This review was written in the style of Red Letter Media's Star Wars Prequel review videos. That is the reason for the Parts and Chapters. And also for the length. If you've never seen those videos, I highly suggest you check them out.
Part 1: The Entire Story
Chapter 1: Krypton Colonization Program
Krypton sent out a bunch of explorers to colonize planets because their planet got too big for it’s own good. For some reason that I don’t believe was ever explained in the movie, they discontinued the program. Strangely, this wonderfully technologically advanced civilization did not seem to pre-plan their colonization program to actually bring anyone home in the event they discontinued it. So the people that were sent to all of these planets were basically stuck there with no chance to get home. Or even call home and let Krypton know how things were going, it would seem.
Chapter 2 : If you have to read the Comic Book to get the movie, at least sell it in the lobby.
A prelude comic book was released a few weeks ago. In it, we learn that the group headed to Earth, led by Super Girl, was attacked by some Kryptonian, causing the ship to crash. So that’s the explanation for this particular failed colony. When Superman finds the ship, the distress signal that Super Girl set off is activated, which alerts Zod to it’s presence. Wait. I thought they couldn’t call home? Now they could have had Zod just stumble upon Earth as he was looking for all the other colonies, but the story required Zod to know that Superman was on Earth when he got there, so they could do the whole “You are not alone” thing from the viral marketing campaign. This creates TWO gigantic plot holes. One that I’ll get to in this section, and one that I will get to later.
Chapter 3: I thought these guys were supposed to be smart?
So apparently the Kryptonians could call home, and the Earth colony was the only one that failed because of an accident. So why were all the other colonies dead? And why didn’t Krypton know they were in trouble until Zod got to each one individually over the course of 33 years? Before you dismiss this as a minor plot hole, keep in mind that this essentially becomes the central focus of the entire movie.
Chapter 4: White People Stink!
The colonists were dispatched to their worlds with a Weapon of Mass Destruction. The World Engine – This takes any planet with a similar habitable atmosphere and terraforms it into an exact replica of Krypton. It is explained in the movie that everyone on the existing planet is killed in the process. Obviously, some of the other colonies used this process to terraform their planets into versions of Krypton. Are we to believe that all of these other planets were not inhabited? Of course not! So now we have an allegory for the British colonization program, where bad white people established colonies and killed the native tribes in the process.
Chapter 5: General Zod – SUPER GENIUS
So wait – all the other colonies were dead, remember? General Zod visited each and ever colony over the course of 33 years. This is because the stupid story required him to not find Earth for 33 years until Superman was grown up to fight him, and it also required him to have a bunch of weapons, including the stupid World Engine thing. And obviously, the story required him to find all dead colonies, because if he had found a live Kryptonian civilization he probably would have either brought a bigger army to Earth or would have just lived happily ever after.
But this creates a World sized plot hole. So we know that at least some of the colonists had this World Engine. We are to assume that they used it to terraform the planet into lil Kryptons. What else do we know? EVERY COLONY FAILED! And it’s not something that WE, the audience knows, Zod knows it because he personally visited every colony! How do we know that Zod knows this? Remember that distress signal from before? The fact that it went off at all tells Zod that Superman must be on Earth.
So Zod’s big plan is to terraform Earth into lil Krypton and use this Codec thing to grow a bunch of Kryptonians. But obviously the thing doesn’t work right or all of the other colonies wouldn’t have failed. So he’s going to destroy Earth to create a lil Krypton, then watch as his colony slowly dies just as all the other colonies did. THIS is the master plan?
Chapter 6: The Codec
Zod knows that he’s about to destroy one planet and build another one that is doomed to fail. Wanting to kill as many people as possible, he decides that he needs this Codec thing to create babies in a recreation of the human storage system from the Matrix. Um…why does he need this? It is never really explained in the movie. In fact, Superman’s very existence is proof positive that Zod doesn’t need it at all. BECAUSE ZOD COULD JUST MATE WITH FAORA AND MAKE MORE BABIES. But the story requires conflict, so instead of just mating with Faora and making natural babies and starting over, Zod needs this thing that he doesn’t need.
Chapter 7: Can we go back to this World Engine thing?
So the stated purpose of the World Engine is to terraform the existing planet into a new Krypton. We know that Krypton itself was not a stable planet. We also know that all of the terraformed Krypton colonies failed. So obviously it’s not a great idea to transform Earth into another Krypton. And…why do they need to again? Superman is Kryptonian, and he can not only function in Earth’s atmosphere, he is thriving. Zod is able to become accustomed to Earth’s atmosphere in 5 minutes. Superman himself must have gotten acclimated pretty quickly, or the baby would have died right there in the Kent’s farmhouse.
So instead of just taking a couple of hours or days or whatever to slowly get accustomed to Earth’s atmosphere, they have to turn it into a new Krypton. Why? Why do they have to do this? They would all obviously have been able to survive and thrive on Earth as it was. They could have come to an agreement with Superman to let them establish a colony on Earth using the Codec to grow some new babies and build some more ships. They could have then used their technology to not seek out and build more Kryptons, but more Earths. Then they could have simply left, and given Superman the option to come with them, which he probably would have taken.
Part II – The Conflict(s)
Chapter 1: I know the answer to Part I!
The obvious explanation for this ridiculously stupid plot is that they needed to set up conflict, and more importantly, they needed to set up disaster porn. They needed Superman to have a good reason for stopping Zod and blowing up a bunch of stuff in the process. But look at all the plot holes they had to create to set up this big machine thingie for Superman to fly up into. Sometimes a simpler story is better.
Chapter 2: General Zod is complex!
They obviously felt like Zod’s revenge motivation was just a little too simple in Superman II. I’ll grant them that. Most people that go to prison don’t get out of jail and go after the Judge that put them there and his whole family. At the end of the movie, they portray it as if we’re somehow supposed to feel empathy for Zod as a man who has now lost everything – again. This is supposed to be the reason he snaps and wants to kill Superman and a bunch of innocent Earthlings, even though….he has spent the entire movie trying to kill Superman and ALL of the innocent earthlings.
I think it’s safe to say that while they were successful in creating a ridiculously complex and nonsensical plot, they failed at making Zod anything more than a homicidal maniac bent on revenge. I felt no empathy for him. I just wanted to be done with him.
Chapter 3: America Sucks! And they’re really stupid, too!
In the middle of all this fighting between Superman and the Kryptonians, America gets involved, and not wanting to pick sides for some reason, decides to fire on both sides. It doesn’t work very well, as this guy can fly and is super strong, and is fighting this small army of super powered people with giant laser guns who came to Earth in a spaceship, and threatened that they have enough power to destroy the entire planet. Why doesn’t it work well? We have weapons of mass destruction, right? Drop a nuke on Smallville and be done with it, and fire one off at that ship while we’re at it. The missile silos are right there in Kansas, for crying out loud. Instead we decide to try bullets and small fighter jets that fly close enough to the ground to be HULK SMASHED by…Non? Clearly they didn’t choose this option because it would have A) Ended the movie and prevented all the disaster porn, and B) They didn’t want to rip off the Avengers. Oh. Ohhhh. Well, it’s a minor thing.
America doesn’t do that. They pick a side. Sometimes they pick the wrong side, but they always pick sides. There were two reasons they were forced into attacking both sides: The first was to give some resolution to the whole “What happens if I reveal myself?” stupid, horrible sub plot. Obviously the answer is “If you reveal yourself, they’ll try to kill you.” Score one for Pa Kent, I guess. But more on that later.
The second reason, and of course the more important one in this film, was to create a giant action set piece. Movies like this need some action, so this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it allowed them to collect some money from Sears, 7-Eleven, and IHOP. But America didn’t really need to be part of this conflict.
Chapter 4: Who brings a knife to a gun fight?
One of the things I liked about the movie was the "good death” sequence between Christopher Merloni and Faora. It had a satisfying ending, but it had a very stupid beginning. There’s an old Robert Wuhl bit where he talks about the Superman TV show. The bit was that the bad guy would fire all his bullets at Superman, while George Reeve stood there smiling, letting the bullets hit him while saying “You stupid bastard, I’m Superman!” The bad guy would then throw the empty gun at Superman – and Superman would DUCK! That’s pretty silly, right?
Faora is coming in on Merloni, and he does the same thing – empties the gun. She smiles and says, “You stupid bastard, I’m Faora!” To his credit, Merloni doesn’t throw the gun at her. He does the next stupidest thing though and pulls out…a knife? What good is that going to do? Whatever, he’s brave, I guess. So the satisfying ending is that Faora uses her super speed and strength to rush him and snap him in two. No wait, that’s not what happens. She produces a knife of her own and squares off with him as if they are equals. A knife fight? Between a super powered alien and a human? What is this, a Steven Seagal movie? Oh…ohhh…oh.
Chapter 5: The Man of Steagal:
Ok, back to stupid Zod and the end of the stupid conflict. Superman flies up the laser beam into the World Engine, causing it to malfunction and fall into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, Lois defeats all of the other Kryptonians (Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about Lois.) So as I mentioned before, this upsets Zod so much that he tries to do what he’s been trying to do the entire movie – Kill Superman and kill a bunch of innocent earthlings in the process. But this time, he’s so angry that he is able to…focus his senses instantaneously, learn how to use the heat vision that he never knew he had until seconds earlier, and of course breathe on a planet that he couldn’t breathe on just a short time before. Hey, he was mad. Lots of people get more focused when they’re in a rage. I get it.
Obviously, that doesn’t make any sense. The real reason for Zod to take off his battle armor and his helmet is so that we can get an old fashioned 80’s movie hand to hand combat showdown. Think Arnold vs the dude in Commando, or Seagal vs the dude in Under Siege 2. Hey, it’s personal, now! I love 80’s movies, but in a Superhero movie, it just didn’t feel right.
The movie climaxes with Superman getting Zod in a choke hold. Zod is able to breathe well enough to focus his heat vision on some passersby, who have all the time in the world to just run away, but stand there like silly geese. Superman decides THIS is a good opportunity to try diplomacy, and asks Zod to not kill these innocent, stupid people, who can’t run one foot forward and to the left.
Ok, time out. Zod just killed MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, and you’re NEGOTIATING WITH HIM?!?!?! WHY?!?!?!?! Zod deserves to be executed for the millions of people he already killed, INCLUDING JOR-EL. So even if Superman doesn’t care about the millions of innocent people, he should at least care that the guy killed his dad. The implication is that even though Superman wants revenge for Jor El, the only reason he kills Zod is to prevent him from…killing a couple of innocent people? I thought they didn’t matter? Collateral damage, and all. What’s a couple more charred up people?
Superman decides 4 or 5 more people on top of several million is just too many and snaps Zod’s neck. I didn’t have the reaction I expected to going into the movie. I thought I’d be disgusted that Superman took a life. But I was disgusted that it took him so long to do it, and I was even more disgusted that he was actually upset with himself afterwards. At least not THAT upset. Cops don’t fall down in the street crying when they have to shoot a suspect to save innocent lives, do they? I mean, WHAT WAS THAT?!?! I’d accept a little PTSD in Man of Steel 2, but that reaction was horribly out of place given the events of the film.
Part III – The Worst Origin story in the history of Superheroes
Chapter 1 – Bullies suck!
There are several scenes in the movie of bullies being bullies to Superman and him not fighting back, because A) he would kill the bullies and B) he would reveal himself to the world. There is no reason for this, and no payoff. I believe it is in there to set up that it’s a really difficult decision for Superman to first reveal his presence to the world and then to fight against Zod. Well, neither of those reasons makes any sense.
Number 1 – I don’t know if I should reveal myself.
Zod had 33 years to kill, and it looks like he passed that time well, by taking a bunch of Rosetta Stone classes and learning how to say “You are not alone” in every language. He goes on to say that if Superman doesn’t reveal himself, he’ll blow up the whole world. Now call me stupid, but not having some guy blow up the world seems like a pretty good reason to reveal yourself. But Superman actually hems and haws a little bit about this decision. I guess because he wasn’t sure what Pa Kent would have wanted? I don’t know. Not saving your dad from a tornado is one thing, but saving the entire planet from being destroyed? I think Pa Kent would have approved.
Number 2 – If I fight these bullies, I’ll kill them.
So Superman decides to surrender to Zod peacefully instead of fighting him straight out. Makes sense, actually. He’s not exactly sure what Zod’s intentions are, and he has no idea what he’s up against. So it’s not a good tactic to go charging in. But that’s not what the movie set up. It was all about not using your strength to hurt people, right? So why did we need all those scenes again? It’s not like there was a showdown between Superman and the Army where they attacked him and he had to show restraint. He flew up to them, surrendered, and they said “Ok.” When they fired on him for no reason later, I guess he showed restraint, but I think that had more to do with the two Kryptonians who were trying to kill him than concern for earthlings. He didn’t make any effort to move the fight into a nearby wheat field. In fact, he seemed to go out of his way to destroy as much of Smallville as he could. I suppose the payoff to all of that was the bizarre callback to one of the bullies in IHOP, where Superman makes eye contact with him and says “See? I could have ended you, fat boy!” But it all seemed so unnecessary.
Chapter 2 – The Finger of God
There’s this scene where Pa Kent gets sucked up in a Twister and killed. Luckily, Krypto was able to outrun the twister, and I guess hiding under a small bridge protected the rest of them from that massive tornado that was only like 20 feet away. I’m not even going to get into all of that. But what was the point of this scene? To hammer home once and for all that Pa Kent didn’t want Superman to reveal himself. WE GOT IT! Over and over and over again, we got it. And where does this come back in the movie? IT DOESN’T. Like I said, Superman’s decision to reveal himself is made painfully easy by Zod’s ultimatum. In the end, there is no meaningful decision that Superman is forced to make. I would even say you could pin tens of thousands of innocent deaths on stupid Pa Kent and stupid Superman for not deciding to reveal himself earlier, but who even cares?
The only reason for all of this was because the story called for earth to find out about Superman at the same time that Zod did, so that we could have this whole “Should we trust each other” thing going on. I’ve already pointed out how stupid that whole subplot was. We would have trusted the one guy who was living among us for 30 years and never hurt us over the guys who came out of nowhere and threatened to destroy our whole planet. We just would have.
Chapter 3 – Hobo Superman
Lots of Superhero movies fall back on the trope of having the hero take off his mask so you can see his emotions. The wonderful thing about Superman is that he doesn’t wear a mask. So there’s really no reason for all the “Plain clothes” Superman stuff. Yeah, yeah – Pa Kent didn’t want him to reveal himself. Again, WE GOT IT. This entire section of the movie dragged on forever and served no real purpose.
Chapter 4 – Kryptonian tailors are psychic!
Superman finds the ship and holographic Jor-El eventually leads him to his costume, which is exactly his size, right down to the right shoe size for the boots. If Superman had been genetically created like the rest of the Kryptonians, their prediction skills might have made sense. Or maybe they were all the same size. But that doesn’t make sense – remember ridiculously tall Krypton guy? And with Earth’s weaker gravity, wouldn’t Superman be much taller than a regular Kryptonian? If you’re wondering how the costume had JorEl’s symbol on it, the comic explains that. It’s Supergirl’s ship, and she’s related to Jor El of course, so her spacesuit would look similar to Jor El’s. But wait - does that make Superman a cross dresser? And where did he find the razor on the ship?
Chapter 5 – If at first you don’t succeed, try one more time.
Superman finally gets his costume and tries to fly for the first time. He crashes once, and then masters it on his second try. Why not cut some of the bully scenes and show us more scenes of him discovering his powers?
Chapter 6 – Jesus Christ, Superman!
The Superman as Jesus thing doesn’t bug me, but it was there. Him floating in the water in the crucifix position and a couple of other shots were noticeable, but whatever. Superman has god like powers. This comparison is unavoidable in a way. But here’s the thing I’ve not seen pointed out anywhere: I got a very strong anti-Semitism vibe in the church scene. Let me break it down. Superman is talking to the pastor, and they show him standing in front of a stained glass picture of Jesus, so the parallel is clear. But what happened to Jesus when he revealed himself to the world? The Jews KILLED HIM! THAT’S what Pa Kent was afraid of, right? That Superman would be betrayed and killed by the people he was trying to save? Don’t reveal yourself like Christ did, or you’ll get killed just like Jesus got killed by those filthy backstabbing Jews. How am I the only one who noticed this?
Part IV – Lois Lane
Chapter 1 – The Protagonist.
Every movie like this requires a Protagonist - A regular person who is put in the middle of all this irregular stuff. It helps ground us in the movie. Our movie’s protagonist is not Superman, who is pretty far from a regular person. It’s Lois Lane. I bet you think I’m going to complain about that, but I’m not. It’s actually a GREAT angle. Here’s the problem – we don’t meet the Protagonist until a third of the way into the movie, and then she disappears for long stretches. Plus, she is completely out of her element and is told to just hide most of the time. Yes folks, Lois Lane = little Anakin Skywalker.
Chapter 2 – Perry White is the worst editor in history
Let’s track the sequence of events. Lois and Superman end up finding the crashed ship at the same time. Lois now has irrefutable evidence of an alien among us, and asks Perry to run the story and let her go track him down. Despite all of the evidence, including a giant space ship taking off, Perry refuses to run it. She says she’ll quit if he won’t. He tells her she’s under contract. She leaks the story. He threatens to fire her, and gives her a three week vacation to go track Superman down. Really movie? This is the best use of Perry White we can come up with?
Why didn’t Lois just go track him down? It’s obvious the Daily Planet has a pretty big expense account. They sent her to Antarctica or wherever. Why wouldn’t she just call Perry and say “Perry, found something up here. Need a couple more weeks and a few bucks to track this down.” But no, we need all this conflict between the two of them that really doesn’t go anywhere or pay off. I guess it’s supposed to provide character development for Lois or show that she’s spunky or something. We got that when she told off Merloni. All this does is slow the movie down unnecessarily.
Chapter 3 – Lois Lane is a qualified government interrogator now?
There’s the cute scene where Lois is interviewing Superman and she calls him Superman and the mike shorts out. This was filmed for the trailer, I guess. It served no purpose in the film. Usually the army doesn’t let reporters interview alien prisoners before they even talk to them, but I guess this is a minor thing. Still incredibly stupid, though.
Chapter 4 – What kind of a General doesn’t search his prisoners of war?
Because our protagonist has to be in the middle of all the action, Lois really gets put through the wringer. She is brought aboard Zod’s ship for…no apparent reason. Superman is not searched by Zod, so he pulls the Kryptonian USB drive out of his butt. (There are no pockets or seams in his uniform.) and hands it to Lois. They take her away and don’t search her either, and leave her in a room with a Kryptonian USB port. Why not put her in a cell? And why was she there in the first place again?
Chapter 5 – Now THIS is Pod Racing!
Just like Anakin, Lois accidentally saves the day by sticking the Kryptonian USB drive into the slot and Jor-El pops up. Jor El guides her to a gun, and she goes on a killing spree and then accidentally launches herself into space. I just...come on.
Chapter 6 – All about Eve
While Lois is busy escaping and leaving poor Superman for dead, Zod is pulling the ol’ super villain gag and explaining his whole evil plot to Superman. Sigh. Whatever. Zod actually tries to convince Superman to go along with his plan by telling him….that he killed his father. Well we’ve already established that Zod isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Jor El sabotages the ship and Superman escapes. Before he goes, there’s a touching father son chat. Superman asks dear old dad if it’s true that Kryptonians murder entire civilizations to keep their race going. Jor El smiles and nods in the direction of Lois’ escape pod. He tells Superman “There’s another way our race can continue. You can save her.”
So now the Christianity thing shifts away from Jesus to the story of Adam and Eve? Seriously? Jor El just told Superman to go save Lois, stop Zod from killing all the earthlings, and then mate with Lois, get her pregnant, and start a new race of superbabies. And…then what, exactly? It’s one of the weirdest moments in the movie. Jor-El said - “I’ve only met one earthling, but this one’s got spunk and a cute butt. She’s the perfect specimen to go forth and create a new master race.” WHAT THE HECK, MOVIE?!?!
Part V – Consequences and Repercussions
Chapter I – At least it wasn’t a Death Star
Remember I said I’d get back to the World Engine? When Superman disables it, it crashes into the South Pacific and probably causes a tsunami that likely wipes out all of Southeast Asia and Australia.
Meanwhile, the World Engine had pancaked approximately 1/3 of Metropolis, a city with a population of something like 10 million people. So there’s another 3 million or so.
The writer explained all this as “This is what happens when Superheroes fight.” No. This is what happens when comic book movies feel the need to continually up the stakes and top each other with the amount of explosions and destruction. Avengers destroyed most of New York? Well, we better do that PLUS Asia, or we haven’t done our job. I suppose we should be grateful that Zod didn’t destroy the entire planet, leaving only Adam and Eve to repopulate it. I’m sure the only thing that stopped them from doing that was the upcoming Justice League movie.
Chapter 2 – Go inside, it’s not safe on the street.
This was one of the most unintentionally funny moments of the movie. Superman squares off against Faora and…we’ll call him Non, I guess. None of the other Kryptonians had a name or spoke lines except the evil Nazi Kryptonian scientist. Superman sees there’s going to be a fight, and in one of the few moments of the film where he acknowledges anyone but Lois or his mother, warns them to get inside. Then he proceeds to destroy the entire town, including throwing Non into a gas tanker. Breaking stuff is fun. Ugh.
Chapter 3 – Relationships based on intense experiences never work
So Superman defeats Zod by using his Heat Vision – not on Zod, but on Zod’s penis ship. Meanwhile, Lois sends all the Kryptonians to certain death by starvation by sending them back to the Phantom Zone with no supplies. They meet back up and are pleased to see all the other supporting characters have survived, and just like any good disaster movie, that’s all that really matters, right? So in a scene inspired by Speed, they start making out in the middle of all the destruction.
Here’s the difference – In Speed, this is a quiet moment after the destruction and away from everyone. They think they are alone, and are so caught up in their emotion that they don’t notice everyone else. Perry and Jenny and the other dude are standing right there, and they are literally standing on the likely graveyard of millions of buried bodies. Shouldn’t Superman be using his stupid X-Ray vision to look for survivors? No, let’s make out instead. WHAT THE HECK, MOVIE?!?!
Conclusion
As you might have guessed - I hated this movie. Common sense is disregarded at every point in the movie by every character for the sole purpose of advancing the plot and creating as much destruction as possible. Superman is given an origin story that is light on origin and heavy on boring flashbacks. We never see how he becomes Superman. How he discovers his powers. We are brought into the movie expecting to know all that. The origin is about how he’s taught not to use the powers we are to assume that he has. So when the time comes to use them, he has no experience using them but somehow manages to defeat a giant World Engine thingie and defeat an experienced General with his bare hands. Not one part of it makes the slightest bit of sense.
The entire plot was designed around creating the largest scale destruction in the history of Super Hero movies. No matter what the story is about, the only thing that mattered was topping the Avengers. Personal conflicts were set up and then forgotten. A better director may have found some nuance in all the chaos, but Zack Snyder is only good at one thing – copying what’s on the page and giving it the Michael Bay treatment.