I will be honest.
I have never been a massive fan of Superman.
To be fair, I have not exactly been a card-carrying flag-waving (should that be cape-waving?) member of the Superhero Fanclub.
As a child I read British comics such as Cheeky, Buster, and Whizzer and Chips instead of the almost requisite, among my peers at least, comics issuing forth at what seemed like a daily rate from DC Comics and Marvel.
And as I grew up, I barely gave the superhero movies, such as they were then, the time of day.
Who knows why? They had action, literal flights of imagination, and all the escapist adventuring a young guy could want.
And yet …
And yet it wasn’t still the modern era of the ultra-hyped superhero movie that I began watching them.
Well at least some of them and that had a lot to do with the more gritty, less camp take on comic book icons like Batman and Spiderman, that rendered them as flawed, though still powerful figures.
Now at long last Superman has been given a modern makeover with Man of Steel, and while opinion is divided about whether it has improved or decreased his chances of box office success, it has at least brought this most iconic of superheroes into the modern age.
Played by Henry Cavill (The Tudors), who with his impossibly good looks, and impeccable acting background seems primed for stardom whatever happens with Man of Steel – so far it is performing strongly at the box office – Superman is now a man, a very powerful man caught between two worlds, and two ways of life in a way never quite shown before.
It doesn’t open in Australia for a couple of weeks yet so I can verify if this will turn it into a great big angst-fest or a searing evocation of a man trapped in a life that is neither here nor there but given the fact that Christopher Nolan, late of the revitalised Batman franchise starring Christian Bale, is at the helm, I am hoping to plump for the latter.
Warner Bros has already commissioned a sequel so they’re obviously confident that we will love this new grittier, more flawed version of Superman, a portrayal of the iconic character that Henry Cavill put a lot of thought into playing.
Man of Steel opens 14 June in USA and 27 June in Australia.
And here is the final, near-wordless, visually arresting trailer for Man of Steel …