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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epic Meepo" data-source="post: 9704411" data-attributes="member: 57073">As someone who doesn't really follow Superman or the DC universe, I'll offer a few thoughts about this movie as a sci-fi action movie in general instead of a Superman movie in particular:I'll start by saying the cast did well with what they were given, but the writing and directing didn't click for me:Firstly, there were too many named characters in this film. I guess I'm supposed to conclude this is a lived-in world because everyone and their henchmen gets a name and a few lines of dialogue. All this really did is make it difficult for me to develop any sort of attachment to these characters. There are so many of them wandering into the spotlight, none of them stands out from the crowd. "Oh, no! They killed named guy on the street who said two lines that one time! Now I know all the other forgetable background characters with names are also vulnerable! Oh, wait. I have no emotional connection to any of them."Secondly, Ultraman being a Superman clone wasn't much of a twist. I didn't realize before reading this thread that Superman clones are such an overused plot device in the DC universe, but the Superman clone still failed to surprise me. This film has corporate-sponsored superhero teams, flying armies with powered armor, an amorphous nanotech cyborg, a captive kaiju, multiple aliens, billionaires with custom pocket universes, and heroes who've seen enough pocket universes to know how they function, inside and out. By the time all that was introduced, I stopped caring who Ultraman was. Due to the rampant super-science, Ultraman could be whomever or whatever the plot required. No reveal could possibly be shocking.Thirdly, this film included too much exposition for an action movie. We start we a wall of text. ("3 seconds ago, you were reading about what happened 3 minutes ago.") I'm willing to forgive the opening text crawl, since it's right at the beginning of the film, establishing the scene. What really threw off the pacing for me was the nonstop exposition during the final fight scene. During the course of the final battle, Lex Luthor explains his ingenious plan to kill Superman, offers footnotes describing his methodology, comments on geopolitics, and does some self-reflection worthy of a therapist's couch. That's a level of commentary I don't really appreciate during an action sequence that should speak for itself. If you're writing an action movie and you haven't explained all the moving parts involved in the final fight scene by the time the first punch is thrown, you're doing something wrong.(Also, nitpick: Lex Luthor has drones with facial recognition software that can I.D. anyone in their field of vision, yet he somehow doesn't know Clark Kent is Superman. No amount of "hypo-glasses" handwaving is explaining away how Superman's alter ego is undetectable to mindless cameras with pattern recognition software.)Despite all that, I wouldn't say this film is a terrible action movie. It's a fun popcorn film with some interesting set pieces here and there. Middling CGI for a Hollywood blockbuster. A few jokes that land, many that don't. It's the sort of thing I'd want to catch when it's streaming and I'm in the mood for some mindless sci-fi action.</blockquote>

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