A little while a go I reviewed the new Star Trek film, I ended it by saying over to you Man of Steel, and Man of Steel has delivered. I absolutely loved this film and can categorically say that you should all go to see it. Whilst it’s not quite up there with Nolan’s batman trilogy, I think it is one of the best ‘comic book films’ ever made. Unbelievably a film that was so good was brought to us by Zack Snyder, yes the same Zack Snyder who brought us Sucker Punch, and it’s probably the best film he’s ever made. That said it’s not perfect.

But first the good stuff, and I’ll start with one thing that I think everyone agrees on. Man of Steel looks amazing. The effects are incredible, particularly the scenes on Krypton at the start of the film. A lot of credit has to be given credit to the cinematography and, as with most Zack Snyder films, there is a good artistic flare to it. As well as the effects the musical score from Hans Zimmer is brilliant in my opinion so hats off to him.

But to the important things, and firstly the acting performances. Henry Cavill is obviously going to be where the big questions are, and I think he manages to do a fairly decent job as Superman, however in my opinion he’s no Tom Welling (who played Superman in Smallville, which is incidentally my favourite tv show) but I do feel that he’s brought as much to the character as any other big screen Superman actor. A big surprise was the performance of Russell Crowe, I must admit that I was a little skeptical when he was cast as Jor-El, but he put in a great performance

Finally kudos to Michael Shannon whose performance as General Zod stole the show for me. He was able to make him a really well rounded villain, who deserves our sympathies. Now he was able to do this due to the fact that Zod was a really well written character. Rather than a simple one dimensional, oh look something bad happened to me better turn evil, motivations there some proper depth to Zod, he’s fighting to save his species, so from the Kryptonian view point he’s actually the good guy.

What I really loved about Man of Steel is all the little references back to source material and the comics that all my nerdy friends picked up. These kind of things is what I love about comic book films, and Man of Steel certainly got a few in. From the brief appearance of Lana Lang, to a Smallville sign being destroyed in the fighting, but probably most crucially of all was all the Lexcorp logos dotted around throughout the film. That’s right guys, be expecting Lex Luthor to be appearing in the sequel.

As I said at the start it’s not perfect, Superman’s character started very well, with some conflict between Clark Kent and Kal-El, mainly through flashbacks to his childhood, however these to dwindle out of it about half way through the film, but maybe it’ll more present in the sequel as Clark tries to have somewhat of a normal life. Also a lot of the characters were just kind of pointless. If you’ve got Laurence Fishburne to play Perry White then give him something to do. Please. Oh well hopefully there’ll be more of him next time.

Now some people complained that there was too much action in Man of Steel… do they not know they went to a comic book film, have they not read a comic book (probably not, not many people do), they are built on action sequences, go see something else if that’s not what you want.

Overall it’s probably my favourite Superman adaptation for the big screen, although it’s a long way off Smallville if you ask me, but I would thoroughly recommend it.

Now kneel before Zod