Henry Cavill takes on role of iconic superhero in disastrous MAN OF STEEL
MAN OF STEEL (Zack Snyder, 2013)
Opens Friday, June 14
www.manofsteel.warnerbros.com
The team that reimagined the Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, unfortunately are not nearly as successful with their new take on another legendary DC Comics superhero, Superman. In 2005, Nolan and Goyer collaborated on Batman Begins, kicking off the outstanding Dark Knight Trilogy, bringing the Bat Man into the twenty-first century. For Man of Steel, Nolan and Goyer developed the story, with Nolan (Inception, Memento) serving as one of the producers and Goyer (Blade, The Unborn) writing the lame screenplay. A melding of the first two Christopher Reeve movies, Man of Steel starts with the birth of Kal-El, who is jettisoned to Earth by his parents, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer), as their planet, Krypton, is about to implode. General Zod (Michael Shannon) vows to find the boy, who crash-lands in Kansas and is raised by farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane). “You’re the answer to ‘Are we alone in the universe?,” his father tells young Clark, teaching him how to hide his special powers, an underlying theme that gets shattered almost immediately when Clark (Cooper Timberline) rescues a sinking school bus in full view of his classmates. Throughout the film, director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) plays with the mythology of the Superman story, which is fine if they make sense, but instead they are jaw-droppingly inconsistent and incomprehensible, with inexplicable time shifts and plot holes the size of, well, black holes. Interesting elements show up and then never come back, or are repeated ad nauseam, or are suddenly twisted around without explanation. Is Superman’s identity a secret or not? Is he a space alien or the second coming of Jesus? How can a building collapse and then just be back up again? And why is Jor-El’s holographic consciousness capable of certain things and not others? Despite an all-star cast of film and television pros — which also includes Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Christopher Meloni as Colonel Hardy, Richard Schiff as Dr. Emil Hamilton, and the voice of Carla Gugino as a cool service robot — Man of Steel is a complete dud, even in IMAX 3D, which adds little to the proceedings. Henry Cavill is fine as Superman, following in the footsteps of onetime fellow newcomers Reeve and Brandon Routh; the film is best when he is wandering around the world in dead-end jobs, trying to figure out who he is, but that ends up being just another brief episode that eventually gets lost in a seemingly endless series of Rock’em Sock’em Robots battles that grow tiresome quickly. This reboot deserves to get the boot.