SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Man of Steel is undoubtedly a visually empowering movie! One has to give that to Snyder. The molten steel lead graphics, Krypton's underwater genesis chamber & Superman's costume are great!
Hans Zimmer's pulsating score truly conveyed the end of a race urge! The zoomed in & out lenses for the actions are good, although the hand-held technique is a bad call for this movie. Zod's 'You Are Not Alone' message sends chills down the spine! But, the biggest plus of all would be Henry Cavill, our archetypal Superman actor!
Video gaming battle styles are rivetingly magnificent despite getting shambolic with over-bloated CGI fest of explosions & production designs ignoring the grounds of reality. But, let's take into account that there's an effort to mask the fully computer-rendered characters brawling with each other.
The story's okay, but what bastardized it is the screenplay. There're no reasons to retrofit a serpentine structure to it. An example to reflect the statement would be Kal-El's abrupt entrance into a glacier scout ship & meeting with his father's consciousness. A script is only as interesting as its simplicity in communicating with the audiences is. Speaking of it, a linear storytelling should have been the way to go to avoid timeline confusions. Because of this, the classic birth of Superman with his suit is less impactful, compensated by the cool first flight across Earth.
Jonathan Clark's dramatic death could have been tweaked. Ayelet Zurer delivers an inferior performance as Lara Lor-Van. One can't justify why Lois Lane (Amy Adams) was a captive in the alien spaceship. There should have been a neat ending instead of meandering fights. Turns out no matter where the chaos happens, every characters tend to coincidentally fall back & meet at the very same locations all the time!
Also, the pacing is off. There aren't moments of rest in between high points which make one feel some activities onscreen are as if uncompressed noises. The colour tone takes one off the film with its glazed pessimism. These are the main factors that made the long runtime lethargic.
Lois Lane: "What's the S stand for?"
Clark Kent: "It's not an S. On my world, it means hope."