A young journalist is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race.
The whole film ends up feeling weighed down: though Man of Steel bounds from one epic setpiece to another, you're left with the nagging feeling that you just can't work out what the central twosome see in each other. And for Superman and Lois Lane, that's hardly ideal.
Ponderous but polished.
It aches for more depth and warmth and humour, but this is spectacular sci-fi — huge, operatic, melodramatic, impressive. It feels the right Superman origin story for our era, and teases what would be a welcome new superfranchise.
This is cerebral, exhilarating blockbuster filmmaking.
Man of Steel is a glorious, epic and optimistic means of reintroducing Superman to the world – even if he’s never really been away. Welcome back, Supes.
Feels fresh yet familiar, believable yet still fantastical and otherworldly.
This is a great, big, meaty, chewy superhero adventure, which broadly does what it sets out to do, though at excessive length.
With too few moments of believable human interaction, too little humour, and characters who are too thinly drawn, it’s easy to lose sight of what Superman is fighting for, and whether it’s even worth it.
Man of Steel is short on the super, heavy on the morals and hardly a bold reinvention - yet as an(other) introduction to the titular do-gooder, it just about flies.
Man Of Steel is certainly a bold reinvention of the comic book hero and many fans may enjoy it. Visually it is striking and artful. Yet it doesn’t come close to matching Nolan’s Batman trilogy for excitement, complexity or character interest.
In some ways Man Of Steel is near-perfect, but in others it feels like a missed opportunity. The grounded, thoughtful material hinted at in the initial trailers is interesting, but it’s devalued by too much slam-bang action.
Red underpants and kryptonite are conspicuously absent, but this dour picture still feels overfamiliar and rote.
All enquiries into humanity and responsibility are drowned out by long, noisy, computer-generated fight scenes which marry Nolan's taste for doom and gloom with Snyder's taste for over-the-top action. The result is a depressingly apocalyptic spectacle.
The film is a load of repetitive tosh, featuring in every sequence of its 143 minutes more special effects than God used when he created the world, ending with a list of credits longer than many a telephone directory. And it's all so deafeningly, humourlessly solemn.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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