Most people's criticisms of this movie are so shallow. They're usually complaints about it not catering to their pre-established idea of Superman. And, like, who gives a shit? This is a movie, its own medium, its own story. Most of these people also expose their hypocrisy by not applying the same standards to Joker, which couldn't have been further distant from its source material. Man of Steel is a bad movie, but for none of the reasons they say it is. I once saw a video called "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?", and this movie kinda makes me ask the same question of Zack Snyder. He's often hailed as some sort of arthouse filmmaker in the field of blockbuster cinema. But, as an artist, what ideas does he express in his movies? His take on 300 (an already pretty ideologically-shady book) dumbs down any moral complexity that the source material had and doubles down on the black-and-white morality with the added original material. His adaptation of Watchmen puts the most right-wing objectivist character to the forefront and presents him as morally superior to the rest of them. And then there's Man of Steel: a movie about an illegal alien who embraces the American identity and fights his own people, all of whom happen to be evil and commit like fifty 9/11's in an hour. His adoptive father, who is supposed to embody the American spirit, is a man haunted by mistrust and paranoia. He teaches his adopted son to *not* help others in order to fulfill a greater destiny. Throughout the movie there are several chances for Superman to apprehend and disarm the aliens before they could cause any significant harm to the population, but he doesn't do that. Instead the movie gradually concludes with the message: "the only way to deal with evil is through murder". After which Superman willingly agrees to "help" the US army. I can't help but reminisce about Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman, especially seeing as how this movie borrows a lot of visual cues from it. In that comic series the superheroes have dismantled the world governments and created an egalitarian utopia on Earth. Now, I'm not saying Superman should've done that within this movie, but making a deal with the US army sure doesn't seem like a step in this direction. Now let's come back to that question: does Zack Snyder believe in anything? Because, if he does, he sure seems like a libertarian right-winger. In his interviews he rejects the idea, claiming that he's a liberal. Though at one point he expressed the desire to adapt Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, he made it clear that for him this wasn't a political book. Well, what is it then, Zack? If you divorce the book from its core ideas, what will remain? And this is why I've been pondering this question. Zack Snyder doesn't seem like a guy who engages with ideas, which is something an artist should do. I've watched a few of his interviews, and he always talks about style and actions of the characters, but never about ideas, meanings, metaphors, symbolism. And when he attempts to, it sounds almost like he's making it up as he goes along or like he's repeating something he's heard from others without fully understanding what it means. For example, he called his Watchmen a deconstruction (because that's the first word anybody ever says about Watchmen), and Man of Steel a reconstruction. In which way is it a reconstruction when it defies so many of the core concepts of Superman? What is he reconstructing exactly? He never really explains that part. If the right-wing ideas that Man of Steel seems to express so boldly are actually not its ideas, then what ideas does it express? Does it say anything? Does it believe in anything? Zack Snyder is either a right-wing libertarian artist or a liberal basic bro who just has a talent in making things look pretty, and any semblance of complexity or artistry in his movies comes from the scripts (written by other people). If it's the former, then this movie is reprehensible. If the latter, it's another dumb blockbuster akin to the Avengers. Either way, Man of Steel is a movie that looks good, sounds good, has good performances, but has a big black void inside.