and if you were a fan of Superman you'd know how pompous it is to say that the personality that was portrayed in MoS for Clark/Superman wasn't one that we haven't seen for many years.
it is fucking tiring to read the same people repeating themselves how Superman should have saved this person or that person or not destroyed the city (which he didn't)
when he fought Doomsday half the country was destroyed, when he fought Brainiac in Panic in the Sky(1991) Metropolis was destroyed (he also had a few years of experience under his belt) when he fought Imperiex(1999) half the world was destroyed.
I can keep going but every time I hear some so called fan tell me that "superman would never let such destructon happen" I laugh and my bullshit detector goes off. because I then know that he doesn't know his Superman media and if one thing that always follows Superman whenever there is a big story or big villain related to him, it's destruction on a large scale.
so yeah, I do get pompous and dickish.
too many people have been fed the Chris Reeve movies which while great(in their day) are done and finished. time for a post-Crisis take on the character.
if I wanted to see a perfect Superman again i'd just pop in Superman I and II.
You aren't getting the root of what everyone keeps complaining about, so I'll try to spell it out for you.
It's not the action that has so many people hating this movie. The action was a very welcome change compared to what Returns was.
It's Superman's behavior. He doesn't
ACT like Superman in this movie. I'll give a few examples:
- When the Kryptonians are threatening his mom he flies Zod across miles of empty fields and throws him right into downtown Smallville. Superman then proceeds to fight them all on Main Street. They are literally surrounded by miles of empty fields, yet Superman takes the fight straight to the populated areas. Although the Faora fight was freaking awesome, the circumstances of it were just perplexing. Superman's actions were just as much a threat to Smallville as the Kryptonians were. Didn't he grow up there? Wouldn't he want to try to save as much of his home as possible?
- The world destroyer in Metropolis. When this appears, Superman takes off and flies half way around the world to destroy the machine IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE instead. He leaves the machine in Metropoplis, where millions of people are, to attack the machine where absolutely NO ONE is. And we proceed to witness the shockwaves leveling block after block of Metropolis, people running scared, buildings collapsing, all of this interspersed with action scenes of Superman attacking a machine in a deserted location with absolutely no people around. Superman would NEVER leave Metropolis like that, not when it's people are in grave danger. Why didn't he destroy the machine in Metropolis first and THEN fly off to destroy the other one? It didn't make sense....
- The kiss in the middle of the holocaust. WHAT THE FLYING HELL. Blocks after blocks of Metropolis are leveled, people are dead, buried, trapped, and Superman takes the time to meet Lois in the middle of it all and kiss her out of the freaking blue? The entire theater looked at each other with puzzled looks at that scene, I mean the guy behind me literally said "what the hell" out loud. The timing was wrong, the setting was wrong, the entire scene made Superman look like an enormous selfish dick.
And this is only Superman's behavior. I won't even go into Pa Kent's character destruction in the movie.
You'll notice I didn't put Zod's death in the list? It's because honestly I don't have a problem with the scene, HOWEVER, it's out of place due to Superman's callous uncaring behavior for the entirety of the movie for human life up to that point. If Clark had shown any concern for human life up to that point then the scene would have resonated so much better. In the film however, it just feels very out of place and confusing.
Man of Steel did a lot of things right. The cast was awesome, the overall story line was very good, the music was great, but it's the details of Clark's character (or lack thereof) that ruins the movie. He just doesn't act like we would expect Superman to act, based on the majority of Superman's history of material before this.
You might be tired of hearing it, you might not understand it, but for an awful lot of us Man of Steel was very disappointing because of this. It's a very divisive movie, some love it and some despise it, different strokes for different folks I guess.