Man of Steel Review

Whoever edited the Man of Steel trailer isn’t getting paid enough. The trailer is hugely compelling, the bombastic brass (since Inception French Horns have become the hip thing in blockbuster scores) and fluttery editing providing a dramatic urgency and importance of astronomical proportions. It was thrillingly captivating; previously I couldn’t have cared less about Zak Snyder’s Superman reboot, yet within two-and-a-half minutes it was one of my most anticipated films of the Summer. The film, sadly, isn’t hugely compelling; it’s a melodramatic, self-indulgent, wholly vacuous, unstructured, horribly written, awfully acted colossus of unmitigated pish. Man of Steel is this year’s Prometheus. I reiterate; whoever edited the trailer isn’t getting paid enough.

It starts well enough. Within moments Krypton descends into political anarchy as the army revolts against the corrupt government while a bored-looking Russell Crowe pours the atoms of a blackened skull into his infant child’s pancreas using magic powers. Or something. It’s ridiculous trite of course, but gripping and exciting. This doesn’t continue past the opening twenty minutes. You see, Man of Steel is literally devoid of a narrative structure. There is no second act, no time given for character development or plot exposition. Proceeding the explosive prologue there’s an hour long montage of Superbland hitch-hiking around rural USA in search of selfhood like the subject of some terrible Bruce Springsteen song, interrupted intermittently by scenes from his childhood desperately trying to portray Superbland as the confused, tormented school outcast. His foster father establishes the layout of Superbland’s destiny, that he must choose whether to use his great powers for good or bad etc. The foundations are laid for a narrative journey, the second act, but Snyder and Goyer inexplicably skip to the film’s climax. It’s as if they only wrote one draft of the screenplay, realised they had far too long an introduction, leaving no time for plot or character progression, then thought ‘meh’.

For the final 45 minutes Snyder exhibits a remarkably good Michael Bay impression by making explosions boring. It’s an intriguing contrast, the opening and climax, because why would the action sequences alter from thrilling to dull? Perhaps this is down to Russell Crowe and Ayelet Zurer’s Krypton characters being more human than the human characters, and therefore, we actually care. They're motivated, emotive and vaguely endearing. Conversely, Amy Adams’ Lois Lane is off-puttingly smug, Clark Kent’s adopted parents, insipidly hackneyed. Henry Cavill’s HenrySuperbland himself, although not human, isn’t very alien either, in fact he’s so wooden he’s essentially a talking tree that knows his lines reasonably well. He’s built like a tree too, so at least he has that in his favour.

What saves the acting, however, is that it’s not Man of Steel’s worst aspect; the screenplay is a masterpiece of crap. It’s riddled too greatly with straight-faced clichés, and too bereft of any form of humour or warmth, to justify its unapologetic self-importance and ridiculous, melodramatic seriousness. It’s as if, with its relentless inspireaquote technique to screenwriting, Man of Steel was scripted by a member of the Twitter Famous. It’s embarrassingly uninteresting, and pathetically boring.

Occasionally the script creaks open the doors to thematic potential before slamming them in the viewer’s face dramatically screaming ‘I’M GOING TO REMIND EVERYONE ABOUT SUPERMAN’S AMERICAN IDENTITY NOW USA OBAMA GUN-LOBBYISTS DRONESAREGOOD.’ There is a passing theological suggestion that Superbland could be interpreted as a God by humanity. Nothing is ever made of this. The Kryptons destroy themselves through excessive overuse of their natural resources; could parallels be drawn with humanity’s own ecological self-destruction? No, again nothing is ever made of this. There is the implication that human nature will drive every human being to inevitably betray their moral principles in the face of adversity. Nothing is ever made of this. But, the special effects are quite pretty.

Man of Steel is quite simply terrible. It lacks characterisation, plot structuring and any form of inherent theme. More importantly considering it's a Summer blockbuster, it isn’t at all entertaining. There’s no comedy or character chemistry to keep you interested, it’s just a never-ending barrage of buildings, bombs and banality. Just watch The Avengers, it's infinitely better. I think I care less about the plight of humanity after viewing Man of Steel. Whoever edited that trailer isn't getting paid enough.