Above: British actor Henry Cavill attended the European premiere of “Man of Steel” in London on Wednesday alongside co-stars Amy Adams and Russell Crowe.
TORONTO — The comic book superhero, who has swooped onto the big screen several times since Christopher Reeve donned the tights in 1978, comes to life again in director Zack Snyder’s highly-anticipated reboot.
Man of Steel, now in theatres, stars British actor Henry Cavill in the lead role and Amy Adams as Lois Lane.
Is the latest take on this well-known tale worth the price of admission? Here’s a look at some of the reviews.
The UK’s Daily Mail called Man of Steel “a very noisy Superman.”
Chris Tookey wrote: “This may not be the best Superman movie ever – I’d rate it third, after the first two by Richard Donner and Richard Lester – but it’s certainly the most humourless. It’s also, easily, the noisiest.”
Tookey described the flick as “bombastic from start to finish.”
Cavill, he opined, plays the character with “absolutely no sense of humour” and Kevin Costner plays his adoptive father “as though wondering why his career went so badly wrong after Field of Dreams.”
Tookey concluded: “If it’s fighting you like, or very loud music, or ultra-simple plotlines that stretch on interminably with characterisation of similar complexity to The Teletubbies, Man of Steel delivers.
“It’s a triumph of spectacle over content.”
Also across the pond, Anthony Quinn of The Independent complained about the volume of Man of Steel, writing that the movie destroyed “half the hearing in my ears.”
Quinn said Snyder flouted a simple rule of movie-making. “One explosion can be exciting; one hundred will be quite boring.”
Fox News critic Justin Craig agreed. “For a two and a half hour film, there is nearly an hour – if that – worth of story, and a weak one at that. The remaining time is all action,” he wrote. “The final hour is a tiresome and incessant barrage of buildings, cars spaceships and helicopters exploding. The first half hour isn’t much different. Without a strong story, the action sequences are just chaos and loud noise. And in Man of Steel, there’s a lot of noise.”
Craig also complained the filmmakers stripped the iconic character of his greatest assets: wit, charm, and most importantly, hope — “rendering Man of Steel this blockbuster season’s biggest disappointment..”
At the New York Daily News, reviewer Joe Neumaier was left overwhelmed by the movie’s big action scenes.
“Snyder struggles to set up huge moments that don’t take off,” he wrote. “Massive scenes of destruction in Clark’s hometown of Smallville and in Metropolis are missing memorable execution. You’re not left with ‘That was great!’ but ‘What were the metal tentacles fighting Superman?'”
Claudia Puig of USA Today echoed the sentiments of many critics.
“For a movie that’s all about saving Earth, there’s an unaccountable amount of destruction in Man of Steel,” she wrote, noting the “plethora of computer-generated demolition, flame-outs and explosions.”
The origin story, said Puig, is drowned out by “numbing spectacle.”
Jake Coyle of The Associated Press described Man of Steel as “joyless” and “solemn” with “nothing soaring about it.”
“This is not your Superman of red tights, phone booth changes, or fortresses of solitude, but one of Christ imagery, Krypton politics and spaceships,” Coyle wrote. “Who would want to have fun at the movies anyway, when you could instead be taught a lesson about identity from a guy who can shoot laser beams out of his eyes?”
Coyle found Cavill “handsome and capable” but lacking the twinkle of Christopher Reeve. “At least he smiled.”
Cavill’s darkness also struck reviewer Marc Mohan, who wrote in The Oregonian that he “never gets a chance to do much more than brood and glower.”
Mohan added: “Man of Steel has too many characters and too much plot, resulting in a movie that feels overstuffed and overlong.”
Reuters critic Alonso Duralde pointed out the movie runs 140 minutes “and feels like it could lose at least 10 of them.”
But he’s a fan of the movie. “All in all this Man of Steel flies, even if it doesn’t quite soar,” he opined. “The movie lays the ground for what could be some thrilling sequels featuring a Superman who’s both exactly what people want to see and a significantly different take on a well-established character.”
Man of Steel, quite simply, lacks heart, according to Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times.
“While its ambition and scope pull one way, its pinched and unconvincing sense of drama pull the other,” he wrote. “Whatever strengths director Snyder revealed in films like 300 and Watchmen, making stories like this emotionally convincing is not one of them.”
Turan said the movie’s plot is confusing and excessive.
“Man of Steel is chockablock with hand-to-hand combat, hurtling cars, huge explosions and howling infernos,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, these pitched battles are so numerous that the effect is numbing, leaving us battered and bludgeoned rather than exhilarated.”
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