SPOILERS follow. (Can this be a thread defaulting to spoilers, please? Maybe a mod can put that in the thread title? Thanks.)
I left with a feeling of elation after seeing MoS, so overall I have a positive reaction.
Including the Donner cut of
Superman II, I'm going to count a total of seven Superman films to date. For me, SR goes in the bottom heap with III and IV, and frankly, I'd rather rewatch the camp-fest that is III than either of those others (IV's clearly the worst, though). The middle two would have to be the two
Superman II's, with the Donner cut clearly on top.
So that just leaves the 1978 film and MoS in the top tier. Which is better? For me, for the time being, it's apples and oranges. Both have their strengths, and both have weaknesses. For MoS, I'm most likely going to end up saying it deserves something in the B+/A-/A range, but I'll need to see it at least a few more times to make a final decision.
What follows is an incomplete list of my reactions.
The cast was pretty much perfect across the board in every case. So, no need to drone on about that.
The "epilogue" as it were in the Daily Planet at the end was fantabulous. "Welcome to the Planet": what a wonderful pun. How wonderful that up front Lois knows his identity. No, I'm going to give a standing ovation to Amy Adams, after all. She was perfect.
The Pa Kent scenes were astonishing. As for maybe Clark should have let the kids on the bus die, because there's more at stake than just kids on a bus: hell, yeah, indeed. And Pa put his money where his mouth was. America is not just the beneficiary of Clark's powers. The whole world is; he saved the
world.
OK, more droning about the cast, after all. Ma Kent was fabulous. Perry was fabulous. Zod was fabulous. Jor-El was fabulous. Faora was fabulous. The cast was fabulous.
(I loved the shot with Toby, Stabler, and Gaeta. A nice little wink to the audience that, yeah, we know you've seen all them before.)
(Also, was Jenny supposed to be Jenny
Olsen?)
I like how the plot stayed ahead of the curve in terms of Clark being on scene and Lois not being an idiot. It was logical for Zod to bring up Lois to his ship, since she was the one who broke the story about Kal-El (by proxy; seems Zod easily tapped into the Internet, as would be expected).
The oil rig scene was actually pretty emotional, although I didn't like the way the first super-hop as executed, before he held the tower up. It was emotional, because for all the oil workers knew, he died saving them.
OK, here come the gripes.
The Codex was way too easy to steal. As an unauthorized breeder, Lara was a criminal and should have been on her way to punishment of some sort, probably to the Phantom Zone also. (
ETA: Buzzkill's right, I should temper this. I don't know she was a criminal; what I meant to say, and should have said, was that based on everything I saw, I would have been surprised if she wasn't. It seemed puzzling to me that Lara was not also standing trial, given the fact that she and Jor-El felt it necessary to hide Kal-El's birth, given Zod's revulsion to Kal-El's natural birth, and given Jor-El's explanation that natural births had been halted long ago. I felt there needed to be a better sense of why security around the Codex, and regarding the integrity of Kryptonian breeding, was so lax, since their whole race was relying on the technological substitute for natural childbirth.)
If Zod was really genetically bred to be the defender of Krypton, then he should have surrendered to Kal-El once his ship was sent to the Phantom Zone at the first climax. For, Kal-El, with the Codex, literally embodied whatever future Krypton has.
The fistfights were ultimately too repetitive. The point of things getting smashed up was actually made during the scene where Kal-El taught himself to fly, when he broke the mountain, which was an excellent scene by the way. After the first punches were thrown, there was nowhere that anybody making the film knew to go but around in circles and, frankly, down. By the time people were getting punched through buildings, it was really very boring, and all kinda been there, done that. But we had to watch them get punched through buildings a dozen more times after that, it seemed.
The most dramatic elements in the fistfights were things like Faora breaking that last soldier's neck, right before Stabler said it was a good day to die/how you die/whatever, and didn't require millions of dollars in SFX to be effective. But on the other hand, why would she just continue to let the bomber approach with what's obviously a piece of Kryptonian technology being delivered according to some battle plan? As soon as the Kryptonians showed up on the cargo plane, I figured that plan was over. Without Superman around, it should have been a cinch for them to bring the plane down and/or get the Kryptonian tech off the plane. Too much time elapsed on the plane once the Kryptonians arrived.
All the dust and debris floating around might have been plausible or even realistic, but it didn't make the film any fun. Kinda made it a downer really, since with all the pieces of paper floating around, all I could think of was 9/11 again.
The palette was too washed out.
I wasn't wholly thrilled with the Kryptonian art design, particularly when it came to the craft. However, that comic-book style presentation of Krypton history was magnificent.
