Surprised to hear so much praise from DLP so far, everything I've read about it has been lukewarm! I haven't seen it yet myself, of course, so maybe people are just being hypercritical (or fatigued with superhero movies).

 

I really enjoyed Zod's portrayal, it made him a much more sympathetic character. To be honest, the thing that bugged me the most is the way the scenes kept jumping around - something about it just kept throwing the rhythm of the movie off. You could follow them, yes, but a large minority of the the scene transitions were nonexistent, as if they cut them out due to time constraints. You could still follow the movie, and what was there was very well done; it just seemed like the producing and editing were trying to cut too much out to save on time or something.

 

To me it seems to be more of a case of movie critics generally being fuckwits and stupid people taking their word as gospel instead of thinking for themselves. IMDB gives it an 8.4 right now, by the way, as opposed to the 57% from Rotten Tomatoes. And the audience reception meter for RT is at roughly 82% last I checked, which shows you how out of touch critics are. The other camp I'm seeing is the hardcore comics fans who will not accept any deviation whatsoever, even if a lot of the things they're bitching about have precedent in the comics, but you have them bitching about everything so it's hardly new.

I never would've expected this huge divide in reactions walking out of that theater. I thought it was just as good as the recent Batman movies (definitely better than TDKR, though maybe not TDK), and better than most of the MCU. It delivered pretty much exactly what I wanted out of it.

Anyway, there are a couple things I want to see in a sequel (which they'll hopefully make). Spoilered just in case I let slip something in there:

Spoiler

- Emphasis on Superman's identity conflict. Is he human or Kryptonian? He sided with humanity in this movie, but he should still have lingering doubts about his humanity and his place in the world. Lex Luthor would be an ideal villain here, playing up the human supremacist angle and trying to discredit and bring down "The Alien." A depowered subplot would be good here, like the one in Earth One, Vol. 2 where the Parasite drains him of his energy for a time and he realizes just how vulnerable normal humans are and sees the kind of strength it takes to live day to day. That was done in Superman II as well, but it's necessary. Also, emphasis on the divides between Clark Kent, bumbling reporter, Clark Kent, son of hard-working and kind Kansas farmers, Kal-El the alien, and Superman the hero.

- Scenes of Superman helping and saving people from more mundane things. Accidents, etc. Superman can't just be punching stuff, as good as that was in this movie. The scene with him saving the plane in Returns was probably the best part of that film. Not to mention after the end of this movie, I'd expect him to have an even bigger respect for life and "saving people thing" in general. A good thing to show would be an adaptation of that scene in All-Star Superman #10, where he saves the girl who's about to jump off a building. It's a small scene, but widely regarded as a defining moment for Superman. This movie had him saving humanity, but few individual people. The opposite should be the case in the next one.

 

Yeah, I liked how

Spoiler

He said he didnt trust Zod, but he didnt trust humans either, the scene where he finished fighting the two Kryptonians and came out only to have a barrage of guns pointed at him seemed to hit home, until they got lowered anyway

Personally I wasnt much of a fan of DKR, most of it was great, but the Blake character just annoyed the hell out of me.

 

Just saw it. Was pretty awesome to be honest. And I'm not a Superman fan. Like at all.

Action was superb, no doubt about it. Really portrayed the kind of Damage a Kryptonian can dish out. Movie is well worth watching if just for the action alone.

Was actually surprised how much philosophical undertones they managed to fit into this movie. Especially a Superman movie. Especially the senior Kent's death. I personally thought it added a LOT more weight to the Earth Vs Krypton argument.

So, good movie all around. 8.5/10

 

Watched it. Good movie.

Only thing that bothered me was:

Spoiler

Clark supposedly cares about the people of Metropolis, seen when he killed Zod to rescue that family, but the fight with Zod and destroying the world engine has him involuntarily kill hundreds or thousands of people.

Then, after killing Zod, fast cut to The Daily Planet, where everything is now rebuilt (that was quick), and the reporters are seemingly happy, even though I'm sure most of their office mates and friends just got pulverized by Superman crashing into buildings and exploding gas tankers.

Like that scene where Zod throws that big gas truck at Supes, and he just dodges, and it hits an office building behind him. Welp, those folks are burning to death.

All they needed was a short scene that said the folks in Metropolis were evacuating, and maybe a short scene afterwards showing the aftermath and the reaction to their entire city getting destroyed.

But then again, it is a superhero movie, and Superman is one of the most not grounded in reality superheroes.

 

I honestly thought there was a timeskip between the final fight & end scene tbh.

 

Takes years to build one building, let alone dozens. If there was that much of a time skip then Lois would be older. Unless Superman helped with the reconstruction which is possible.

Y'know. Since it's his clumsy ass fault.

 

I don't recall the Daily Planet being trashed that much. I remember that they evacuated the building before it was hit and we weren't shown anything of it until the end. And I think they only showed one office at the end, that doesn't say much about the entire building.

This was Superman's first fight. Not just his first fight with other people with superpowers, but his first fight ever. He'd constantly been holding himself back because if he ever lost control, he'd kill someone. You can see this when Faora completely owns him in hand-to-hand, and he only gets the upper hand through raw strength. I can forgive a lot of the collateral damage because of that.

That said, I'm not seeing a lot of justification for this apparent holocaust of thousands that supposedly died because of Superman and Zod. I would expect that most of Metropolis was evacuated or being evacuated by the time they were fighting, especially around the zone where the World Engine pulverized everything where most of the fight took place. And unless we were shown these deaths on the screen (we weren't) or they were alluded to somehow (they weren't) then they probably just didn't happen. To be honest a scene or two of Superman saving people in the fight wouldn't have been unwelcome, but that might've broken the flow. Also, Superman clearly couldn't control Zod in the fight, so expecting Superman to just take him elsewhere when Zod was hell-bent on destroying the city and everyone in it seems a bit much.

 

It might have been cause I was high when I watched it, but I thought this movie meh at best. The acting felt bland, the romance felt rushed, and it seemed like Henry Cavill barely had any lines. The action and the CGI were pretty awesome though. I don't know, everyone else seems to think it was great. Guess I'll have to watch it again.

 

While the movie was undoubtedly fun to watch, I can see why critics are divided over the movie. While certain themes are present in the movie, they come off as weak or irrelevant towards the end of the movie.

Spoiler

The theme about having a choice and making the right decision? Largely irrelevant for Superman as he was already a good person, willingly to risk exposing himself to save people as a kid. Nor did we really see any good reason why Krpytonians need to divide their people into caste and genetically engineer their soldiers. Just look at how easily Jor-El defeated Zod.

The theme about trusting others? Largely forgotten once Superman decides to let the US military arrest him.

Most importantly of all, character development was quite weak in this movie. Jor-El has more character development than the protagonist of this movie! We do not really get to see the moral conflict faced by superman. I get the point that they were trying to make, regarding killing off the last of your people to save an innocent species. However, at no point in time can I feel how much Superman wants to be with his people.

 

Saw it, liked it. Felt that some of the action went on a bit. In a fight where two characters are pretty much evenly matched, equally strong and equally invulnerable, where every punch can destroy a building but can be shrugged off by the combatants, it's not too interesting to watch them smack each other around for 15 minutes.

Also felt that Zod's eventual defeat wasn't very well done. It seemed to me that Kal-El was losing the fight. He was the inferior fighter. There didn't seem to be anything in particular that led to him winning the fight other than the producer looking at his clock, realising that the fight had been going on for a while, and calling it for the good guys.

 

I may be talking out of my ass, but I thought that was kind of the point. Zod was bred to protect Krypton at any and all cost, that was one of the themes of the whole story. Krypton blew up. He lost. He knew he lost, and that there was no hope since the incubator, or whatever the hell that thing was was destroyed. So he suicided by Kal-El.

The things that I didn't like were the "shaky cam" annoying as all hell to me. And the constant back and forth between the past and the future. It just killed the momentum of the story.

The things that I liked was the new version of Krypton, but they made it too "Avatar" for my tastes. They stole several scenes straight from that movie. (riding the dragon bug thing, free falling and being caught by the dragon bug thing, etc.) It was still neat either way.

I like the new Superman better than the old. I've never been much of a fan of the "No killing" rule.

I liked that Lois tracked him down and that he wasn't able to keep his secret in Smallville... ever. It made it more realistic for me. I'd be interested to see what they do with a sequel.

The one thing I was confused about was how everyone that had seen it before Friday said that it was so intense and the fight scenes were so great. I thought they were... meh. Maybe it was because there were simply too many people involved.

 

Yeah, this is what I was referring to when I said I was worried people would start liking this Superman for the wrong reasons.

I'm hoping that being forced to kill Zod in this is what cements the attitude about killing he has in the comics. Whichever villain they use in the next one, Superman has to spare him specifically to counter what he did in this one.

 

Yeah... uh, sorry for liking this for the wrong reasons. What was I thinking?

 

You're completely missing the point of his character. The sanctity of life is something that's central to Superman.

 

You're completely missing the point of a reboot, which is to do things differently. The character of Superman isn't something like 2+2=4. It's not something eternally fixed. Different writers can take the story in different directions and can put different spins on the character.

That said, it was quite clear that taking a life was something he didn't want to do. Being willing to kill (which is what Heather acclaimed) is a long way from being happy to do so.



On another note, if you have any female friends reluctant to see superhero movies this is the one to take them to. I went with two girls, both of whom were in awe of how guapo Henry Cavill is.

 

I loved this movie, but the one thing my friends and I mocked was how easy it would've been if Zod decided to just move "New Krypton" someplace else. I mean, I feel like if he'd just told Clark that he wanted to bring back the Kryptonians, Clark would've helped him if it didn't include wiping out the sentient race living on the planet he calls home.

Also, couldn't Superman had done literally anything else aside from destroy the scoutship and kill any shot of bringing back the Kryptonians?

 

I kind of had to laugh at Zod's method of selling the idea to Clark. Give him a vision of the apocalypse, wherein he drowns in skulls, and then when he wakes up, mention you killed his dad and would do it again. "Wasn't sure when it would come up in conversation, so I figured I'd just tell you. Sorry but not really!"

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True story. >.>

 

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal talk.