Man of Steel

The last Superman movie that I watched (just like everyone else) was Superman Returns in 2006. Since the movie came out 7 years ago, I barely remember anything from that one unless I refer to Wikipedia. That's how forgettable the movie was. The new 2013 reboot: Man of Steel is an entirely new movie altogether with no relation whatsoever with the last movie.

Man of Steel started with Clark Kent (Kal El) wandering around Canada doing odd jobs on fishing boats and waiting tables. As the story goes, Clark was still reeling from his adopted father's death and tried to look for traces of his roots and beginning( which he could find in Canada of course). Oh wait, I totally forgot about the Kryptonite's destruction scene early in the film. Krytpon was on the verge of destruction from over-mining of it's planet's core, Lara (Kal El's mom) gave birth to him and send him away in a one way trip to Earth to survive the destruction.
Back to Canada, Clark finally found a spaceship from Krypton which was buried under the ice for 22,000 years. There he meet his dead father whose conscience was preserved in a hologram state and learned everything about Kryptonite and his origin. Louis Lane, a pesky Daily Planet reporter happens to follow Clark Kent into the spaceship and was later attacked by the bad probes in the ship. I don't wanna bore you with the details or spoil the movie for you but let me tell you what I think of the movie.
Amy Adams was the most plain-looking and boring Lois Lane ever. Seriously, Erica Durance would look like a super-model beside her.I don't know what the producer was thinking but I think it was something like 'let's choose some random average-looking actor to play Lois Lane'. I mean the heroin must be at least pleasant to look along with a little bit of cleavage. Furthermore, there wasn't an ounce of chemistry between Clark and Lois in this movie. Heck I think Clark had more chemistry with General Zod than Lois Lane.
Henry Cavill did a decent portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman. If you ask me, he looked much better when he was an unshaven nomadic tramp wandering the shores of Canada. The clean-shaven Superman just doesn't look right. His physique though is out of this world and would give Tom Welling a run for his money.

I don't know whether it's the cinema that I went to but the sound during the entire movie is ridiculously loud. Add that with the endless special effects and fight scene, I was nursing a headache after the 2 hour long movie. Another thing I think Man of Steel relied too much on special effects to draw the appeal fans instead of elements of love, tragedy, conflict or humanity. I know this is Superman, an alien from another galaxy with superhuman abilities and what not so liberal use of special effects is all but expected. But you can't help but compare this movie to say The Dark Knight trilogy which is more realistic and believeable with less spectacular effects. Throughout the movie it was like bang-bang crush and destroy. The movie is too fast-paced for my liking and the amount of destruction caused by General Zod is just unbelievable. More shock and awe than inspirational. Special effects is cool if used sparingly and correctly but I think Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan over-killed it in this one.

I think the scene where Jonathan Kent would rather die in the tornado than let people see Clark saves him is rather silly. In Smallville, Clark would have saved his stepfather in a blink of an eye without anyone noticing anything but a red-blue blur. Also when downtown Metropolis were being destroyed by the genesis machine, I think it's silly that people still hang around and wait in buildings and on the streets when there's a pretty good chance they would be crushed by collapsing buildings or the machine itself.
Man of Steel borrows a few elements from Smallville, like the Smallville high school. Pete which is white, not black. General Zod and the Phantom Zone. Unlike Smallville though, Clark in Man of Steel didn't spend much of his adult life on the Kent farm and he learned to fly pretty quickly too.There's no Lana Lang or the mad Lex Luthor yet in Man of Steel. In Smallville, Clark would speed from one place to another in different parts of the globe in mere seconds. In this movie however, Clark is shown to take buses and hitch hike along highways. What's up with that?
Lastly I feel the movie is way too long. It's like I waited 143 minutes just to see a bunch of aliens fighting and a city almost got reduced to rubble only to find out Clark got a job as a reporter at Daily Planet. And all through the movie there's not a single scene that shows how Clark turned from a boy in a farm to a nomadic trump to a reporter. Although he's Superman, at least show us he took mass com at UiTM or something first to make it more realistic. I don't believe the Daily Planet would simply hire anybody just for good looks and a buff body.
Overall I think despite the best effort of Nolan and Snyder, Man of Steel falls slightly below my expectation. I've never heard of this Snyder guy before today. Just because he produced 300, which is a mediocre achievement in my opinion, doesn't mean he's good enough to make a Superman reboot. I mean this is Superman okay, the most powerful superhero of them all. I had to give this movie 6 out of 10 points only. I hope they would do a better job for the sequel due to be released next year.