"At once frantically overblown and beautifully filigreed, “Man of Steel” will turn on everyone it doesn’t turn off. Summer blockbusters have a way of encouraging multiplex Manichaeism, though I propose a middle way. It won’t be easy. Even those who patiently ride out the bludgeoning excesses of the film’s final 45 minutes may wonder what happened to the movie — the one about human and humanoid struggles — they watched for the first 100. They may also wonder why no one, anyone, smacked the director, Zack Snyder, in the head and reminded him that he was midwifing a superhero franchise, as the film’s first image, of a yelling, straining woman signals, not restaging the end of days."