drwex | We saw "Man of Steel" and it was *facepalm*

I must begin by saying that I generally like Chris Nolan films. Never mind that his plots tend to have really major fatal flaws in them, he tells a decent story and he gets into characters' heads in interesting and engaging ways. I also generally like Zack Snyder films. Watchmen was fantastic and I even liked 300.

I should also say that the cast of Man of Steel were fantastic, up and down the prominence chain. Henry Cavill is good as Superman and really good as Clark Kent. Michael Shannon (Zod) is probably the best villain-who-is-driven-to-evil-by-a-greater-purpose I've seen in a long time. Yes, that's a cliche' interpretation of villainy, but Shannon does far better with it than you would expect. Speaking of villains, Antje Traue may be the best villain-villain I've seen in approximately forever. She's tough, she's awesome at what she does, and props to Nolan for avoiding the "chick fight" cliche. Trau's Faora-Ul fights whoever happens to be between her and her objectives and there's no fake moments anywhere.

Diane Lane is absolutely brilliant as Martha Kent and one of the best parts of Nolan's script is the range and variety it gives her. She's never simple, never unrealistic, and you just feel the love and strength that Clark must have relied on growing up. If she does not return for the next movie it will be a major loss. She and Russell Crowe (Jor El) should be up for Best Supporting nominations.

There are some casting choices I didn't like - particlarly Laurence Fishburne as Perry White. Everybody who saw this movie has seen Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and casting Fishburne looks like an imitative move. Casting a black actor who was, say, physically short and not known for Morpheus would have been better, imo. Amy Adams is trying really hard at Lois Lane and in a movie with no Diane Lane I think she'd do better, but although her character is well-written it didn't touch me the way that Lane's performance did, nor impress me the way that Trau's did.

So what's the problem? Well, there's a pretty clear moment when Zack Snyder sort of elbows Nolan out of the way and says "Let me drive." At which point I started shaking my head, groaning, and eventually facepalming.

I get that Snyder has a hard task - he needs to show what would happen if two or more beings of Superman's power and ability decided to throw down. And he set that fight in a difficult environment because it affords all kinds of dramatic opportunities... which he then completely screws up through awful physics and entirely unrealistic human behaviors. Avengers did it WAY better, sorry. Snyder is trying to go big and dramatic and he gets past big and dramatic and into outright unbelievably ludicrous.

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Plus, and I can't believe I'm the only one to figure it out: Dear fighter pilots, gravity on a planet pulls things DOWN. If you want to hit something inside a gravity well, um, that's a trivially solved physics problem.