Mild Spoilers... only mild mild ones... nothing too much that you won't know if you've watched previous films or read the comics. 

Superman Returns... ah shit, that’s the one the fans want to forget but to be fair I liked it and thought it was the beginning to a great franchise, excluding the one huge addition of a young boy who should never have existed in the first place.

Warner Bros. Pictures hasn’t given up on Superman yet though as another actor steps into the fabled red boots to face off against one of the biggest threats in the history of Superman. Both the comics and film that is. Zod has returned and earth is in danger, Superman is forced out of hiding in order to save the human race.

That’s as far as the story goes to be fair.

With a story from David S Goyer and Christopher Nolan, of which Goyer wrote the screenplay, I can’t help but feel that both men were a little bit ambitious when it came to the Man of Steel’s return to the big screen. As the film suggests throughout, is the world ready for Superman? In this incarnation?

Probably not.

Man of Steel is ahead of its time. While comic book fans dread the reboots of their favourite superheroes on the big screen, not because they’re bad but because they have to sit through the origin story once again, forgetting that there may be some people in this world who may not have witnessed the tale before.

In Man of Steel we once again witness the demise of Krypton and the sacrifice a father (Russell Crowe) makes to save not only his peoples heritage but the life of his son. It’s at this point I should mention that Krypton has a lot of architecture that resembles a penis. Even the shuttle superman arrives on earth in looks like a mutated penis. Even the transport that sent Zod and co to the Phantom Zone looks like a penis, although Zod gets balls on his penis. Zack Snyder appears to have a real fixation on the male genitalia throughout the first half of Man of Steel. Or maybe I do... I can’t be the only one that thought it!

However I skip ahead of myself. In Man of Steel we get the checklist of Origin Story, We get the hero, we get the girl, we get the world afraid of change, we get the father figure whose tough but really cares, we also get the mother who is willing to lay her life on the line for the boy she raised.

But then the check list goes out the window as an alien threat makes itself known to the world, a threat which totally turns everything on its head and consumes the film not allowing any newcomers to Superman to understand what it is to be a hero, a stranger in a new world, a stranger who is the only hope for mankind.

We’ve been through all those emotions before with the various Avengers films, we’ve even been through it with Spider-Man and The Dark Knight trilogy, even the original Superman and Superman returns tackles the issue but with Man of Steel the message is lost as Snyder throws everything into action and forgets to cultivate the man; the legend, which is truly a catastrophic error.

Superman her is a vehicle for action and more action, there’s no depth to the man, the character, the hero who changed so many lives and would time and again save the world. There’s no real emotion in Clark Kents life apart from one moment involving Kevin Costner as father to Clark and husband to Martha (Diane Lane).

Henry Cavill certainly has the looks but Brandon Routh was allowed to have heart in Singer’s Superman Returns. Here Cavill is exposed not as the Man Of Steel but the man of action. His rugged good looks and toned body make for a more rugged Superman which is a great look for the Man of Steel but without heart? What is he?

Then we have the villains...

It’s hard to say if  Zod (Michael Shannon) as an enemy was the right one to choose to start off this reimaging of a grittier Superman but in the end it comes down to one thing for all superhero movies. Did you take anything with you? Did you learn anything or were you merely entertained? There’s a reason why comic book geeks are antisocial but have such good manners. There are messages of hope, morality and bravery littered throughout the pages of a comic book but here Snyder and Goyer settle for entertainment and forget the values that make heroes... urrr great.

The human resilience, Hope,

It’s hard to say that mankind could have faced off against Zod and his people but to be honest Zod wasn’t half as scary as his other half Faora played by Antje Traue. Shannon kind of fell into the realm of comic book villain of old, animated and comically evil at times in his expressions. Whereas Antje played cold, hard and fierce as though she slits the throats of babies as a hobby. She stood head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. Even Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Henry Cavill as Superman.

But again this is down to Goyer. Both Lois and Clark failed to connect because the elaborate action sequences went to the stars and back but Lois was always two steps behind the Man of Steel and although we all know how this story plays out, it plays a little differently in Man Of Steel. Here is a superhero forced out of hiding and into the limelight by an alien threat and with the facial recognition software we have on surveillance cameras these days, Snyder and Goyer expect us to believe Clark Kent can indeed become the man we know him to be in both the comic books and the previous films? Are you smoking crack or are you just wanking a donkey off in the hope that it spunks out gold?

It’s an entertaining film but the story for the first outing for Superman in a long while is far to sci-fi laden for audiences. This should have been a story about self discovery, a man who doesn’t feel he has a place in this world but finds it at the bottom of a bottle... I mean, finds it in a moment of true heroism. There’s so much that could have been changed to make Man Of Steel a truly spectacular debut but Snyder thought the Michael Bay approach of action, action action was the way forward when we all know that Superhero films today need to be a whole lot more especially when they will be held up to the glory of The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Avengers Phases.

Man Of Steel might be a great summer action movie but it may disappoint fans that have been awaiting the arrival of this very special hero.

Cavill makes a great start but without a script that allows the characters to flourish, he’s just a machine that seeks out action without any real consequences.

Try harder Warner Bros, you’re on the right track. It’s fun but it just doesn’t feel like Superman... not yet at least.

Oh and hooray for Christopher Meloni!!