It has been a black eye to Hollywood that throughout this, the unending and increasingly repetitive age of the superhero blockbuster, the comics' most iconic son has eluded its grasp like a bird or, if you will, a plane.
New hopes of box-office riches and franchise serials rests on Zac Snyder's 3-D "Man of Steel," the latest attempt to put Supermanback into flight. But Snyder's joyless film, laden as if composed of the stuff of its hero's metallic nickname, has nothing soaring about it.
Flying men in capes is grave business in Snyder's solemn Superman. "Man of Steel," an origin tale of the DC Comics hero, goes more than two hours before the slightest joke or smirk.
This is not your Superman of red tights, phone booth changes, or fortresses of solitude, but one of Christ imagery, Krypton politics and spaceships. Who would want to have fun at the movies, anyway, when you could instead be taught a lesson about identity from a guy who can shoot laser beams out of his eyes?