Admittedly, when General Zod (a ferociously shouty Michael Shannon) and his icy henchwoman (Antje Traue) start throwing around their weight, there is plenty of viscerally destructive Transformers-scale violence - indeed, the climactic smackdown in Metropolis makes the end of Avengers Assemble look like a minor fracas. And while Cavill certainly looks the part, when he dons his iconic supersuit for the first time, it's a muted moment instead of a rousing one, with Hans Zimmer's otherwise insistent score strangely silent. The scattershot flashback technique revealing Clark Kent's time in Smallville with his adopted parents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane) and his struggle to deal with being 'different' undermines the film's momentum (though a scene about the sensory overload caused by his powers is worthy of note).

The Krypton depicted here is run by computers and bleached of humanity, though Russell Crowe as superdad Jor-El at least gets his Gladiator mojo working when he battles to send baby Kal-El to Earth. But, unlike those classics, Watchmen director Zack Snyder's take is more Matrix than mythic. Nolan is co-producer and story provider for a reboot that melds the plots of the first two Christopher Reeve epics - origins story meets Kryptonian bad-guy invasion. But spurred on by the success of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and Marvel's blockbuster output, the last son of Krypton is back in the strapping shape of buff Brit Henry Cavill. The lukewarm reception given to Bryan Singer's Superman Returns led to a seven-year wait for the big-screen revival of DC's archetypal superhero.

Man of steel movies