When news emerged that Warner Bros. were intending to reboot the Superman franchise and that Christopher Nolan was on board as a producer, comic book fans the world over could barely conceal their excitement and anticipation. Nolan had done such an impressive job with revitalizing the Batman franchise after it had been all but torn to shreds by Joel Schumacher, and while Zack Snyder was hardly a director known for subtlety his movie adaptation of Alan Moore's classic Watchmen hadn't been the total disaster many were expecting. And then Man of Steel hit the cinemas. On a purely technical level it displayed a level of accomplishment you'd expect from a budget of over $200 million, and by the same token the performances throughout are professional. But these compliments reveal the broader problems which lie at the core of the movie - Man of Steel appears so desperate to deliver spectacle on a grand scale that it fails to deliver in practically every other respect, most notably a coherent and engaging storyline and interesting character development, both of which increasingly fall by the wayside as the film progresses. Watching Man of Steel and you can't help but imagine the production meetings which led up to filming, where post-it notes marked with "cool scenes" floated around the room, haphazardly pieced together with little thought for crafting an engaging or human element, substance reduced to a single dimension while everyone focused on creating impressive 3D visuals replete with product placement (and boy is there a lot of that!). The result is just a beat shy of the kind of crass, corporate blockbuster movies synonymous with Michael Bay - a migrane-inducing cacophony of eye candy devoid of heart.
