My problem with MoS (extensive spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (17 June 2013)

Make no mistake, I have a number of problems with the plot of Man of Steel. (Which I won't get into here.) But there's one thing that bothered me more than anything about the movie and which made the movie not work for me: this Superman is not a hero.
This Superman definitely has superpowers and he'll help people if there's no one else there do it, but I never bought that this Superman felt a strong need to help people. When he saved the other kids on his school bus as a kid, he did that because no one else was there to do it. When he saved the people on the oil rig, he did that because no one else was there to do so. But I felt like this Superman would gladly let other people do the things he did if there was anyone else around to do them. If Wonder Woman had showed up at that oil rig, he would've glad stayed hidden and trusted her to take care of it rather than jumping in to make sure everyone is saved.
There's a reason Superman is like this. When young Clark helped those kids, his father promptly scolded him for it. He instilled in him a sense that it was better for his identity as a superpowered alien to remain hidden than for people to be hurt. He essentially taught Clark to be selfish. Which I suppose is a fine superpowered-person story to tell. But it doesn't make him much of a hero. He has to ask other people whether he should surrender himself to Zod. I get the feeling that if others had told him not to, he would have remained hidden.
In fact, one of the only real defining traits of this Superman is that he's obedient. When Jonathan Kent tells him to remain hidden, he remains hidden. When the priest tells him to trust people, he trusts people. When Jor-El tells him to stop Zod, he stops Zod. If this Superman becomes a regular crime-fighting, person-rescuing superhero, at this point I'd believe the only reason he did it was because Jor-El told him to.
Essentially, this Superman lacks the need to help others that other interpretations of Superman have had. Typically, Superman helps others because he feels empathy for others. Strongempathy. If anything, one of the defining characteristics of Superman is his superhuman empathy. This Superman doesn't have that. He has a more normal degree of empathy, and it's not a major motivating factor in his life. We see that in his hiding and we see that in his apparent disregard for collateral damage when fighting Zod's forces.
As my wife put it, this Superman is basically a coward in the only way Superman can be a coward. Here he is, 33 years old, having spent years with these superpowers, and he's done little with them. He's having a rather adolescent/early adulthood identity crisis still. He travels the world not because he wants to see it or to help others (as in Mark Waid's excellent Superman: Birthright), but because he's trying to remain anonymous. Perhaps this would work if Superman was supposed to be, say, 20 years old, struggling with the selfishness and fear of rejection that his adoptive father taught him. But given his age here, it just leaves me feeling that this Superman is too afraid to help anyone unless he absolutely has to.
The conflict with Jonathan Kent is actually an interesting part of Birthright and no doubt inspired much of Jonathan Kent's character in this movie. In Birthright, Jonathan is angry that Clark is making a costume (with Martha Kent) and going to become a superhero. The Superman of Man of Steel might have been swayed by such an argument and decide to put the costume away before he'd ever donned it. The Superman of Birthright can't. He'd rather upset his adoptive father than stand by while others are hurt where he could help. We see the opposite in the Man of Steel Superman when he lets Jonathan die rather than disobey him by risking exposing his powers.
In other interpretations of Superman I've seen (but especially Birthright), I feel like Superman has a secret identity because he wants to remain connected to people. That he dislikes the distance being a superhero puts between him and others. But at the end of the day, I feel like if Superman had to choose between losing his secret identity and losing his superpowers (and thus his ability to help people), he'd rather sacrifice his powers than see others hurt. The same could not be said for this Superman. Like Nolan's Batman (and perhaps that's no coincidence), this Superman feels burdened by his powers and by being a hero. It's a very normal, very human thing to feel. But it isn't very heroic.