Saturday, July 6, 2013

Movie Review: Man of Steel

Just a first note: I had a blog where I wrote book and movie reviews, but I decided to delete that blog in order to be able to just post book reviews on this site. Hence, I'm also going to be doing movie reviews here and there as well, because, I'll be honest, I watch a lot of TV (maybe a little more than I should...). Of course, if anyone, like me, is interested in screenwriting, watching movies is as important to us as consistent reading. However, I will try to tie everything into at least one point that has something to do with writing.

A few weeks ago, I went to see the new superhero movie Man of Steel. I personally like Superman - he's not my favorite (I'm more of a Marvel fan than DC if I had to choose ;) ), but I still enjoy his character. I'd seen the trailer for Man of Steel and thought it looked awesome, so I sat down in the theater to enjoy another great movie of action-packed super-goodness. What I got was 143 minutes of disappointment. Okay...maybe 130 minutes.

**SPOILERS** Ye be warned.

I was bored, literally bored during parts of the movie. Was there anything in that movie we hadn't seen before in other superhero movies? Let's see... Big battle in the big city? Done before, check. The military comes in, fire their guns which have no effect on the big bad guys, and yet continue on until almost everyone is dead? Check. Fights on the sides of city buildings (scraping along bricks, thrown through glass past several rooms) Check. Sexy female side-kick to the bad guy? Check. That's just a few.
(I thought the beginning of the movie on Krypton was beautiful, however, and really enjoyed the creature that served as Jor-El's get-away ride ;) )

I will say I thought the casting was really well done. I'd never seen Henry Cavill in a movie before and thought he was a fine actor; Amy Adams was awesome as Lois Lane (though I'll get to her in a moment), Russell Crowe was great and I could understand what he was saying, and then of course Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Clark's parents was an obvious wonderful choice.

However...I feel bad for these actors in this movie. The script wasn't that great; not exactly lame, but just completely overdone. Amy Adams had NOTHING to work with as Lois Lane. I thought her performance was good, but I kept waiting for more and it never came, and in the end her character was proven weak.
When Superman and Lois kiss at the end of the movie it didn't feel real. Their relationship was entirely rushed throughout the movie, and their kiss felt more like a spur-of-the-moment, I'm-so-emotional-right-now-I'm-going-to-kiss-you-so-we-bond-in-this-time-of-conflict (phew) instead of the romantic, I'm-feeling-something-for-you way it should've been. I almost would've preferred it if they had left the kiss out of this movie so that famous tension between these two characters could be developed a little more.


Overall, the movie was enjoyable to watch, but I hope they have bigger and WAY better things planned for the sequel. I've been disappointed by un-originality in a couple movies I've been psyched for in the past few months; the writer's need to get with it and start using their creative minds to add some... flair. I plan on discussing this more in my next post, which I hope to publish this weekend.

If you've seen Man of Steel, what were your thoughts? Comment below or on my pinterest account for this blog.

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