I saw Man of Steel (SPOILERS!)

[IamLEAM1983]

It's good. Probably the best Supes flick in terms of how his battles and general scrapes are rendered, but the pacing could have used some work, I think. Some characters are underused not because the actor's not properly directed, but because they're not properly put together. Russell Crowe's Jor-El is barely anything more than a solemn and melancholy presence in the back of the movie, while Diane Lane's Martha Kent feels a little too permissive of her son's fairly quick accession to superhumanhood.

The movie tries to follow the same arc as Batman Begins, but I don't think it really paces itself well. Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) goes from a scraggly and confused migrant worker to a self-assured, quiet and borderline angelic figure who's seemingly at peace with himself as soon as he rediscovers the crest of House El (the S symbol) and his Fortress of Solitude.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no problems with how Lois Lane (Amy Adams) deduces that Supes is her high school buddy, seeing as he more or less knocks her on the head with one of the canon's biggest classic McGuffins. Yes, we all know Kal-El is Clark and classically, revealing that involves a long ritual by which Lois works with Clark the doofus at the Daily Planet. She eventually puts two and two together, and voilà. Either out of a desire to compress key plot points in a movie that wasn't likely to get a sequel or because David Goyer didn't really believe in playing these old tropes out, Supes just drops Lane at the Kent farm after Zod (Michael Shannon) nearly kills her - having her immediately understand just who exactly she's been following.

I also have no problems with the new motivation found for everything from Krypton's demise to Zod's desire to annihilate Mankind. The short of it is Krypton is part of an empire, and that empire's embraced Eugenics as a means to better its society. The problem is this leads to overpopulation and the critical use of all of Krypton's natural resources. When they start excessively tapping into their homeworld's core, planetary collapse becomes unavoidable.

Zod is a "classic" son of Krypton, in the sense that he was genetically engineered to be a warrior and to protect Krypton's citizens. When his planet falls, he understandably becomes absolutely driven with the goal of restoring it, using a sort of genetic archive that's travelled with Baby Kal-El to Earth. Kal, on the other hand, is the first traditionally born infant on the planet in generations, and his father Jor-El sees that as an omen. He'd rather preserve the memory of Krypton with his son, rather than subdue an alien populace and consent to genocide so his kinsmen can survive. It basically boils down to Principles versus Desperate Measures.

As to why Kal has powers - that's because Krypton had become so polluted that planet-bound kinsmen of his suffered from severe radiation poisoning as well as the naturally inhospitable conditions of the decaying planet. Larger gravitational field + Genetic Engineering = Lighter bones to compensate. Intense sunlight with almost zero barriers against ultraviolet rays + Genetic Engineering? Crystal-like focus lenses that behave like an ordinary human eye on Krypton, but that can focus light into intense energy beams on Earth.

It makes no sense at all, of course - but it also does make sense. Because comics. It's a heck of a lot better to think of Superman as a sort of John Carter analogue than as a guy who's given awesome abilities just because our sun happens to be yellow.

Then there's the big one. The movie's ending. The one moment that has deluded fans raging. The fact is - Superman does kill. He doesn't want to, he hates having to do it, but go over the DC Comics canon and you'll find plenty of examples where Clark bit the bullet and snapped someone's neck. Besides, it's either that or what? Goyer resorting to using the Phantom Zone as a stupid cop-out, because comics?

No. Just - no. I'm actually glad Zod's dead. It makes sense.