Over the last few decades, comic book movies have reached heights of storytelling and spectacle that readers could never have DREAMED of. But for every triumphant high—The Dark Knight, The Avengers—there have always been a good number of stinkers… some bad enough to become punchlines or talking points, but most mediocre and ultimately forgotten…

Until they end up here.

The Discount Spinner Rack is where you’ll find the worst, the weirdest, and the most puzzling of comic book movie misfires. We’ll take a look at the things that actually work and the parts that absolutely don’t, and decide whether it’s worth your time and your dime. In the end, movies will be marked down on a scale from $1.00 (a surprise gem) to $0.05 (better used for kindling). With Warner Bros.’ DCEU coming to a shrieking, inevitable end this year and a new Superman film on the horizon, I think the time is right to reexamine the broken foundations that this particular kingdom of sand was built upon: 2013’s Man of Steel!

God help us all.

So… Superman.

EVERYONE knows Superman, right?

This is a character so ubiquitous, so thoroughly saturated into common culture everywhere in the world, that he’s on par with certain religious figures. And in the U.S., even if you don’t read the comics or haven’t watched the movies, you STILL know the story just through cultural osmosis: a baby rocketed from a dying world, raised in the heartland of America by a kindly couple, gains powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, goes to the big city to become a mild-mannered reporter, and saves the day when things get bad by stripping down to his red underpants.

And more than anything else, what we all know most about Superman is that he is good. He will always make the right decision in any circumstance, because he is guided by a moral compass that (whether by advanced alien nature or by wholesome human upbringing) is unerringly true. When Superman shows up, things inevitably get better, because he has the power to take the morally-right actions necessary without need of compromise or excess. So everything he does is, by definition, a statement on what constitutes “doing the right thing”. He is THE “Good Guy”.

… I bring all this up because I want to make clear that the movie we will be discussing this time around is not an accident. This isn’t some half-formed, poorly thought-out reboot that’s mindlessly chasing the trends started by the Dark Knight trilogy. Nope… Man of Steel is a cogent, fully-formed thesis statement on the character of Superman. And it has a clear agenda that it’s using that universally-understood character to fulfill:

It’s trying to redefine what “good” means.

So after the Salkinds lost control of the Superman franchise (and its attendant spin-offs), and Warner Bros. spent over a decade developing all sorts of Superman movies that didn’t come to fruition, Superman Returns turned out to be… something of a disappointment for them. Earning $391.1 million on a budget of $204 million (after tax rebates), Returns didn’t catch on with audiences the way Spider-Man or Batman Begins had; a major criticism at the time was that the film was too slow and melancholy, with virtually no action to keep audiences engaged.

Prior to the first film’s release, plans had been set in motion to make a sequel to the Bryan Singer film, which was announced for release in 2009—with Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, and the rest of the cast all contracted to return. Reportedly, writer Michael Dougherty (Trick ‘R Treat, Krampus) wanted to introduce more Kryptonians and feature Brainiac as a main villain, and in 2008 producer Thomas Tull suggested that the film would depict Superman as “an angry god” in the new installment—which was rumored at the time to be titled The Man of Steel (in keeping with the second Nolan Batman film being named The Dark Knight). But the studio was hesitant to go into production, and insisted on a smaller budget than the previous film; Singer delayed production in 2007 to focus on his WWII drama Valkyrie, and then dropped out entirely in 2009 when Brandon Routh’s contract expired—electing instead to develop Jack the Giant Slayer.

So with Singer and Routh outta the picture, Warner Bros. began fielding pitches for a reboot of the property. Comic luminaries such as Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, and Mark Waid were invited to throw in their two cents on how to restart the franchise. Most notably, scribe Mark Millar teamed with director Matthew Vaughn to pitch an epic-scale, three-part trilogy intended to be filmed back-to-back and released over three years, much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Millar compared his approach to the Godfather trilogy, chronicling the entire life story of Superman—from baby Kal-El’s days on doomed Krypton all the way up to thousands of years in the future, with Superman losing his powers as the sun goes supernova.1Supposedly Vaughn’s suggestion for an actor to play Superman was Charlie Cox, to harken back to the Golden Age comics when Superman was “a bit more of a regular person”.

However, that potentially-amazing pitch got tossed aside when the news came down that David Goyer and Christopher Nolan (the writer/director duo who’d just scored a billion-dollar hit with a little film called The Dark Knight) had their OWN pitch ready to go. Goyer had brainstormed the concept during early story meetings for The Dark Knight Rises—explicitly as an exercise to spitball what he thought Nolan’s approach to the Man of Steel would be. The angle he ultimately settled on was a re-framing of Superman’s origin story as a sci-fi first contact narrative, with an invasion from Krypton driving the conflict and Superman torn between his human upbringing and his alien heritage. Nolan, impressed by Goyer’s idea, pitched it to the executives at Warner Bros… and those executives, still rolling in all the cash and snorting all the cocaine The Dark Knight bought them, greenlit the project IMMEDIATELY.

Unfortunately, Chris Nolan had no interest in directing the reboot, as all of his attention was focused on completing The Dark Knight Rises; instead, he joined the project as a producer, and the hunt began to find a director to bring this new Superman to the big screen.

So, SO many filmmakers were considered for this job. SO many. Of all stripes. Reportedly, Guillermo Del Toro was offered the job, but turned it down so he could work on an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (which subsequently fell apart anyway). Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Pinocchio 2022) was also approached, but to no avail. Darren Aronofsky, Duncan Jones, Matt Reeves, Tony Scott, even Ben Affleck—we could have gotten any one of them.

But… no.

We got Zack Snyder.

Now… in HINDSIGHT… it’s easy to see how this was a terrible idea. Hell, even at the time—when Snyder hadn’t had a genuine hit since 300 and had just released the indefensibly awful flop Sucker Punch—it was a bit of a head-scratcher. But the rationale given by Nolan, Goyer, and the studio was that they wanted a talented action director helming this film: someone who could bring an energy and dynamism to the Big Blue Boy Scout that would allow him to compete in a cinematic marketplace crowded with Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Men. And in that respect, well… Snyder seemed like a reasonable choice. After all, the one thing the man had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he could direct was action.

The problem was, once Snyder signed on to do the movie… it really became his movie. And when he decided to do his own pass on the screenplay to change some, er, key details… well, who was going to stop him?

It wasn’t gonna be Nolan, who was too busy working on Rises to provide much input2Pointedly, there was one story beat that Nolan DID vocally disagree with: the killing of General Zod. But ultimately Nolan relented when Snyder explained his rationale; likely he just didn’t have the energy to make a fuss about it, given that he was working on his own movie at the time, but who’s to say? Maybe Snyder made a strong case for it.. And the only thing the studio cared about was finding a director who could shoot crazy fight sequences, and getting an actor in the lead role jacked enough to compete with the beefcake leading men the MCU was churning out.

For the titular Steel-Man, Snyder went with British actor Henry Cavill (Stardust, Immortals)—a very handsome and charismatic young man who’d not only auditioned in the past for the roles of Chris Nolan’s Batman and Casino Royale’s James Bond, but had ALREADY auditioned to play Superman for Brett Ratner, McG, AND Bryan Singer3Pointedly, though—as I’m sure you know—he did not land any of these parts. Even in the cancelled Superman projects, he was apparently never the frontrunner—instead, the filmmakers were eyeing Brendan Fraser or Matthew Bomer. I wonder if that’s an ill portent…. Then, after a wide search and a chemistry test, Amy Adams was selected to play the newest Lois Lane. A-lister Russell Crowe and Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer (Nina’s Tragedies, Netflix’s Daredevil) were chosen to be Superman’s Kryptonian parents, while Kevin Costner and Diane Lane slotted into the roles of Pa and Ma Kent. Lawrence Fishburne became the first African-American actor to portray Daily Planet editor Perry White, and intense indie actor Michael Shannon (Take Shelter, Groundhog Day) was tapped for one of his first major mainstream roles as Kryptonian supervillain General Zod. Like Nolan’s Dark Knight films, the cast seemed to be an eclectic and talented ensemble of big names and character actors—further strengthening the notion that this would basically be a Nolan Superman film, regardless of who was actually directing it.

Warner Bros. dumped a TON of money into the production—somewhere between $225- and $258 million. This being the height of the superhero movie boom, Warners seemed convinced that the combination of Nolan’s involvement (given The Dark Knight’s billion-dollar worldwide gross and Inception’s instant cultural ubiquity) and Superman’s iconic status would guarantee them a worldwide gross in the billion-dollar range—enough to compete with the new mega-success of the MCU, which had become a cultural juggernaut with 2012’s Avengers. I mean, how could it possibly go wrong?

Well, Man of Steel was not a billion-dollar hit. But it ALSO wasn’t a flop, either. Grossing $668 million worldwide, the film was a success… it just wasn’t quite the universally-beloved, four-quadrant smash-hit the studio had been HOPING for. Some of the blame for this might fall on its middle-of-the-road reviews; Man of Steel holds a mere 56% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with common criticisms of the film being its grim, overly serious tone and the shockingly destructive final act of the film, which sees entire city blocks of Metropolis leveled and an unclear number of the city’s residents seemingly killed. Calling it a “mixed response” would be a bit of an understatement.

Nevertheless, the film was successful enough for Warner Bros. to commit to using it as the launching pad for a new cinematic universe of DC characters—their second attempt, following the failure of Green Lantern. This broader franchise—which unofficially came to be known as the DC Extended Universe (mostly because they never settled on an OFFICIAL name for it)—was ultimately spearheaded and masterminded by Zach Snyder, who insisted on bringing Batman into his Man of Steel sequel and planned out an overarching narrative that would lead into a pair of Justice League movies (which he would also direct). Snyder went from being a director-for-hire to being the defining architect of one of the largest comic-book movie projects ever undertaken…

… and it was a f%$#ing DISASTER.

So now, a little over ten years later, in the aftermath of the crumbling DCEU and with the benefit of hindsight… what can we make of Man of Steel? Is it the fundamental betrayal of the character that some fans (and even comic creators, like Mark Waid) were decrying it as? Is it a sturdy (if underdeveloped) starting point for a revamped Superman franchise that simply never materialized?

And, probably the MOST important, most pressing question of all: is it even… Superman?

IN THIS ISSUE: An overstuffed, overwhelming sci-fi fantasy yarn with a truly horrifying moral message underpinning it.

To be fair, the first-contact/alien-invasion hook that Goyer uses to distinguish his Superman reboot from previous attempts IS a unique one: rather than presenting a traditional superhero origin story, Goyer spends the first half dwelling on the emotional and philosophical implications of Clark Kent’s alien nature (his sense of alienation and isolation clearly intended to be a humanizing element… on paper, anyway), and the SECOND half playing out a gritty remake of Independence Day wherein one of the aliens wears a red cape and is on our side.4These two halves never really cohere into a single, clear narrative, incidentally… but that’s okay—this movie has WAY bigger problems than that.

Because of that increased focus on sci-fi, though, there is naturally a LOT of Krypton stuff in this movie.

Snyder and Goyer’s Krypton is far from the shimmering futuristic utopia of most adaptations—no glowing tinfoil costumes here—and much more a desolate fantasy landscape that you might see in a Frank Frazetta painting or on the cover of Heavy Metal magazine. (But believe me… those aren’t the ONLY sources this movie “borrows” its aesthetics and ideas from.)

The planet itself is etched with deep grooves from generational mining5It is strongly suggested that mining the core of Krypton is what leads to the geologic instability that causes its destruction; Jor-El shouts to the Council “I told you that mining the core was suicide!” This essentially turns the destruction of Krypton into a VERY on-the-nose metaphor for global warming, but sadly… the movie doesn’t really do much with the idea. and covered in bizarre fauna. The weapons, ships, and armor we see are notably techno-organic, more than a little evocative of H.R. Giger’s work on the first Alien. And in one memorable scene, Jor-El (Russell Crowe) has to rush to get home, so he summons his… personal… insect-winged tiger-dragon? That he rides? Named “H’Raka”? And it’s the only one of these that we see in the movie?

Moreover, the politics, philosophies, and technology of Krypton drive the plot of this film in ways they NEVER have in a previous iterations of the story.

To start, Krypton is quickly revealed to be a eugenicist culture in which babies are genetically engineered to fulfill given roles in society, and are no longer born naturally (instead being grown on artificial “trees” in birthing chambers ripped straight from The Matrix). But in the tumult of General Zod (Michael Shannon)’s uprising against the aged, ineffectual Council, Jor-El scarpers off and grabs “the Codex”—an ancient ape-skull fossil… thing… that is apparently the storage medium for ALL the genetic information used to grow new Kryptonian babies.

And before rocketing his son off into the cosmos, Jor-El ALSO chucks the Codex in with the baby, salvaging some hope that Kryptonian civilization can continue on… and creating a convenient McGuffin for General Zod to seek out when Krypton blows up, bringing him to Earth at the midpoint (with his ALIEN ARMY, ATTACK SHIPS, and TERRAFORMING MACHINE).

Does that sound like a largely unnecessary overcomplication to the basic Superman narrative and the General Zod conflict? Don’t worry: it gets worse! Because Kal-El is ALSO established to be the first natural birth on Krypton6The movie even opens by showing us Lara in labor and Jor-El delivering the baby, because this film starts out in full-on pretentious biopic mode. in centuries—an act of political defiance by Jor-El and Lara (Ayelet Zurer) against the stagnant and repressive status quo, which Zod fanatically decries as “HERESY!” Superman, you see, has the freedom to choose his destiny, rather than being programmed for a specific task; he’s exceptional, even among other Kryptonians!

But that’s not the ONLY way he’s exceptional! Because you know that Codex thing his dad sent along with him? To ensure its protection, he reduced the Codex to pure data… and imprinted the whole thing onto Kal-El’s cells. He’s a walking McGuffin, carrying the seeds of his entire race’s re-creation, LITERALLY in his blood. THE SYMBOLISM IS SUFFOCATING.

But that’s all just backstory, set-up, and context. What about our protagonist himself? How does this Superman’s story play out?

Well, the entire middle chunk of the movie is about Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), wandering magical hobo, trying to find his place in the world and seeking out any clues to his origins. We skip past most of his childhood to find the mute, bearded man-mountain aimlessly traveling from place to place, saving people’s lives when disaster strikes, and then moving on before anyone can ask him questions. He has no friends, no intimate connections, and barely even talks to anyone—because he’s been taught by his closed-minded, paranoid Earth dad Jonathan (Kevin Costner, somehow making this character not ENTIRELY detestable) that, should anyone learn the truth of his existence, it would be catastrophic for him and for the world at large. He’s a Clark Kent who’s been raised on fear and mistrust.

… But despite the fact that he’s a silent, mopey goon for most of the film… he’s still clearly Superman. Right away, we see that Clark is committed to saving people in danger—even as a kid, despite the repeated admonishments of his absolutely monstrous father—and he’s also shown to be a pacifist, choosing not to make mince-meat of a scummy truck driver who tries to provoke him while he’s working in a bar. He’s a non-violent, unambiguously heroic guy from minute one!

But in flashback, we see Jonathan Kent warning a young Clark that “there’s more at stake here than just our lives, Clark, or the lives of those around us.” Jonathan’s argument is that Clark needs to act morally, not JUST in the short term, but with regards to the greater good. He’s a utilitarian, convinced that the ends justify the means—that, for instance, allowing a school bus full of children to drown is the morally right choice if it means fending off the (potentially) far more damaging social and political upheaval that would come with mankind discovering that they’re not alone in the universe (… an assumed outcome rooted entirely in Pa Kent’s stunted and minanthropic view of humanity from the mud hole that is Nowheresville, Kansas).

We also see that Clark’s relationship with his Earth dad is distant and cold; Jonathan does hug his son once, but otherwise spends his time lecturing Clark on his duty to the world and the importance of hiding his true nature from others. Clark learns to be stoic, distant, and sullen, and becomes a pillar of toxic masculinity—eschewing friendships with other men, and only unburdening himself emotionally to the women in his life (in particular his mother Martha [Diane Lane], the one warm and emotionally open relationship he’s shown to have). I’m sure it’s no coincidence that, even when this universe finally DOES get a Jimmy Olsen, he certainly never gets a chance to be Superman’s “pal”.

The other woman in Clark’s life is, of course, Lois Lane (Amy Adams, wasted here)—whom the movie pointedly lets in on Clark’s super-powered secret from the get-go so that she effectively ONLY KNOWS him as a virtual demigod, and never gets to engage with Clark as a vulnerable or flawed human being.

Lois is presented as a tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners hardass (“what can I say? I get writer’s block if I’m not wearing a flak jacket”) who is nonetheless introduced to Clark via him physically dominating her (when she frantically tries to escape from him after seeing him use his powers) and painfully cauterizing a wound she’d sustained; then she defers without meaningful rebuttal to Clark’s opinion (and by extension, Pa Kent’s) about the world not being “ready” to learn about his existence7An opinion later explicitly shared by Perry White, confirming that this patriarchal, pessimistic view of humanity’s ability to cope with the wider implications of alien life is definitely the correct opinion in the movie’s estimation.; and she subsequently gets dropped into endless damsel-in-distress scenarios that Clark has to save her from.

She has no agency after the mid-point. Yes, she does help to defeat the Kryptonians at the end, but her involvement is entirely arbitrary; she literally just happened to be the person in the room when Jor-El tells her the means of sending the bad guys back to the Phantom Zone. Other than that, she’s just there so that Superman can repeatedly stare deeply into her eyes while the music swells. (There are a lot of silent, faux-meaningful stares inserted throughout this movie in lieu of actual dialogue or scenes. When Superman and Lois kiss at the end, it feels WILDLY unearned, because these two have barely spoken to each other for the whole film.)

Anywho, Clark eventually manages to find a Kryptonian scout ship lost on Earth8Continuing the trend of this movie being massively overloaded with exposition and backstory, it seems the Kryptonians were explorers and colonizers thousands of years ago, but gave it up at a certain point—and one of their scout ships was stuck on Earth, trapped in ice, all this time. Now, the scout ship has an open hibernation pod in it, and an accompanying comic tie-in suggested that the scout ship contained this universe’s version of Supergirl, who may well have been frozen in ice herself like Captain America… but this thread was never addressed in the films and basically just never gets explained or paid off., and—using the command key from his own spaceship—meets the digital recreation of his Kryptonian daddy Jor-El. Clark starts getting told far, far more optimistic and positive things than he’d ever heard from his Earth daddy: that he’s going to be the bridge between humankind and the people of Krypton, that he stands for the belief that any man can choose to be a force for good, that his family crest LITERALLY means “hope”. And he’s like, “AWESOME! I’m gonna embrace my heritage and learn to fly and tell my Ma all about my space daddy!” But before he can choose to do anything ELSE with this knowledge… before he can, say, decide to reveal himself to the world and discover whether or not humankind will accept him for who he is…

… Well, suddenly General Zod shows up and forces his hand—completely invalidating any consideration of how humankind will react to the existential questions posed by the knowledge of alien life, because they’re all panicking about the giant spaceship that’s threatening the entire planet.

From that point on, the movie hard-shifts into being an alien-invasion story, with Space Hitler broadcasting demands, probing minds, and tearing through military hardware like Kleenex in his quest to reclaim the Codex from Kal-El. Zod is sort of the unofficial third daddy figure for Superman: if Jor-El is the utopian and Jonathan is the utilitarian, then Zod’s the fascist—willing to murder as many people as it takes to ensure the survival and purity of the Kryptonian race. And the thing is, while the movie does disapprove of his goals—rebuilding Krypton atop the bones of a massacred humanity—it doesn’t entirely disapprove of his, or his underlings’ brutal methods.

Because Zod is a General, after all: a military man. And this film venerates and valorizes martial authority and its uses of violence in ALL contexts. Zod, while clearly cruel and despotic, is also somehow framed as “honorable” and even SELFLESS; the violent acts he commits are written off as necessary evils to protect his entire species and their culture. It’s also telling that, while Zod is presented as an obvious villain and Jor-El is presumably philosophically at odds with him… Jor is still shown to know enough martial arts and battle strategy to defeat two of Zod’s soldiers and even Zod himself in hand-to-hand combat9How Jor-El could have received this combat training in a rigidly eugenicist society in which all social roles are pre-determined at conception and enforced by unbreakable caste hierarchy is, well, never explained. Do ALL Kryptonians know kung-fu and practice with firearms—so well that they can somehow defeat soldiers who’ve been training to do this same kind of thing their entire lives? Isn’t the whole POINT of Krypton’s society the idea of specialization—that its citizens are forced to stay in their lanes and only do the jobs they’ve been programmed to do? So why is this one scientist and inventor so good at kicking ass?. He explicitly uses the same tools of militant violence as Zod does, and is presented as a hero for it!

It doesn’t stop with the Kryptonians, though. Oh, no… this movie is absolutely in LOVE with the American military, too—from valorizing the ground troops who fruitlessly take a stand against the literally BULLETPROOF Kryptonian baddies, to the commanders who brave the front lines and face down death with an unwavering stare, to even the generals who have to make the tough decisions back at base. The disturbing fetishization of military might throughout this film makes sense, as the film partnered with the National Guard to use real military equipment and personnel for its many, many combat scenes10A fairly common practice with big-budget action movies, in particular Michael Bay films and the Marvel movies, that we should maybe question the moral implications of at some point in the future…?. Clark also chooses to reveal himself to the military directly—rather than making an appearance to the broader public or to the government—and at the end of act two, the catharsis moment (in which Superman is apparently finally accepted by humankind) comes when Colonel Nathan Hardy (Christopher Meloni) declares in a hushed tone to his troops, “this man is not our enemy.”

The ringing echo of post-9/11 military worship is unmistakable. And that’s not the only way the movie decides to echo that particular national tragedy.

Now, the most common complaint leveled against this film, by far, has concerned the third act’s destruction of several square miles of downtown Metropolis. Zod activates a terraforming engine in the middle of the city to transform Earth into a new Krypton, and the field it creates causes a gradually widening area of the city’s downtown (and all the vehicles, buildings, and PEOPLE within it) to be violently flattened. The military keeps sending fighter jets at Zod’s ship to blow it up, but their missiles are thrown off-course by the gravity field, and both missiles and planes are flung wildly into buildings and streets filled with people. The staff of the Daily Planet—specifically Perry White (Lawrence Fishburne), Steve Lombard11Can I just take a moment to rant about how infuriating it is that Steve Lombard’s first live-action appearance had to be filtered through the lens of Zach Snyder’s macho worldview? Because Steve Lombard is supposed to be a buffoon. He’s the sports writer for the Planet, and he’s a big, dumb, burly meathead, the jock to Clark Kent’s nerd. He’s supposed to be toxic machismo incarnate. But in SNYDER’S hands, this guy becomes the Everyman: an average-sized, unlucky-in-love, good-hearted sports writer who steps up and proves that he’s a hero in the third act. WAY TO MISS THE POINT! (Michael Kelly), and intern Jenny Jurwich12Rumors during production suggested that this was supposed to be a female version of Jimmy Olsen—certain tie-in books even cited her name as “Jenny Olsen” before the movie was released—but at some point the plan changed and her name was changed to “Jurwich”, which you can see on her Daily Planet press badge. (Rebecca Buller)—desperately try to escape to safety on foot, but Jenny gets caught in the rubble of a collapsing building and the other two frantically try to rescue her as the gravity field approaches. And throughout it all, Superman can’t help any of them—because he’s on the other side of the planet, trying to destroy the terraforming engine itself and end the broader threat.

It is deeply unpleasant to watch—explicitly calling to mind real-world images of 9/11. And that is very much intentional. Snyder, in these scenes, is building up the immensity of the threat from Zod and his fanatics, so that it will force a very specific character change in Superman. Because Superman has a very deliberate arc in this film, and it requires an absurdly huge threat in order to justify it.

Superman, from the outset of this film, values human life. He saves people in danger wherever he finds them. He’s willing to risk revealing his big secret to rescue others, and he also sacrifices his personal happiness and stability in order to do that. But the movie keeps admonishing him for it. Jonathan says that “maybe” he should have let a bus full of school children drown to protect his secret. He later specifically STOPS Clark from rescuing him from a tornado (in perhaps the dumbest death scene in cinema history). And then when the Kryptonians show up? They start making similar arguments! Faora-Ul (Antje Traue), General Zod’s scene-stealing badass second-in-command, declares that “the fact that you possess a sense of morality, and we do not, gives us an evolutionary advantage.” Making decisions based on empathy rather than utility is a flaw that the Kryptonians are willing to exploit.

During that big Smallville battle sequence, at one point Superman rushes over to save a soldier who falls out of an attack ‘copter. He takes a second to check on the troop, but that one second leaves him open to getting bashed by Faora’s giant grunt and being sidelined while Faora demolishes an entire ground team. She then warns Supes, “for every human you save, we will kill a million more.”

So when the final battle for Metropolis comes along, Superman has shifted his priorities. He’s not worried about saving individual people anymore (aside from Lois, whom he has an obvious personal interest in); he’s dead-set on neutralizing threats. He spends the whole sequence focused on destroying the World Engine in the Indian Ocean, because he knows they can’t send the Kryptonians back or save the world if it’s still running. Then he recklessly disables Zod’s scout-ship so that it can’t stop the U.S. bomber from sending the Kryptonians back to the Phantom Zone (despite the fact that the scout ship crashes through SEVERAL skyscrapers on its way into the ground). And finally, in his one-on-one battle with Zod, he completely disregards the innocent bystanders around them as they kick the snot out of each other… because he knows that Zod is a potential danger to EVERYONE on Earth and has to be stopped as quickly as possible.

Superman has been taught the importance of accepting collateral damage. He accepts that, to accomplish the MOST good that he possibly can, he needs to be willing to allow something bad to happen in the short term so that the greater good can be preserved. Basically, he’s learned to let the school bus full of children die so he can save the world.

But… he still has to go further.

The Superman we meet at the beginning of the film is non-violent, and is therefore shown to be impotent when it comes to conflict resolution—the drunk in the bar treats him like sh*t, and he takes the abuse silently, quits his job, and walks away13… but not before petulantly demolishing the drunk’s truck, robbing him of a means to make a living without actually solving anything.. But then General Zod threatens Ma Kent while looking for the Codex—a transgression so infuriating that it prompts Clark to finally abandon his pacifism and tackle Zod across several corn fields, through a grain silo, and into a 7-11 gas station in downtown Smallville14This is the one instance of callous disregard for human life in this film that I’m willing to chalk up to just pure inexperience and recklessness, as this is literally the first time in the movie he’s ever physically attacked ANYone, so he has no sense of just how powerful or dangerous his actions could be, and he’s clearly emotionally out-of-control in that moment. But from this point forward it becomes increasingly difficult to justify…. Hey, it saves Martha, at least!

But just being willing to fight isn’t enough for this movie. Clark is depicted as naïve, in the sense that he’s never actually gotten his hands dirty—he’s never HAD to fight, so he’s never been confronted with life-or-death decisions in the heat of battle. And while Clark may respect all life in the abstract… understanding morality as he’s read it in philosophy books… the movie ultimately frames this as childish and short-sighted. It’s only when he’s faced with an enemy like General Zod—an enemy who refuses to surrender, who cannot be subdued, and whose ultimate goal is the death of every single man, woman, and child on Earth15In other words, a cartoonishly broad strawman for a foreign terrorist who despises the American way of life and will do anything he can to destroy it, of the sort that we saw a LOT of in post-9/11 cinema.—that Clark is forced to take action… for the greater good.

So he murders General Zod with his bare hands.

This is what the movie has been building to. This is the POINT of Man of Steel. It was never a story about how an alien refugee grew to be a superhero; this was a story about how Superman, the superhero, learned to be a militant utilitarian. It’s about him learning the value of death—about how sometimes people DO have to die for the greater good, whether it’s from the “unavoidable” collateral damage of military actions, or directly from the actions of people who deem it necessary, because eliminating a threat is more important than protecting the vulnerable. The military solution is always the correct solution. And it’s a story about how, of the three “fathers” we see, Jonathan—the ruthless centrist between the utopian and the fascist—was the one who was RIGHT all along.

At one point, Superman sees Lois falling to Earth in a damaged escape pod. Jor-El appeals to his son, then: “You can save her, Kal. You can save ALL of them.”

And for the rest of the movie, Zack Snyder responds: “Bullsh*t.”

IS IT WORTH YOUR DIME?: I’m not gonna say there’s nothing to enjoy here. The action sequences are dynamic and often exciting, and there are some aesthetic choices that I particularly like (see below). But in the end… this just isn’t Superman. This is a corruption of everything the character stands for.

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FAVORITE BITS:

1. Taking Flight: In a movie filled with dourness and violence, the one, shining bright spot of joy comes when Clark, garbed in Kryptonian clothing for the first time and finally aware of who he is and where he comes from, steps out into the Arctic wastes and decides to see just how high he can jump. He takes off, bounding miles into the air and smashing into the ground, then again and again… and the third time, at the apex of his arc, he thrusts his arms upward and starts to soar HIGHER under his own power! Clark lets out a delighted laugh, his face lighting up… just before he loses his concentration and tumbles clumsily back to Earth. But after picking his dignity back up from the ground and climbing out of his newly-minted crater, Clark takes off, soaring through the air at delirious speeds and traversing the seas and continents while a broad grin plays across his face. This is the one moment of exhilaration and fun that the movie grants us—putting us in Clark’s shoes as he learns to fly—and it’s wonderful. It even ends with Clark soaring around the curve of the Earth, in homage to the Christopher Reeves films of yesteryear:
   
2. The Suit: Now, I know this is an unpopular opinion in some circles… but I LOVE the Superman costume in this movie! From the metallic sheen of the fabric itself (evoking a LITERAL “Man of Steel”) to the muted-but-still-recognizable color palette, to the choice of the old-fashioned, 40’s-style “S” shield design (just unique enough to stand out, while still being iconic). What really works for me about it, though, is that it fits into the film’s central sci-fi theme really well: while it’s definitely a Superman suit, there’s a sort of alien unfamiliarity about it—what with the detail work around the hips and down the arms and legs, and the unearthly quality of the materials. Hell, the lack of red underpants reinforces this sense of alienness—because we’re not used to seeing Superman without a big patch of red and yellow there! It feels of-a-piece with the reimaging of Batman’s suits for the Dark Knight films… though its subsequent redesigns in the later DCEU films are much uglier and more garish.
3. Krypton Wear: Speaking of super-suits, one of my pet peeves about the idea of Superman’s costume coming from Krypton has always been that no other Kryptonians are ever shown to dress like him. But in THIS film, the traditional Superman jumpsuit is the foundational garment for literally EVERYONE on Krypton! Granted, the design team did a phenomenal job of building suits of armor, robes, and ornamental outfits that hang off of- or strap on over the skin-tight base outfit—so it’s not just a bunch of people standing around in spandex onesies. But every character has an undersuit on, complete with a chest emblem bearing their family’s crest—including Jor-El (who strips down to his Super-suit when he goes to fetch the Codex) and even General Zod, who rips off his armor for the final battle with Superman to reveal an all-black Super-suit beneath. There’s also an emphasis on Kryptonian fashion making major use of CAPES: Jor-El wears a ragged, leathery cape, while Zod is decked out in a thick, wooly black fur cape! It’s a neat bit of retroactive world-building. (And hey—this means that Superman technically doesn’t NEED to wear underwear on the outside of his costume… because his entire costume basically IS a pair of underwear!)
4. “Hope” and a Two-Way Mirror: Gotta hand it to David Goyer: he knows how to write a fun interrogation room scene. After “surrendering” to the military in order to get Lois released from their custody, Clark and Lois have a chat in an interrogation room, wherein Clark tells Lois that the symbol on his chest is “not an ‘S’. On my world, it means ‘hope’.” Lois, culturally insensitive jerk that she is, insists that it IS an “S” and nearly uses it to name him “Superman”, before being obnoxiously interrupted before she can say the name aloud (because I guess that would be too silly?). Anyway, for the second half of the scene, we get a fun exchange wherein Clark starts chatting with Professor Emil Hamilton and General Swanwick, who are watching him through a two-way mirror… but whom he can see perfectly fine anyway, because, y’know… x-ray vision. It’s probably the one scene in which Superman gets to act warm and friendly in the costume, and it’s just… it’s kinda nice, alright?
   
5. Breathe It In: Now this is a clever bit of mythologizing. One of the conceits David Goyer comes up with to make his Superman story a more “realistic” sci-fi narrative than past efforts is the idea that Krypton’s atmospheric composition is radically different than Earth’s, and therefore that Clark had to adapt to breathing Earth’s atmosphere as a child… but never actually acclimated to Krypton’s. So when he first steps onto General Zod’s ship, he gets dizzy, collapses onto the floor, spits up blood, and passes out—eventually waking up to discover that all his powers are neutralized by the different atmosphere. This is a clever way to give Clark a weakness without having to introduce or explain Kryptonite16Though the movie actually quite cleverly sows the seeds for the introduction of Kryptonite when General Zod explains that they spent thirty-three years seeking out all of Krypton’s terraformed outposts on alien planets, only to find that every one of them had died off without explanation—like, literally, they’re all littered with mummified Kryptonian corpses. Zod never puts the pieces together (after all, he isn’t a scientist), but this is because the terraforming process apparently fuses native minerals together into higher-density materials to recreate Krypton’s planetary conditions… and one of the byproducts of that is a radioactive rock that kills Kryptonians with prolonged exposure. The terraforming system was flawed from the start; Zod could NEVER have succeeded in recreating Krypton. He was just too stupid and single-minded to realize it., and it fits in thematically with the idea that Clark is made vulnerable in his reconnection with his homeworld and discovering its ultimate failings.
6. The Stupidest Man on Earth: I couldn’t wrap things up without pointing out the most inexplicably idiotic moment in the entire movie. Clark is working as a busser at a restaurant-slash-bar in… Canada somewhere, I think… when some scruffy, drunken runt of a truck driver named Ludlow gropes the butt of the lady bartender and tries to pull her onto his lap. Clark immediately puts a hand on the trucker’s shoulder and tells him that he needs to let go of her. And Ludlow—all of five-foot eight, scrawny, who looks like the strongest thing about him is his smell—looks up at the seven-foot-tall mountain of muscle that is Henry Cavill, who looks like he was weaned on formula laced with HGH as a baby, and says to himself, “… yeah, I’m gonna pick a fight with this guy.” He leaps to his feet, tells Clark to shove it, and dumps a whole beer over his head. Like, even setting aside that we know he’s doing this to literally Superman, these look like the actions of a man with a death wish. And the whole moment culminates in one hilarious beat where Ludlow, finally ready to get the fight started, throws his whole body weight into a shove… that bounces off of Clark as harmlessly as a squeaky toy.

NEXT ISSUE: Whew! That was… emotionally exhausting. I might just have to give myself a rest for a bit. But when I come back around for the 30^th spin on the Discount Spinner Rack, I’m gonna kick off a three-part look at pulp heroes of the ‘90s—starting with the colorful newspaper-strip detective, Dick Tracy!

(If your interested in further exploration of the ideas presented in this article re: the films of Zack Snyder, YouTuber and Nebula creator Maggie Mae Fish explores the themes present in his entire filmography in a fantastic three-part video essay series, which you can watch here, here, and here. Her series is far more in-depth than I could manage here, and influenced my perspective on this particular film pretty strongly. And for a more focused examination of the structural and thematic issues with Man of Steel, I recommend Folding Ideas’ very, very old video on the subject.)