Indy Datta only saw the new Superman film last night, so this review will be small, and we can’t promise it will be perfectly formed.
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is, in almost every way, the epitome of the contemporary fantasy comic-book blockbuster, assembled with enormous skill and craft – but also witless, repetitive, thoughtlessly cacophonous, artlessly pretentious. There’s an hour of throat clearing exposition before anything of any interest happens. The plot, on pretty much every conceivable level, makes no sense. Film and director seem needlessly cowed by the source material (the crazy Snyder grandiosity of 300 and Sucker Punch is entirely absent, and yeah, I miss it), yet also simultaneously Nolanishly embarrassed by its inherent silliness (the one time a character says the word “Superman”, it’s an inadvertently delivered punchline). Henry Cavill, in the lead, is given little scope to be anything more than a sixpack on a stick.
Not unusually for superhero movies, it’s down to the villain to save the day.
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