Per Virginia's suggestion (which I just saw), I'm moving my review to this thread.
My wife and I have seen them movie and we both liked it a lot.
I read the review Fred Bracklin wrote (
see it here ), and either the guy just doesn't get it or he loves the sound of his own snark. Either way, he's apparently not a Superman fan.
I liked putting the extended intro on Krypton. It gave the casual yeah-I-heard-of-Superman moviegoer enough background to understand why Clark/Kal-El was sent to Earth in the first place.
If he thinks the tornado part was stolen from Twister, he obviously knows nothing about Kansas being smack in the middle of Tornado Alley, where a spring month without rope funnels on the horizon leaves residents nervous and wondering what the problem is. Tornadoes are a fact of life in Kansas and Oklahoma and north Texas and Nebraska.
And as far as calling the director The Man Who Would Be Michael Bay, he apparently doesn't understand that bad people do bad things, and the more powerful they are, the more destructive the bad things they do end up being. When super-powered bad guys break things, they break big things and lots of them.
My likes? This is what stands out to me right now.
1) I liked the fact that Lois tracked down Clark and identified him as the secret super-do-gooder before Superman appeared on the scene. It shows that she's not only brilliant and determined, she's committed to a higher goal than just selling newspapers, because she never hints that she knows more about Superman than anyone else does. I also like it that Clark has an ally at the Planet who will help him retain his civilian identity.
2) The madness of Zod. Only a crazy person - or one who's been pushed over the edge of sanity - will fight for a destroyed and totally unobtainable goal. Zod's actions don't even rise to the level of honorable suicide (i.e., kamikaze), especially at the last fight between him and Kal-El. The movie portrayed an insane man who was lost in a reality inhabited by no one else but himself as he strove to recreate and reshape his home planet.
3) Zod's female adjutant Faora-Ul. She was almost as loony as Zod and just as fanatically committed to his goal. The actress playing her (Antje Traue, from Germany) captured just the right amount of snarls and deadpan stares.
4) Both of Clark's fathers (Jor-El and Jonathan Kent) played Robin Hood in previous movies. No wonder Clark was so into the truth and justice thing.
5) Lois greeting Clark at the very end when Perry introduces Clark as the new stringer: "Welcome to the Planet." Terrific double-entendre (they're not all dirty) to welcome Clark to the organization and Superman to the world at large.
6) Christopher Meloni (formerly of Law & Order: SVU) giving Faora-Ul's words about a good death back to her just as he dives the C-17 into the terraforming ship (although, shouldn't it be called a Krypto-forming ship?). Poetic justice and courage if I've ever seen it on the screen.
My nitpicks? Mostly minor.
1) Jonathan Kent would know that the absolute worst place to hide from a tornado is beneath an underpass. The wind currents get compressed and speed up, sending all the debris sailing at the people and objects in its path. They should have dived into the ditch on the other side of the bridge, or even climbed into the ends of the horizontal drainpipes. But you have to be careful there, too, because if a flash flood happens along - not rare with tornadoes - drowning is a real possibility.
2) At the end of the movie, downtown Metropolis gets rebuilt quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail. If there had been something about Superman helping to rebuild, that would have made it a little more believable. After all, the replacement for the World Trade Center isn't finished yet, and how long has that been?
3) Superman kills Zod.
For some, this will be a HUGE turnoff, because the modern mythos is that Superman does not kill. But I saw the act as the only option Zod left for Clark. He didn't want to take a life. But Zod had promised to kill humans wherever he could, whenever he could, and was trying to fry some as Clark was trying to restrain him - including children. If I were faced with the decision to save the lives of many children by taking one life, I don't know what I'd decide to do. I do hope, though, that Lois has to help him deal with the emotional fallout in future movies.
4) Not a nitpick, really, but other reviewers have commented on how little screen time Perry and Jenny and Steve got. I would ask, where would you put such interactions? There was barely room in there for what's on the screen now.
Overall, I'd give the movie as many thumbs-up as I have thumbs. If you've not seen it, I recommend that you to go. I think you'll consider it worth the time and the dollars. And if the sequel is close to being this good, it will be worth it too.
