Clark Kent (Henry Cavill, a good choice for Superman: solid, sturdy, fairly anonymous) is a twentysomething wanderer uneasy with his powers. It’s in the middle section, post-Krypton, pre-showdown, that the film hits its stride. It’s here, and at the end, that Snyder is at his most baroque: first, he indulges the weird science of Krypton and, later, he enjoys giving America a vicious pounding when Zod tracks down Superman. It opens with a lengthy preamble explaining how Jor-El (Russell Crowe) launched his son Kal to Earth just as his planet was falling apart, and how failed coup leader General Zod (Michael Shannon, a muted villain) was banished at the same time. ‘Man of Steel’ is punchy, engaging and fun, even if it slips into a final 45 minutes of explosions and fights during which reason starts to vanish and the science gets muddy. Just how ‘real’ can the story of a genetically-modified baby launched to Earth from a planet called Krypton ever feel?Īnd so it’s no surprise that ‘Man of Steel’ feels both modern and traditional – a halfway house between the broodier Nolan way of shaking things up and the louder, bone-crunching style that director Zack Snyder established with films such as ‘300’ and ‘Sucker Punch’. But it’s harder to make those claims for a Superman tale, even when the producer is ‘Batman’ regenerator Christopher Nolan – a man with more backstories than an osteopath. Yes, we know, Spider-Man and Batman were just troubled sons with daddy issues. It’s a cliché followed by a yawn when the makers of comic-book movies boast about how ‘real’ and ‘psychological’ their stories are.
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