What happens when the filmmakers don't like their main character.

Rating: 1/10 (4 November 2015)

Man of Steel is a depressing example of what happens when a studio decides it would be profitable to make a movie based on a pre-existing franchise without any appreciation or love for the franchise itself. It's obvious in watching interviews with the producers and director, that they think Superman is lame and cheesy and needed to be made cool again. Unfortunately the person trying to make him cool is Zack Snyder who has a somewhat juvenile sense of social interaction and ethics.
As an example, in the movie Clark destroys a man's big rig because the man harassed a waitress and poured a beer on Clark. It's clear in the film that we are supposed to accept this as a just punishment for the man's actions. It's meant to be cathartic. We're supposed to cheer at the justice of the situation. However, what Clark did was terrible. He did a really bad thing. He destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in property and ruined this man's livelihood out of revenge. Revenge can be a cathartic experience for the viewer, but it's not the right thing to do. It's just the emotionally satisfying thing to do. Heroes are heroes because they do the right thing despite their emotion. Now, fanboys will argue that this is a young Superman just learning his moral code. However, this misses the point. The filmmakers themselves thought that this form of revenge was a good thing. Superman isn't learning his code. He's implementing it.
It's such a cynical film you can practically hear the boardroom meeting that spurred its creation. The words, "modern," "dark," and "gritty" must have been said hundreds of times. The film is desaturated because bright colors are too campy and light. The opening is one long action scene because the creators thought we'd get bored just watching people talk. They need to talk while a war is happening behind them! Superman can't have red trunks because they're "silly." Ignore the fact that the film is riddled with silly nonsense. It's dark and gritty silly nonsense so it's cool I guess.
Now people like to throw around the word, "realistic" sometimes to describe movies like this. This is a Hollywood marketing gimmick that they've unfortunately fallen for. This movie is shot almost entirely with a hand-held camera and features a significant amount of bouncing and snap zooms. This is meant to subconsciously evoke the feel of news footage from the audience. The color is desaturated to remind us of 9/11 and WWII footage. This is simply an aesthetic trick. Nothing about the film itself is more realistic in tone or content. None of the characters act or talk like real people. Things happen just because they need to happen in this type of movie. Zod could have won easily but he gives a cheesy villain speech that has been the downfall of so many movie characters. Lois appears places seemingly randomly just to hear or espouse expository dialogue. She loves Superman because she's the girl in the movie. They kiss because market research dictates that more people will buy the film if there's a romance subplot. There's no in universe explanation for why they would like each other. They have no apparent common interests or personality traits. They get together because they do in all the other versions we've seen. That's it. Why is Superman going to the Arctic? Cuz the ship is there and he needs to find it to talk to Jor-el and get the suit and send the signal that starts the invasion. Things just needed to happen for script reasons. Character motivation is irrelevant.
Basically this movie is a marketing scam. They know that people will buy it because it's the most recognizable superhero in a day of very successful superhero films. They didn't know how to sell it so they made a generic alien invasion action movie full of one-dimensional characters and gave them the look and name of Superman characters. It's loud, it's dull, it's boring, and it's full of melodrama in an effort to convince us that it has themes and heart. I'd give it a zero if I could. Please don't support movies that have such little faith in the audience and put forth so little effort in actual story telling.