SPOILER FREE: I enjoyed this movie. There were definitely a lot of aspects that I didn’t care for, but for the most part, it was pretty good. I LOVE Man of Steel and it’s probably my favorite movie of all time, but this was also pretty good.
First the positives:
Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor in my opinion is the best Luthor we’ve seen to date in live action. Mr. Terrific was also captured near perfectly in this movie. Unlike previous movie interpretations of Lex Luthor (& Batman), both of these characters actually felt like geniuses and were actually given great feats of their intellectual prowess. This really gives me hope for the DCU’s interpretation of the Dark Knight himself as we’ve gotten very poor imitations of the character’s intelligence which is supposed to be the greatest in DC & possibly fiction.
The colors and theme of the film felt awesome and perfect for the DCU. There were moments where it felt straight out of a comic book which was awesome.
Now for the negatives:
Sorry if some of these complaints feel dumb, Superman is my favorite fictional character of all time and always has been. David Corenswet did really well as Superman. He did not really deliver anything poorly or seem wrong in any way. The writing for his character could’ve been better. He seemed much less in control of his emotions and lacked composure. I wouldn’t care if it was a year one film, but this is supposed to be an experienced Superman. He wasn’t as emotionally composed as Superman always is, nor was he as confident in his actions like he would other places. Another complaint is just how weak they made his character. It’s very hard to scale Superman in live action since you didn’t want to make him seem like everything is effortless and he has no struggle, but this movie just made him downright weak. The also ditched just how fast the sun heals him and made it have a less drastic effect than it’s actually supposed to.
Also didn’t like the interpretation of Jor-El and his wife. It felt very disrespectful to the source material. Not all like them. His earth parents felt more like stereotypical uneducated bumpkins rather than smart, inspirational figures like they usually are in other media and comics.
Hawkgirl aside from design was pretty disappointing. Not very much screen time, very poorly written scenes for what was there, and did something towards the end of the movie that felt very out of line for her character. Isabela Merced is a great actress so none of this was due to her, just poor character writing.
Now my biggest complaint. To me, the trailers made it seem like Superman the movie was going to be much more emotional. It was going to show Superman being much more inspirational to both the characters in the movie and the audience. Did not feel as emotionally touched by this movie as anticipated. I was fully expecting scenes that would bring tears to my eyes from how emotionally powerful the moments would be.
Overall, this movie is pretty good. Not my favorite Superman film, but definitely not a bad one. I’ll give it a 7.5/10.