The movie begins with a gorgeous and grim wrought Krypton suddenly erupting into war about who to blame for its obsolecence. The scenery, weapons, iconography are dark, fantastic, evokative. It's a world and a culture I want to know more about.
Clark's ship travels to earth and it jumps to him on a boat many years later. A nearby oil derek explodes, and he swims to it, saving the men on board while he is ablaze and holding up the collapsing structure with his bare hands. It's a glorious Fuck Yeah! moment, particularly when looked at from the view later in the film, where it's shown that Clark's own abilities convinced his father to hide them and keep his hero son from being hero.
The narrative flickers back and forth in history now, showing him as a child learning to cope with his senses and trying to reconcile how saving a bus full of children could be bad, while at the same time showing him as a grown man keeping the powers under control and venting anger only when it won't hurt anyone. It's very well done, and I want to know more about this Clark.
Lois Lane is introduced by sniping at a general and exploring when she's not supposed to. You see her be inquisitive, fearless, and clever. She ends up being lasered for this, but it just makes her look for Clark that much harder. I want to know more about this Lois Lane.
And then he puts on the suit, and it's a differet movie. He leaps great heights in a single bound, and then suddenly learns to fly by putting his fist on the ground and powering up his chi. The Christ imagery becomes overwhelming and blunt. The Kryptonians arrive and the character growth turns into window dressing. A great story becomes a great fight scene. Aliens capable of placing people into blackholes for temporary storage use massive gravity cannons to terraform the world by bludgeoning it. The airforce fires missles at a thing that is screwing with gravity, then charges it. A great fight scene becomes a boring one. A boring one becomes a stupid one. Zod can suddenly fly now. A stupid fight scene becomes aggrivating. Zod is killed in a moment that genuinely pissed me off, and then I don't want to know anything else about this world.
This is a very weird, flawed movie. It felt genuinely strong opening, but loses its spark about halfway in and what should be ignored becomes glaring. Watch, but prepare for MST 3 K.
Half a very good movie. Spoilers!
The movie begins with a gorgeous and grim wrought Krypton suddenly erupting into war about who to blame for its obsolecence. The scenery, weapons, iconography are dark, fantastic, evokative. It's a world and a culture I want to know more about. Clark's ship travels to earth and it jumps to him on a boat many years later. A nearby oil derek explodes, and he swims to it, saving the men on board while he is ablaze and holding up the collapsing structure with his bare hands. It's a glorious Fuck Yeah! moment, particularly when looked at from the view later in the film, where it's shown that Clark's own abilities convinced his father to hide them and keep his hero son from being hero. The narrative flickers back and forth in history now, showing him as a child learning to cope with his senses and trying to reconcile how saving a bus full of children could be bad, while at the same time showing him as a grown man keeping the powers under control and venting anger only when it won't hurt anyone. It's very well done, and I want to know more about this Clark. Lois Lane is introduced by sniping at a general and exploring when she's not supposed to. You see her be inquisitive, fearless, and clever. She ends up being lasered for this, but it just makes her look for Clark that much harder. I want to know more about this Lois Lane.
And then he puts on the suit, and it's a differet movie. He leaps great heights in a single bound, and then suddenly learns to fly by putting his fist on the ground and powering up his chi. The Christ imagery becomes overwhelming and blunt. The Kryptonians arrive and the character growth turns into window dressing. A great story becomes a great fight scene. Aliens capable of placing people into blackholes for temporary storage use massive gravity cannons to terraform the world by bludgeoning it. The airforce fires missles at a thing that is screwing with gravity, then charges it. A great fight scene becomes a boring one. A boring one becomes a stupid one. Zod can suddenly fly now. A stupid fight scene becomes aggrivating. Zod is killed in a moment that genuinely pissed me off, and then I don't want to know anything else about this world.
This is a very weird, flawed movie. It felt genuinely strong opening, but loses its spark about halfway in and what should be ignored becomes glaring. Watch, but prepare for MST 3 K.