'Man of Steel' not-so-stainless

Flop with some big-budget action movie or some romantic-comedy chick-flick, society doesn’t care. But mess up the superheroes people grew up loving and society will remember.

Fear not, though. Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” doesn’t join the parade of miserable superhero movie nightmares.

However, will it stand the test of time with the legends such as “The Dark Knight” and “The Avengers?” Most likely not.

Where “Man of Steel” succeeds most in is in its aesthetic. We are presented here with such a truly beautiful film — from Hans Zimmer’s valiant score to Henry Cavill’s perfect ... well, everything, to Snyder’s epic vision as a whole. The film is a piece of art.

Henry Cavill is the perfect socially awkward Clark Kent, sent to Earth from Krypton as Kal-El, giving us just enough humanity to grip onto, but still keeping his distance as his role as Superman. Amy Adams plays the go-getting, tough-as-nails journalist Lois Lane, selling her character from top to bottom as well as she could have and Michael Shannon nails the role of Superman’s nemesis General Zod.

“Man of Steel” presents us with some themes that are massive in scope, larger than those of your run-of-the-mill superhero film — that of Superman being a Messiah-like figure, what it means to be human and the idea of one race being superior to another. It makes for some very thought-provoking cinema. It’s refreshing to see a concept that could have been very two-dimensional become much more.

However, “Man of Steel” does have its faults that will keep it from going in the superhero genre hall of fame.

It’s clunky as hell. The movie seems to take itself so seriously that it stumbles upon itself all over the place. Of course the entire planet isn’t going to take a threat from an “alien” seriously. It creates distance between the viewer and the movie when the reactions of the characters are so unrealistic. Where films such as “The Avengers” and the Sam Raimi “Spider-Man” trilogy succeeded was in their ability to laugh at themselves — to make light of situations that should be light, and to give heavy its due course. In the entirety of “Man of Steel,” there are only a handful of lines and moments that could be considered light-hearted or funny.

Going on, the film seems slightly confused as to the tone it’s trying to set, and the overall dynamic it’s trying to convey. “Man of Steel” is a great birth-of-Superman movie, but it’s not a great superhero versus supervillain movie. We bear through an impregnated prologue on Krypton and then fast forward to Smallville, and the film flips back and forth between sequences of both ecosystems until they come together in the finale.

It doesn’t really work. I found myself wanting so badly to stay entirely within Earth. An overly nationalistic villain from Krypton may work with the comic-book fans, but I wanted a, well, cooler supervillain.

“Man of Steel” has its big wins and its big losses, but in the end it’s solid enough. It’s huge, it’s loud and it’s very Superman. Hopefully, we get to see some more material milked out of this one, that “Man of Steel” was just a good first part to a great trilogy.

If for no other reason, though, staring at Henry Cavill for two-and-a-half hours is well worth the admission price.