I am not quite sure why Man of Steel, at its initial release got rave reviews, only to have them fizzle and have it end up being considered sub-par.

I personally really enjoyed the film. It was certainly far more superior to Superman Returns, with Brandon Routh as the titular hero.

Zack Snyder has a passion for comic books and graphic novels, considering he has already done 300, Watchmen, and the sequel to Man of Steel, which will be as of now, called Batman vs. Superman, and his love can be seen in trying to include as much back-story as possible, which at times can be overwhelming, but this is a reboot, so it is kinda nice to have an idea of what is going on if you never read the comic books.

How does Henry Cavill fair as the Kryptonian? Well, that seems to be one of the issues people had with this film. Some say he was boring, some say they could have done better, but I disagree. It is so hard to make Superman an interesting character. How do you make someone really worry about someone who is basically immortal? With Cavill, I rather enjoyed him as Superman, he had his moments of humor and of despair, especially at the end. He had a more Superman look than Brandon Routh did. I don’t know, maybe I’m just crazy. If you have issues with my liking of him, share so in the comments.

Now I will say this: the writing in this movie is rather poor. There are a lot of plot holes and characters are always conveniently where they need to be or just so happen to be in the right place. One thing in particular that irritated me was the dialogue in the movie is so explicit on how Superman has spent his life covering his tracks and how he never stays in the same place for long, yet Lois Lane, played by Amy Adams, is able to find him in about 5 minutes. In the movie she tells Superman that she knew that he would come find her when she got close; yeah….right.

The characters at the Daily Planet were also poorly written, we hardly get any screen time with them and I probably couldn’t tell you two of the people’s names other than Perry White, played by Lawrence Fishburne. During the big climatic fight scene in the city, we see them running from the destruction and we’re actually supposed to worry about them and take screen-time away from the battles going on in order to see what happens to them, when in actuality, we don’t really care.

I will say this however, with Michael Shannon playing a vicious and entertaining General Zod, Kevin Costner and Diane Lane playing the Kent’s, and Russell Crow playing Jor-El, the cast and acting is superb.

There is also some beautiful cinematography in the film, just watch the trailer for a sample of it, but Snyder’s use of the snap-zoom becomes a bit repetitive by the end of the film.

So, you can go along with the haters and bash this film, or you can go and enjoy an actually decent Superman movie filled with great action scenes and surprisingly solid acting. The choice is yours.

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