Did anyone else notice this movie has Morpheus, Commander Lock, and kids grown in pods?
If it were up to me, White, you’d never run a newspaper again!
Then I am grateful, General… that it is not up to you. 
This.
Way too loud, and the last act was too action-y by half. Was anybody left alive in New York (excuse me, Metropolis)? Or in Smallville? Other than people Superman was personally acquainted with, I mean?
I love the way the origin story works – Superman is a tough story to tell because he’s pretty much all powerful and almost too good. It was nice to give him some psychological barriers to overcome; compared with Batman and the Marvel characters he’s too simple a character to make interesting.
Also, it seemed like Amy Adams had better chemistry with Russell Crowe than with Henry Cavill.
Ultimately, superhero movies either work or don’t work based on the quality of their villains. Without the origin story I think this movie doesn’t hold up – Luthor can work, he’s Superman’s Joker. Can they get a Luthor for the next iteration that’s as good as Heath Ledger (or at least as good as Nicholson)?
I didn’t like the shaky cam or the Jesusy stuff and they hit the relentless destruction button pretty hard (or held it down with a brick, I suspect), but beyond that, my reaction is positive.
Of course not. Superman “saved” them all by fighting General Zod there, thus assuring that both of them would go plowing through as many skyscrapers as possible.
I found it interesting that, once the main enemy space ship had been turned into a black hole, Superman’s first instinct wasn’t to dig out the THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SURVIVORS TRAPPED UNDER THE RUBBLE, but was instead to go looking for General Zod so that he could beat him up some more.
Felt the movie was very meh. Didn’t really like the cast (especially Lois - not a bad actress, but doesn’t feel like a good Lois to me), if anything Russell Crowe was the best actor. The fight scenes were good (lots of very good kinetic energy, definitely had a lot of “oomph”) but too much shaky cam… right from the first scene. Jor-El is talking to a council: SHAKY CAM! WHY!?
First hour dragged as they hashed over his origin story, and boy does Jonathan Kent look like a moron in his death scene. Overall the plot was fairly mediocre and spartan - Zod shows up, tries to find the Macguffin, fights Superman a bit, unleashes the World Engine, Superman blows World Engine up without a problem, they fight some more. No real chance to really build any relationships or any interesting character development. Superman’s always a bit hard to do that with since he’s “perfect” and doesn’t really have any flaws, so I feel the best way to handle that is to really have a good foil for him, and try to put him in situations where his moral code hamstrings him. But aside from a couple of lines that felt ham-fistedly inserted (“we don’t have morals, you do!” huh? Since when do Kryptonians not have morals?) and Zod’s good final speech, there wasn’t really much foiling going on. And Superman probably killed just as many people through collateral damage. Killing Zod at the end especially was a wasted moment to really show who Superman is, especially in an origin story.
I saw someone else describing it as a “cold” movie, and I agree. There’s no emotional connections, no good humor or zingers like the Marvel movies, and no dark brooding edge like the Nolan Batman films. Just kind of an impersonal superhero movie. Still, there wasn’t really anything bad about it, which was certainly possible given Sucker Punch. And it’s miles better than Green Lantern.
I will say the final scene with Zod seemed strange to me because the family was cowering as the laser approached, but it seemed to me they could very easily just run around the obstacle they were cowering against and get the heck out of there.
So I don’t even notice shaky cam. Is it just me? Does this mean I’m missing something or getting something? I don’t know…
I think it means you and the director have synchronous Parkinson’s.
Saw it yesterday afternoon with my wife. A few points, some as mentioned above…
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It was way too freaking loud, at least in the theater I was in. I also saw it in IMAX 3D. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. I had a headache when leaving the theater
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Shaky Cam, yeah, no. It was used, way, way too much. I thought the fight scenes were great, but they would have been better had the use of this ridiculous technique not made them so difficult to track visually. Also, what’s the point of using it during conversations with no action at all?
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I didn’t care for the new Lois. But then I haven’t liked any Lois, going all the way back to George Reeves.
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Zod was good, really good. Too bad he’s dead. He would have been a great recurring foe. Now all we’ll get is a reimagined Lex Luthor, who’s only human but, somehow, will be able to withstand anything Superman will throw at him. Bleh.
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3D use in this movie, in my opinion, was distracting, and didn’t add anything. I’m going to see it again without the 3D
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I didn’t care for the kiss near the end. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t buy that Lois and Superman had built up anything near the level of relationship warranted by such a kiss. Yeah, he saved her a few times, but still.
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Contrary to other comments above, I liked the darker Superman. it felt more realistic to me.
All in all, I liked the reboot. It almost makes me forget the terrible mistake: Superman Returns. i look forward to the sequel.
They actually had some somewhat realistic physics!
When Clark is supporting the falling tower on the drilling platform, they showed the beam he was standing on starting to bend from the force.
That wasn’t Clark, that was Joe …or greenhorn. Heh. I actually don’t remember if he was called Joe during his ‘Deadliest Catch’ stint. 
I thought it was great. I loved how they worked in the character of Pete from Smallville, who I understand wasn’t in the comics. He wasn’t a black kid who had always been his friend, he was a white guy who was picking on him until Clark saved him from drowning in the bus.
I choked up three times in the first 30 minutes or so: when Jor-El and Lana sent Kal away, when Jonathan Kent exclaimed “You ARE my son!”, and then when he died in the tornado. I like that ending for Pa Kent a lot better than him just having a random heart attack like he did in the original movies.
I kept comparing Michael Shannon’s Zod to Terrance Stamp’s. While Stamp’s version is iconic (KNEEL before Zod), Shannon’s was way more violent and believable. I kept wondering how they were going to face off at the end when Zod couldn’t control his powers, until he mentioned being a genetically engineered warrior who was bred to be able to control his senses. Perhaps a bit of a cop out, but it’s a comic book movie so I’m willing to suspend disbelief.
I also thought it was great how the military kept trying to take them all down. Clark took the bullets and the bombs and still saved a handful of them, making it that much better when Meloni’s character said, “This man is not our enemy.”
I only caught two bits of Jesus imagery: the Jesus Christ pose as he left the ship after Jor-El told him “You can save them all” and the mention that he was 33 years old. It felt shoehorned in, but since he’s supposed to be a Jesus allegory, I can take it. Besides, it didn’t seem quite as forced as it did in Superman Returns.
All in all, it’s about what I expected. It was gritty, it was dark, it was realistic (at least as realistic as a movie about superheros and aliens can be). I liked it a lot, and can’t wait for the sequel.
I didn’t love it, but I liked out quite a bit. I did have to plug my ears numerous times. It was way too loud.
The loadmaster who was killed on the C-17: I went to basic training with him. It was cool seeing someone I know.
How was the end a happy ending! I’m assuming millions are dead with the entire world in a deep economic depression. I work in insurance and the entire time I was trying to figure exactly how much we would need to pay out and what we would have to cover.
This is the best Superman movie ever made. Yeah, it’s got it’s flaws, but overall it’s very worthwhile to go see. I loved it.
One thing that kinda puzzled me though: at the end, when he assumes the full-blown Clark Kent identity as a reporter for the Daily Planet…how can he be working there without anyone knowing who he is? Perry Mason surely knows who he is, obviously Lois know who he is (which is fine)…other employees there saw him battling Zod and whatnot…I don’t get that. Oh, he put on some glasses and now nobody recognizes him! Yeah, right.
Just saw this and I enjoyed it. It was dark, and wow, a whole lot of people probably died in all those battles, but Superman is an A-list character and you really can’t have him chasing down pickpockets on the streets. If half the city has to be blown up to get across the idea that Zod means business, then that’s how it’s gotta be.
I didn’t mind the lack of laughs, the darkness of the story, or some of the changes to canon. They needed this movie to be Batman Begins, and while I don’t know if they succeeded, I think its certainly possible. If this version of Superman is going to anchor The Justice League movie, then I’m fine with it.
They’ve got a long way to go to beat Marvel at their game though. There were some things I didn’t like, some stuff that I felt didn’t work (weirdo Kryptonian dot technology, wtf?) but it can be overlooked because its Superman and people will forgive a bit of that. However, WB can’t go making any more Green Lanterns, that was a bit of a disaster. I just don’t know where else they can go (except with a sequel to this movie) to set up JLA.
So guys I think it would be fine to take an eight year old to this movie. (The most mature work he has read is Deathly Hallows.) But am I totally off?
It’s good. I took my seven and eleven year old sons. They loved it.
Pre-SMALLVILLE, Pete was in the comics as a white kid who discovered our hero’s secret and didn’t even let Clark know. So a group of kids would be out at a malt shop, and there’d be a radio announcement about a burning building across town, and, oh, gosh, I just spilled this milkshake all over myself; Clark, can you go run out to my car and get a sweater from the trunk? Or he’d join the high-school geology club because Clark joined the high-school geology club – and when they’d all get trapped by a cave-in, hey, let’s all split up into groups of two and look for a way out; Clark, you’re with me – uh, after I go around this corner to take a quick leak.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. I thought I remember reading somewhere that they invented the character for the show. Thanks for correcting me.
Pete Ross has been part of the Superman (well, Superboy) canon since 1961. He was the kid who knew Clark Kent was Superboy (the discovery was in his first story), but concealed this knowledge. It’s very roughly analogous, I guess, with the movie character, except the movie version told his mom, like some kinda wuss.
Making him black was purely the decision of the Smallville producers.
[I see I should have kept reading the thread… oh, well…]
Similarly, the jerkish (yet somewhat heroic when it counted) reporter Steve Lombard is also a long-established comic book character. I liked these little touches, myself.