Movie review: Man of Steel (2013)


I just came back home from a movie that I would give a huge thumbs up. It’s ‘Man of Steel’, a superhero film based on the DC Comics character Superman. It’s directed by Zack Snyder, produced by Christopher Nolan, and scripted by David S. Goyer. Superman is one of those many popular superhero characters first originated from comics and then get to appear on big screen especially in recent years when creating a Hollywood’s superhero movie would usually promise a great return in box office. ‘Man of Steel’ is my first Superman movie that I watched. And all I have to say that it’s an epic and thrilling movie with breathtaking action sequences.

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The movie tells of a young itinerant man whom is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race. The man is none other than Clark Kent, Kal-El or Superman himself. The way the story unfolds is interesting because it gets to start with substantial introduction of how Superman originated from an alien planet, then growing up on Earth without knowing his true identity yet realizing his own unique superpower, while at the same time couldn’t use it for fear of being rejected by society. Then, there are several essential flashbacks that engage the audiences to know better the inner heart of Clark Kent rather than only showing him dealing with the main villain, General Zod. It’s a thick plot yet well carried out from this movie.

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The story develops very well within this movie that took over two hours. It combines right amount of character and story development, emotional elements and of course action sequences that made this movie way too awesome! No worry, there are quite a number of things from the plot to tell the audiences, and yet we won’t feel boring. Instead, we enjoyed digesting the story which is very well delivered. We enjoyed how Superman has to deal with things around, with him becoming the ‘bridge’ between the human and the extraterrestrial species he belonged to originally. The movie touches on way more deep to explore on inner conflict within Superman himself and his love to his parents (both biological and adopted) while also not neglecting the amount of action.

Action. Wow. Fantastic. I didn’t expect the amount of action sequences in this movie to be that much and that epic! It’s massive and crazy, and also too exaggerated, but it’s okay for me. I had a great time watching all that blasts, explosions, collapse, fights, etc. It’s breathtaking especially at the last part when things hit scale out-of-this-world. Honestly, Superman didn’t had much special abilities (only can fly, high strength, and eyes can blast things off), and yet this superhero provide us with huge amount of wonderful and intense action-packed scenes. And all that are greatly enhanced and heightened with impressive and heartstopping score by Hans Zimmer.

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The performance by the casts are great particularly the main characters of course. Henry Cavill is the right choice for the Superman character. Strong and solid acting, and he is definitely well-received by female due to his look. Amy Adams is good as Lois Lane, the love interest of Superman. On the other hand, the visual effects are awesome in this movie. A big-budget movie like this one would definitely grant us wonderful imageries and state-of-the-art outcome. It appears that this movie nailed in every different aspects and it delivered more than just a typical superhero movie. Definitely better than Iron Man 3 which is released not long ago too (sorry to Iron Man fans). ‘Man of Steel’ is no doubt a really exciting, superb, solid and strong superhero movie, and for me is one of the best movie this year. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Man of Steel’ a total of 8.0.

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But wait, why is this called ‘Man of Steel’? He is not made of steel, but I think it’s because he is as strong as steel, and that ‘man of steel’ sounds much cooler than inserting ‘superman’ into the movie’s title. By the way, ‘S’ on his uniform is actually a logo or a symbol from his alien planet Krypton, but in planet Earth, human see it as ‘S’, and so Lois, his love interest gave him this ‘Superman’ nickname. A bit of spoiler. I have to assure you that this is definitely a great movie not to be missed this year. It’s beyond my expectation. But I’m sure this movie is going to perform very well in box office too. Go for it if you haven’t.

(All images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)