Zack Snyder

The innovative stuff that split the fanbase so (the end of Superman's fight with Zod, or the fate of Jonathan Kent, or Zod's motivation and the specifics of the fate of Krypton), I'm fine with. I'm not sure if it quite rings true with what I'd expect from Superman, but Snyder makes it work within the narrative, and it is close enough that it still feels like an interesting take on the icon rather than a new character wearing the same suit.

I outright like how the film handles the origin story show more -- piecemeal, in flashbacks, so we experience it, but don't have to watch the nineteenth version of Superman growing up and are bored to tears for the first thirty minutes like a linear approach would have done. And the acting's good, with the three leads -- Cavill, Shannon and Adams -- all being particularly great.

Where the film falls short for me, is with the non-stop slugfest that it becomes once Lois and Clark flee the Kryptonian ship. Once Zod threatens Ma Kent, the film barely takes a single breather until the epilogue. It's just one fight after another. Individually, these fights are fine, and rather entertaining. But all in a row, they're just exhausting CGI cavalcades. From my layman's perspective, the film should either have been 30 minutes shorter, cutting most of that from the final hour, or 15 minutes longer, adding story beats and dialogue into that final hour. Ideally the former, as it was already dragging a bit on the pacing, but honestly, almost any change would be better than the punch-punch-punch-explosion-punch-punch-punch-explosion it is now.

It could also have used a bit more humour. On the few occasions where it shows a little levity, I notice myself sitting up straighter, paying more attention, having a better time. I don't mind the mood being more dour and serious than one might be expecting from a Superman film, but some counterpoints wouldn't hurt.

All in all, though, I think the film's pretty OK. "Pretty OK" is admittedly not what you want from a huge budget Superman reimagining, but plenty of films of this ilk have failed much more spectacularly. show less

We'll let's just start off by quoting the science fiction web site io9.com. "Sucker Punch is such an awful movie that it raises the bar for what counts as terrible". After we saw this, I told my daughter that at least it would make an entertaining blog post. I said I'd start it by saying "If you see only one terrible movie this year, make it this one", but she seriously doubted that I should recommend that anyone see it under any terms.

Is it the worst movie ever made? Is it even the worst show more movie I ever saw? Probably not but it is quite a mess. Little did I think that I'd find a movie featuring scantily clad beautiful women wielding swords and sub-machine guns boring. The plot, such is it is, concerns a young woman locked away in a mental institution by her evil step-father. It hardly matters why. In five days a 'specialist' is coming to perform a lobotomy on her (with an ice pick no less). She has to escape by then. Her escape attempts consist of elaborate fantasy sequences which, while inventive, are too long and boring, and, ultimately, meaningless to the audience. In the first, she meets a guy who tells her she needs five things to escape: a map, fire, a knife, a key and a mystery. This is the plan she sells to the other girls (with out the mystery part). Most of the movie is a fantasy within a fantasy (sort of like Inception is a dream within a dream, but making even less sense).

The guy shows up in the various fantasies giving the girls advice before each mission, such as "Remember, girls, if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything". At least that makes sense. His next piece of advice was "Don't write a check with your mouth that you're not willing to cash with your ass". Huh?

Are there holes in the plot? My daughter said in answer, "If you put Swiss cheese in a blender, does is still have holes?"

I'm not really going to recommend that you see this, although if you do, stick through the credits. Perhaps the only redeeming virtue of this movie is the sound track. Most of the music consists of great covers of great songs. The last half of the closing credits features an inventive cover of Roxy Music's "Love Is The Drug" performed by the movie cast. show less

Incoherent plot, but strangely absorbing. The uncanny valley effect on Superman's face after he's resurrected works; there's no good reason for a just recently dead Kryptonian to look entirely normal. Why are the super-magical objects mere cubes? Couldn't they have been dodecahedrons, or something?

An alien raised on Earth defends his adopted world.

I can see how if you want to make a long-lasting franchise that takes itself seriously, you probably feel the need to do the whole origin thing to establish exactly what's what in this version. But why do I want to watch it? I'm looking forward to the sequel, though. This movie doesn't do much for me, and I suspect the action would be mind-numbingly dull on a re-watch. But there's a lot of potential. It establishes a great cast and setting show more for an epic DC Comics movie franchise, and that is exciting.

Concept: C
Story: C
Characters: C
Dialog: C
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: B
Music: C

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.4/4 show less