captain America and The Amazing Spider-Man are just in my top ten FAVORITE CBM's. Captain America has the best origin story for a CBM. But, Avengers is the best in my opinion. I'm not blinded by bias and quite frankly, I'm not attempting to start an argument nor did I want one. But, if it's a comment that I can't help but laugh at (again, film is subjective and my ignorance admittedly gets in the way at times, as it does here) then, I have to make my voice heard. Man of Steel being one of the greatest is nuts to me. My five favorite movies of all time are: Jurassic Park, Lincoln, Gladiator, Zodiac and Warrior. Even if they weren't my favorites, they are some of the best. I agree with your list of films that you named except Man of Steel, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Man of Steel, I won't go there. I would be beating a dead horse. Star Wars, I appreciate the advancements in technology and Lucas' imagination but, I've always found Star Wars boring. Lord of the Rings, I'm still working on that. I started last year but, I don't own any of them.

Yes, I've bashed it before it came out. I will agree, Michael Shannon did a hell of a job and is clearly the best CBM villain of the year. I went in with an open mind and it's the same issues as with most of Snyder's films. I've talked crap after seeing it just cause it's not a good movie to me but, it's enjoyable for what it is. Which is more than I can say about most Snyder films. No character development, off-on visuals, unmemorable score, eh acting and I just don't think it's what fans hype it to be. Again, I meant no argument to get started or anything. I just couldn't help but respond to someone saying Man of Steel is one of the best films they've ever seen. No disrespect towards ya bro.

Yeah Zod was a great villain alright.....



The action was great no doubt. But it was excessive, that Hentai tentacle fight was really un-necessary imo. Zimmer's score was awesome!!! Nice article but you need to proof read this. :)

I liked it when I first saw it in the theater, but I thought about it for a while and realized that it wasn't that great. To me, the problem was that it was just to depressing for its own good and the script felt rather muddled. Plus it just didn't have a lot of energy and was dull at parts. Maybe it's because I let my expectations get out of check since the trailers made it look like the second coming of Christ. I also didn't like how the film had too much Batman Begins influence; I swear, there were parts of that film that were lifted directly from BB. Now, there were some good things about it; Henry Cavill is the perfect Superman for one and I though Michael Shannon and Antje Traue (sp?) were great villains in addition to it getting me into Superman comics and helping me gain a greater appreciation for the character. But overall it was one of the biggest disappointments for me recently filmwise. Well, let's hope that Batman/Superman is better and they get rid of David Goyer.

@AnnoDomini

I wasn't nit-picking. That's what happened in the movie. Zod took a cheap shot when he killed him. Jor-El was watching his son's ship take off and he was distracted, Zod then proceeded to kill him. It's just something I found odd that Zod was bred to be a warrior yet Jor-El owned him in that fight and the funny part id Jor-El was bred to be a scientist. This wasn't even the problem with film. Many of the faults in the film lie in the execution and weak scrip imo.

"Good gosh, just watched the fight to confirm. If Superman had have went to see Jorel instead of the priest and Jorel could have taught him some moves, this movie might've ended 40 minutes earlier. Jorel was bustin Tekken moves on Zod"

Lmao xD That priest scene was so unnecessary, instead of going to see his dad, he goes to a priest. Why?

Okay, for everyone who whines about Jor-el beating Zod, you need to watch the extras on the Blu-Ray. Part of the idea they had for Krypton was that it was warrior society. While everyone was bred for a specific function, scientist, leader, worker, whatever, they were all also given training as warriors. Being a warrior was part of everyone's DNA, it's just that the soldiers had extra training and were made even more to be warriors. This is shown by the fact that all Kryptonians had that basic garment and they all had battle armor that went over the basic garment. And Jor-el was able to get ahead in that fight at first because his fighting style was different from that of a soldier, which was something Zod wasn't prepared for at first. But Zod does ultimately win, because as a soldier he had equipped his armor with an extra, hidden weapon and he knew to use it when Jor-el was distracted.

I think there should be a #5 devoted only to this jewel:

IMO, you guys are arguing about the wrong thing. Honestly I doubt even the filmmakers put as much thought into this fight scene as you guys are. They wanted a B.A. Jor-el who was able to throw down with Zod, so they created the character to do so. Whatever excuses they came up with after the fact to justify that, almost doesn't matter. They wanted to squeeze in another fight or two, so they did so. End of story.

Stop focusing on these little "logic" problems, start asking yourselves why the filmmakers decided to do these things. Was the fight necessary to the plot? Or did they just want to pile on the action scenes and cool visuals? I think you guys can answer that...