I always kind of have mixed emotions about remakes (or "re-imaginings.") They run the gamut from well-done to terrible, with a lot of largely-unnecessary thrown in. But since we ran out of ideas years ago, and thus remakes and sequels are pretty much all we get any more, I've resigned myself to dealing with them.
I wasn't sure about Man of Steel when I first heard about it, and kind of thought I could take it or leave it. But since it seemed like everyone I knew was talking about how great it was, I decided to give it a try. And while I didn't think it was the be-all, end-all of superhero movies, I agree that it was pretty darn good.
I wasn't really familiar with Henry Cavill before this, but I thought that he was a good fit for the part. Handsome, obviously, with a beautifully genuine smile that really makes you believe that he's the good guy that he's portraying. Michael Shannon made a sufficiently creepy General Zod, and I even thought Amy Adams (who I sometimes like and sometimes don't) made a decent Lois Lane.
The rest of the cast made a good ensemble. And, let's be honest, any time that Russel Crowe doesn't sing and Kevin Costner doesn't hurt himself trying to do an accent is a win.
For my money, there were only really two drawbacks to the movie. One was the length. At almost two and a half hours, I was kind of tired of sitting there by the time it was over. Not that it was slow or dragged at all; I was just ready for it to be over be the time we got there.
The other thing that bothered me a little bit (and the thing that could have solved the length problem) was the overly-gratuitous destruction of the city. I'm not one of those "stop the violence!" people. And I get that superheros always destroy the cities that they're protecting. But for some reason the climactic fight scene here seemed to go on a bit too long, and try too hard to be "bigger and better" than other movies.
Those two slight issues aside, this was still a pretty great movie. It was entertaining, and exciting, and definitely worth the price of admission.
My husband is a big comic movie guy. When he first heard about this movie last year, he declared that this would be our one movie at the theater for the year. I was kinda 'meh' about it.... We saw it opening week and loved it.
ReplyDeleteIan told me that the auditions for Superman started with who looked best in Christopher Reeves' old costume. And my gawd, did this cat fit the bill! *drool*
~Sunfire
Glad you enjoyed it. I hadn't heard that about the auditions, but yes, Cavill definitely looked good in that costume. I'm pretty sure my reaction to kissing him would have been about like Lois's was. :)
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