Honestly, I felt like it was a letdown.
The writing was poor, the plot was terrible, the characterizations were weak. Im kinda shocked its getting so much praise.
An example of what I mean by terrible writing. Luthor had literally zero plan when he breaks into the Fortress of Solitude. None. He had zero idea what he'd find. And he just happens to come across this e-mail from Krypton, the latter half of which not even Superman knows about, and somehow its this smoking gun to bring down Superman....but only because everyone in the movie is stupid and it just takes some 20 second commercial from Luthor to make the entire world go "Oh, that dude thats been saving everybody for 3 years? FUCK THAT GUY I HOPE HE DIES".
And even THAT was kind silly because it wasnt even necessary to make the Kryptonians send Superman to Earth to rule everybody and bang some sluts. Just have Luthor, Super Villain Genius, dupe up the video. Its ridiculous that all the coincidences have to align for his plan to work, which wasnt even a plan because he had no idea what he'd do once he got into the fortress.
Then theres Superman himself. Who is almost incapable of accomplishing anything for the majority of the movie. He gets beat up in the beginning and then somehow keeps getting beaten at every turn, until finally he beats Ultraman because only the dog could have destroyed the cameras? For some reason?
The movie is kind of a mess. All these parts and none of them work in tandem. I get that its sort of a love letter to DC fandom, but is it only successful at that level? Why would I care about Mr Terrific? hes kinda boring and has meh powers, but hes propped up like some sort of big deal that Im supposed to care about, and cheer when he has an action scene or says dumb shit like "Im goddamn Mr Terrific".
This isnt really a Superman movie. Its a Saturday morning episode of Super Friends with a 200 million dollar budget. I dunno. I dont mean that as an insult. Thats what it was. Maybe thats what some people wanted. But its just packed to the brim with all these ideas, but theyre basically half baked. Why is hawk Girl even in this movie? She accomplishes nothing, contributes nothing to the plot and makes annoying sounds.
And how is Nathan Fillion in the movie for less time than Mr Terrific? Is Mr Terriffic that popular? I dunno, is he?
So ultimately, I guess I see how if youre just a true DC fan, itll really resonate with you. I can see how people that said Man of Steel "wasnt what Superman should be" might think this is more what they wanted. Fair enough. Theres no accounting for taste, although Im sure theres plenty of Superman stories to go around.
I will say Im kinda looking forward to Supergirl. A superpowered drunken bitch teamed up with Lobo sounds pretty cool.
This echoes a lot of how I felt about the movie.
Luthor had no plan for when he reached the Fortress, had no idea what was inside, so what was the play there?
I don't like how they just completely shit on Krypton and Superman's parents. The movie touched on certain things, but it was generally light, and it didn't really deep dive into any struggles he had with his humanity vs alienness, or his feelings about Krypton. They show him listening to a message of his birth parents at the beginning of the movie to show how important that message is to him.
All of that to just casually wipe it away by saying that his parents were basically no better than Zod.
This plot made the whole war plot and Superman's interference in that lose value. That should have been the plot and what Luthor should have been using to discredit Superman and drum up public and government fear/hate against him.
And there are a grand total of 2 Kryptonians, and somehow Lex and 30 other humans are able to translate Kryptonian? Lex was able to repair the broken message, but Superman's robots weren't?
In the very first Superman movie of this DC Universe, Luthor has already made a clone of Superman, infiltrated his fortress, and has access to world ending technology and black holes.
I felt this was too much for an introduction movie. Where does someone like Lex go from here?
If you already have the tech to create your own Superman (and he said his is stronger) that you can control, then how is it not game over?
The idea of him controlling his Superman like a game was interesting at first, but I got tired of it very quickly. In a real fight you wouldn't be able to call a fist fight like that in real time. How could you do that between 2 Supermen? They should be moving at speeds you wouldn't be able to catch with your eyes. Add to that, who was Superman fighting where you could study his fighting style long enough to prepare counter attacks/plans for him?
I also saw it as more of a Super Friends movie than a Super Man movie.
