FILMMan Of Steel
(12A) 142mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Superman cracks heads but no smiles in Zack Snyder's earnest and spectacular re-boot of the Kryptonite outcast.
REVIEW
Remember Christopher Reeve, bumbling his way into the Daily Planet, nudging his glasses, spilling coffee. We'll have none of that silliness here. This is a very sensible Man Of Steel so sit up straight at the back and pay attention.
I immediately missed those characters from the 1978 incarnation - Perry White, the bombastic editor, Lois Lane, the flighty, feisty gal, Lex Luthor, the cartoon villain.
In this incarnation they have all been replaced with automatons. Or at least, their personalities have been drained away. There is not a single character among them, not a single moment of warmth and only a couple of laughs.
In fact, Clark Kent, Daily Planet bumbler, has been expunged entirely and with him all those little side jokes showing a pacifist nerd getting sly revenge on his bullies.
Superman's real dad Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is replaced with his adopted dad (Kevin Costner) but they come out with the same pompous homilies about duty and peace and hope and fear and justice...
And when they're not around, editor Perry (Laurence Fishburne) who flings around the damp cloth. And if that's not enough earnestness, dead Jor-El keeps popping back with more expositionary moralising.
The stuffy script, such as it is, has been written by the same people who compile all those god-awful Facebook "postcards" that keep cluttering up my Timeline. They are distributed around the cast like the Beadle slopping gruel into orphans' bowls. Doesn't matter who gets what, it all comes out the same.
But, I guess, you come not for character or laughs, you come for action and spectacle. And this is where this incarnation hits its stride.
It's loud, bombastic, destructive and epic. Set aside the fact that the set pieces are derivative - a bit from Avatar there, Avengers Assemble here - and just relish the digital marvels of big things falling over and falling apart - all in 3D, of course.
This is an origins story, with the familiar tale of Krypton's destruction, the Ark containing the little one, and the Kryptonite fugitives who find their way to earth to retrieve Kal-El. For within him are the seeds of the next Krypton, to be overlaid on the crushed skulls of the current inhabitants.
Travolta lookee-likee Henry Cavill is required to do nothing much except be handsome and carry a dimple. His chemistry with Lois Lane (Amy Adams, wasted like the rest) is so ghastly that when they finally kiss it jars, like an unfortunate misunderstanding at the school prom.
As always, the baddies get the good stuff and Michael Shannon as improbably named General Zod (like we're being invaded by Teletubbies) barks and snarls effectively under the impossible overhang of his forehead.
And just when the clattering and destruction ends, it goes again. Perhaps wisely, and certainly characteristically director Zack (Watchmen) Snyder has thrown all his energies and budget at the fight scenes.
This ensures the film will be a monster hit with the target market and anyone looking for any cultural subtext, human emotion or double-life conflict (a la Dark Knight) will have to leave scoffing Neurofen and feeling empty.
