IS MOS basically groaning under the weight of expectation?

All these mixed reviews for MOS makes me wonder if Superman is suffering from the Star Wars problem, i.e. the prequels struggled to match up to the iconic reputation of the first three films. There is huge expectation attached to any Superman movie because the character has such as long history, is so widely known and loved by the general public and Chris Reeve's legacy looms over the franchise. I mean Iron Man and Thor started with a clean sheet of paper because they had nothing to follow. Man of Steel was trying to be a different kind of Superman and this has upset so many long standing fans who still want/expect the 1970s type stories and character? What do you think? I raise this topic as a lifelong Superman fan who really enjoyed the new movie.

It isn't the movie's fault.

our expectations were just to high!

I don't get those who have their expectations weighed down by the Reeve movies.

I do get those who were expecting a perfect Superman movie given the people involved, as well as this being his first 'modern' incarnation and the first movie of the DC Cinematic U.

No because no movie will ever be "perfect" regardless of who is working on it. That is a rather naive thing to think.

Who expected this Superman to act like he was born in the 1970, I'd love to know! :l

Based on my search, the mixed/negative reviews are outweighed by the positive. It appears that a wide margin of the general audience has a favorable opinion of the film (based on user reviews from IMDB, RT, metacritic and CBR's poll).

@k4tzm4n: MoS has a rotten rating over at Rotten Tomatoes from the critics. Word of mouth I've encountered has been positive from the kind of people who liked the Transformers movies and negative from people who like superhero movies. Real success will be counted in dollars. I've heard, as a rule of thumb, that one of these big budget sfx movies needs to double its production budget in box office receipts to be considered a success. According to Box Office Mojo, MoS made back its production budget yesterday, but it's going to immediately run into stiff competition this weekend from World War Z and Monsters University.

@malonius: I'm well aware of that -- it has been "rotten" since the weekend IIRC. My entire point is about user reviews/general audience and clearly it was a hit in that regard. Not to mention it set a new opening record for June. Point being: the reaction (critics aside) has been mostly positive.

I despise the Transformers movies, love a lot of superhero movies, and I think MoS was amazing.

@k4tzm4n: That's cool. The word of mouth I personally get is just anecdotal, but it's also a sense I get from the media. People are/were excited about the Avengers franchise or Nolan Batman movies and were talking about when they were going to see them or encouraging people to go see them. I sense a hesitation about Superman from regular non-comic book fan adults. Kind of a "Superman is for kids" vibe. Since the reviews aren't very good it will depend on word of mouth to convince all the people who didn't go see it opening weekend to go. Maybe the teenagers and college age kids are real excited about it and I'm just not picking it up.

I think so. I had extremely high hopes for the film and I realized I did. I was a wee bit disappointed but for the most part I loved it. People complain about the action but that was probably my favorite aspect of the film. I have waited a long time for superpowered battle scenes and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

@_black:

I hear ya man. About time we get a live action movie that accuratley shows a real superman battle. And the 80s superman movies are classic C'mon they have like no action ( thats not their fault limited by tech of the time)

@martyyy15:

I know right! Hopefully they will have some more awesome set pieces in the sequel, as I feel like they will go with Luthor as the main villain.

@_black:

Gonna need to be a good time skip. I mean metropolis is destroyed basically lol. But yeah that would be pretty cool

'Perfect' in the sense of universal critical acclaim, ala The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2. Of course no movie is going to be actually 'perfect', Mr. Skeptical.

There are a lot of negative reviews with B-, 3/5, 3.5/5. So...yeah.