“Superman: The Movie” in 1978 was a masterpiece and in many ways, the ultimate superhero movie. No “Superman” film since has managed to capture that and while “Man Of Steel” includes a few things that surpass a lot of the previous films, it ultimately doesn’t do it for me.

In “Man Of Steel”, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) lives in hiding because of his amazing capabilities. When General Zod (Michael Shannon “Vanilla Sky”) and other beings from Clark’s home world appear on Earth and become hostile. Clark must become Superman and fight against them to save his adopted planet and the movie basically becomes an alien invasion film.

Henry Cavill may not visually capture Superman but when he actually dons the cape, he’s pretty good. However, it’s the Clark Kent persona I’m not so keen on as he’s not the loveable, goofy person we’re familiar with and is more like a normal guy. Amy Adams (“The Muppets”) is okay as Lois Lane but she and Superman/Clark Kent have surprisingly little screen-time. I dislike the villains. I like both Kevin Costner (“The Untouchables”) as Superman’s Earth dad Jonathan Kent and Russell Crowe (“Gladiator”) as Superman’s kryptonian father Jor-El. The other cast/characters were average.

“Man Of Steel” gives a scientific explanation of why Superman is more powerful on Earth than on Krypton and it gives us much more on his two fathers than before. Those are two major pluses but apart from those things, the film seems more obsessed with becoming other things. We see spaceships hovering over the cities and destruction over a city on a massive scale until we feel we’re watching “Independence Day” meets “Avengers Assemble” and after all that, there is very little that feels like a “Superman” film. It has by far the most action of any “Superman” picture to date and it goes to show that the ‘78 film, which had the least action (not counting the terrible “Superman and the Mole Men”), is by far the best. See the first film from ‘78 and leave the sequels, spin-offs and reboots.