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Man of Steel

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, and Laurence Fishburne
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Screenplay by: David S. Goyer

    Superman is one of the oldest superheros ever.  He's been around for about 75 years and there have been about a million different movies and about him.  And, here's another one.  I guess we just can't get enough of Superman.  Or can we?
    Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) is not of this world.  He's from the planet, Krypton, a planet whose race is dying due to the planet imploding.  He is sent to Earth to be a symbol of hope for the humans and a symbol that the Krypton race will once again live.  After being freed from prison once the planet implodes, General Zod (Michael Shannon) travels all the way to Earth to take Kent away from the humans in order to recreate the Krypton race and world.  So, once again, the fate of the world is in Kent's hands as he shows the world what he is truly capable of, giving him the name, Superman.
    So, how do we know that there have been too many Superman movies and comics?  Well, you probably know Superman's story pretty well without having to read the above paragraph.  You'll miss some of the details that are specific to this particular film, but you probably know the basic story.  But of all the superman movies that are out there, this one probably has the best special effects.
    Henry Cavill plays Superman quite well, better than I expected.  Amy Adams isn't quite as impressive as Lois Lane as I had hoped she would be.  I think the best performance in this film is perhaps that of Michael Shannon.  He is quite good as General Zod, not quite as good as in his role as Richard Kuklinski in the recent film The Iceman, but he still delivers a strong performance.
    What bothers me the most about this film is the way that the story is told.  It's told almost completely out of order and jumps around between present day and throughout Clark Kent's life in the past.  At least the movie starts at the beginning of the story and ends at the actual end of the story.  But it keeps jumping around when there is not really a need to do so.  I think this would be a far better film if it were actually told in the sequence of Kent's life, starting from when he is a child and ending at his saving the world from General Zod.
    Some of the action sequences are drawn out far more than they should be.  As a whole, this movie could probably be about twenty minutes shorter than it already is, and some of these action sequences don't help.
    Man of Steel is predicted to have a huge opening weekend at the box office, and I believe it will be the highest grossing movie of the weekend, but I don't think it's going to have the opening the studio hoped it would.  Perhaps Superman has been around for so long that his time is almost up or already is up.  Perhaps the heyday of Superman is behind us.  The other problem is that the film doesn't look quite as good as other superhero movies of late.  I didn't expect this to be a tremendously great film and sadly my expectations were met.  It's not anywhere near as good a film as it could be, but nowhere near as bad is it could be either.  In the end, I had hoped I would be wrong and I would be blown away.  I guess Man of Steel didn't exactly do that for me.
    I give Man of Steel a B-.

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