[Thespiralgoeson]

Just saw Man of Steel. I didn't think I could be disappointed because my expectations were fairly low, but man..... what a colossal piece of sh*t this movie is.

I fully expected the movie to take itself way too seriously, and be relatively devoid of (intentional) humor and charm. I can handle that. What I didn't expect was for the movie to be mind-numbingly stupid and unintentionally hilarious. There were a good four or five moments that were so ridiculous I couldn't stop myself from chuckling. One scene in particular involving a tornado made me laugh so loud that other people in the theater started giving me dirty looks. I also didn't expect the movie to completely waste most of its great cast (Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane and Laurence Fishburn all have roles so underdeveloped and poorly-written, they might as well have been played by anybody.)

I liked Henry Cavill well enough (which surprised me a bit). Michael Shannon is a badass villain, and Russell Crowe is fine as usual. There's some neat visuals of course, but other than that, total stinker. The third act is especially painful. Really, almost Transformers bad. One giant, INSANELY long, drawn-out action sequence that goes on for about 30 minutes longer than it should (not exaggerating.) It reminded me of Peter Griffin fighting the giant rooster. Plus, it's the same tired ass thing we've seen countless times in recent blockbusters; a giant battle with aliens in the middle of a New York-ish city. Without looking anything up, just see how many movies you can list off the top of your head that have that exact same sequence. Go ahead, try it! I just now counted six thinking too hard. (To be fair, three of them are Transformers movies.) EDIT: And Spreedom is dead-on about the amount of destruction and the carnage it would inevitably cause; another moment that made me laugh hysterically was a part where Superman is freaking out over Zod threatening to kill a single family, totally oblivious that their fist fight must have just killed half the f*cking city. And that's not the only hilarious thing about this scene. Trust me, this one's worthy of Mystery Science Theatre. Also, this is a small thing, but the product placement in this movie is really ham-fisted and distracting.

I'm sure the movie will make a ton of money (I was dumb enough to pay for it,) and there will probably be at least two sequels. However I'm convinced as ever that Hollywood still doesn't "get" Superman. I'm also convinced that David Goyer is a talentless hack who only has a career from riding Chris Nolan's coattails, and that Zack Snyder might actually be retarded. For a sequel to be any good at all, the execs at WB would have to ditch Snyder and Goyer, and then lock themselves in a dark room and watch nothing but Max Fleischer cartoons until they understand what is appealing about Superman. He's appealing because he's a childhood fantasy, not because he's a Jesus allegory. And for god's sake, Hollywood, ENOUGH with the 9/11 imagery already.