When it comes to Super-Heroes on Big Screen, there’s always a big hype, this trend has developed specially in the past decade after Huge success of SpiderMan, IronMan and Batman. With the announcement of the new SuperMan film “Man of Steel”, Directed by Zack Snyder – the guy who directed 300, Screenplay by David S. Goyer and Produced by the critically acclaimed Director and Producer “Christopher Nolan” of The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, audience has high expectations from the new Super Man film. The story kicks off with General Zod’s attempts of taking control over the council/ leaders of Krypton. The planet is dying and in order to preserve the Kryptonian race, the chief scientist Jor-El (Russel Crowe) rockets his son Kal El (the first natural born child after centuries) to another planet “Earth”. The rocket is found by an old childless couple (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) who raise the boy help him strive against the not so natural abilities anyone could possessive on planet earth and keep his real identity secret. Meanwhile Zod locates Kal and comes to planet earth after 33 years of search to finish the human race and finish off Kal. And in this hour of need, Hope – (which is also the meaning of “S” on his chest) is emerged to protect the human race.Rebooting the franchise was a good idea and Zack Snyder if compared with the previous Super Man films has done a marvelous job. Super Man was portrayed, better than ever in Man of Steel, but there was something missing in those 143 minutes you spend sitting and staring at the screen. He has always been a difficult character to bring on the screen, be it his scripted character or the perfect actor who has the Super Man built and physique to present on the big screen. With so many problems Zack Snyder was able to promise what the title of the film stated - “Man of Steel” with loads of action packed in the film, the super powers of Kal El and most importantly his fight with General Zod and his minions to save planet earth. But then again these fight sequences in the film were a cliché because of their repetition. The film should have explored other areas like his coming of age and discovering of his powers with a slow brief and in depth angle. The rhythm of the film was also toppling over the story, one thing was happening over the other, there was no consistency in the story except the end where it’s one long day of fighting and destruction. One thing fans and critics complained most was, the film had no humor or joy, majority of the film was dry. Apart from the story, the protagonist was missing something major in the plot. When it’s a Super hero film, there is always gotta be 2 Protagonist played by the same person and this case it was Cavil. Goyer could have gone, instead he should have gone into a more distinctive and diverse roles for both Kal El and Clark Kent that would have helped to separate both characters. However General Zod was played with the perfect evilish-mind intensity by Michael Shannon.
Mark’s Army of Special Effects team was able to pull a fantastic job to show the world, What Super Man is made up of and what he is capable to do, this brought a charm in Man of Steal, that never existed before. With the super power and super speed fighting style, as well as flight in super speed but too
much destruction was caused using this, Metropolis was almost brought down to it’s end with everything building being destroyed and wait a minute didn’t this happen before in a movie, Wasn’t it Chicago in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where Decepticons had brought down the entire city. All this hardwork could have been used in some other domain. And the story even though kept quite intact with the comics, still couldn’t find it’s way through, We have seen so many alien invasion movies and 2 years back another Super Hero film related to Alien invasion hit the screens, Yes I’m talking about Thor but was Man of Steel offering us something different, something like The Dark Knight with countless twists and turns. Obviously one could expect a story within a story if Chris is involved in a project but seems like he was hardly present on the set when the shooting took place, the only face to face in detail interaction he had with Zack was when the film was in post-production. World’s first Super Hero has always been a difficult job to bring on screen with perfection but long story short, it was a Good Superman comeback even though he was only addressed as “Superman” just once in the film.
The glitches of the film can be overcome in the sequel of Man of Steel where I hope to see two distinct voices of Clark Kent and Kal El (Super Man) as well and best part was for the first time Superman isn’t wearing his underwear inside out the costume.