Movies With Butter

He's a brilliant visual stylist, but the knock on Zack Snyder as a director is that he too often neglects real storytelling in favor of pretty pictures. The latest Man of Steel trailer, however, suggests he may have made a quantum leap as a filmmaker.

Even the most ardent Superman fans would have to concede that it's been an awfully long time since a movie made any real sense of the character, and in the post-Batman Begins era, that's a task that's only gotten harder; when your hero is an invincible Boy Scout, there's really only so much you can do to generate tension, drama, and meaningful stakes.

Fittingly, it took Batman Begins writer David Goyer to solve the riddle of what to do with Krypton's favorite son -- and his answer, based on the evidence available to us in this Man of Steel sampling, is an artfully poignant blend of whiz-bang action and small-scale (but almost universal) family drama. Meanwhile, with Snyder behind the cameras, it all looks amazing.

We've admittedly been slow to warm up to the idea of yet another Superman reboot, but this trailer's the clincher: Man of Steel looks like the fresh epic that fans have been waiting for ever since Richard Donner made us believe a man could fly. Take a look below, and be ready when the movie arrives on June 14.

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