As you could tell I didn't like this new version of Superman all that much. There are positives, I can think of Kevin Costner's solid performance as Kal-El's father and Henry Cavill who is in fact quite good in the role as the man of steel. However, here are the reasons why it all went wrong and this Superman movie just sucked.
1) Zack Snyder. Sorry movie geeks, the director of 300 and The Watchmen just hasn't made a good movie so far in his young career. Then why even hire him to take on what is arguably the most popular superhero of all superheroes? I can't understand it. Christopher Nolan was set to direct at one point, so were other big name directors but Snyder got the job and what he does in The Man Of Steel is destructive. In the film's first half you have hope as shades of humanity and feeling show with less action and character development. It is in the film's second half that Snyder piles on the action and destructs one building after another. There is nothing subtle about his direction, Michael Bay could have done the same job. The last hour is like Transformers 4, the movie we never saw.
2) The Screenplay. Written by David Goyer -who was credited with re-building the Batman franchise with the Dark Knight series. The script is a confusing mess. It makes a mockery out of what Superman was all about in the first place and turns the story into a sort of alien invasion picture. Blasphemy. Goyer seemed to think that the story he came up could be followed and actually make sense. Nonsense. He brings a real Dark Knight-esque feel to the film's first half, much credit must be given to Christopher Nolan who produced the whole film, but by the film's second half Goyer has far outreached his ambitions. He goes too far with the film's villain and loses the humanity that made superman such a loveable superhero in the first place.
3) The Villain. As played by the always reliable Michael Shannon, General Zod is a wimpy villain. There is nothing frightening about him. There is nothing that makes you believe that he cannot be beaten by Superman. His intentions are outrageous, his reasoning ludicrous. A far cry from the General Zod we saw in Richard Donner's landmark Superman 2 thirty years ago. Shannon chews the scenery knowing that is the only way to make such a poorly written villain come alive. He fails, just like Snyder and Goyer do. Time to go back on the drawing board for the sequel. Maybe bring Doomsday out or Lex Luther.
4) It's too loud and too hyper. Never have I seen -or actually- heard such an assault on the senses. The movie is quite simply the loudest thing I've ever witnessed in a movie theatre. It does not help that Snyder assaults us not only by the ears but the eyes as well. His non stop cutting of frames goes beyond the limit allowed and he hammers us down by film's end with relentlessly unnecessary action that goes on for way too long. By the time the whole thing came to its conclusion I was glad to get the hell out of the theater.
5) Expectations were too high. And so comes another disappointing Superman movie. One who's trailer promised artful subtleness but instead gave us a superman as directed by Michael Bay. Yikes. We need to be faulted too for this. We all hyped it up and jumped into the hype machine in the first place. Did we not realize that Snyder was just not a suitable director for this? Or did we just want to believe that he had it in him to make something good out of it? I think we were lying to ourselves. Who would have thought that Man Of Steel was going to be worse than Bryan Singer's misbegotten Superman Returns from 7 years ago? I sure didn't. Neither did you probably.