akharvey

I have not been excited about this film at all. Having grown up with Christopher Reeves' excellent portrayal of the titular character, enjoyed Brandon Routh's take, and been "OK" about Henry Cavill's turn, I found myself feeling cold watching the trailers and announcements for this one. I truly wanted Superman to be amazing once again. I wanted it to capture the humanity and the strength of this being from a dying planet who could be our saviour and hero on Earth.

I just gave in and watched it today. While it wasn't as bad as I feared, it was still pretty boring. I found myself willing it to finish and it's not even that long a film, clocking in at around two hours.

The quality is there in terms of set design, wardrobe, cinematography, and direction and you can see money well spent. I just felt it was a little too "GOTG" for me. While that worked brilliantly, as the Guardians are a zany bunch, it didn't work well here. Superman is strength, truth, sincerity, pure goodness.

I wanted a more grounded movie - not stupid aliens running loose, pocket universes (I'm so over multiverses at this stage), a phoney war based in some Middle Eastern country that's been done a hundred times before, and then a full blown CGI-gaming scene of whack-a-mole. It's all been done before, it's boring and stale.

I did love the nods to the original Superman theme throughout the movie and David Corenswet did occasionally evoke Christopher Reeves, which was endearing. But in amongst a non-stop, chaotic, over-stuffed character fest, it felt impossible to simply enjoy Superman, let alone love it.

I'll probably never watch this again, which is a shame as I've watched the other cinematic versions multiple times. I doubt a sequel will happen as I can't see James Gunn being around long enough to get to it, especially with all the other films he's planning.

A wasted opportunity.

I enjoyed this, mainly because I loved the book as a teenager and enjoyed the TV mini-series with the wonderful David Soul.

It's pretty faithful to the original story, even being set in a mid-70s America that we remember from our childhoods but doesn't seem to exist anymore. Simpler times.

The only criticism I'd have is that while the TV mini-series gave the story a lot of room to build suspense and reveal the horror of Mr. Barlow, this film has to rush through the story which loses a lot. If you've never read the book or watched the earlier adaptation, this may feel like a generic low-budget vampire movie and fail to impress.

For fans, it's like pulling on your favourite sweater and immediately feeling that familiarity.

The cast are relatively unknowns. You'll recognise some of them but avoiding any big stars is a really good choice as it allows you to simply enjoy the movie for what it is.

Overall, it was nice to go back to Salem's Lot!

This is one hot mess of a movie. It rips off everything from Star Wars (Cantina Bar, Jabba The Hutt), and Thor: Ragnarok (stupid teenboy humour) to Brendan Fraser's antics in The Mummy.

It's one constant CGI fight after another, over-coloured cinematography, stereotype brooding evil bad guy with snivelling cowardly geek sidekick.

Nothing in this is original. Even the soundtrack is generic and feels like it was put together by a five-year old.

Jason Momoa can't act - let's face it. He and Chris Hemsworth have both been paid way more for their muscles than any acting ability. This was funny in the days of Stallone and Schwarzenegger but now it's tired and dull.

The story? A bad guy is causing climate change havoc... what an unoriginal plot!

And Nicole Kidman doesn't need CGI since her face was frozen in time years ago.