7. Colonel Hardy's Good Death Scene Kills Others
The problem with a Superman film is that it can be hard to make the human characters interesting. When your main hero could probably blow up the moon, why even bother with human help? But to Man of Steels credit, it found an erstwhile use for Colonel Nathan Hardy, whose main job up until the final act was to stand in a corner and look vaguely distrustful. Hardy is charged with using Superman's escape pod to bomb Zods ship, thus creating a block hole which conveniently only applies to Kryptonians. Unfortunately, everything starts to go wrong when Lois realises she cant activate the pod and Laora attacks the plane. She proceeds to whup everyone, throwing around Lois and Hamilton before murdering her way to the cockpit to confront Hardy. In the meantime, Hamilton figures out how to activate the pod by rolling it around a bit, simultaneous making Lois a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, no less look like an idiot and saving the day. What Hardy decides to do now is both reckless and stupid he flies the plane into the ship. You might argue that he had no choice, that Faora would have otherwise obliterated him. But if he had enough time to pilot it into the ship, surely he had enough time to get near enough to drop the bomb? If hed have just thought about it, he wouldnt have killed Dr. Harrison who we assume is an important guy due to his top-level military clearance and almost kill Lois, who only survives thanks to Supermans intervention. Obviously, its pretty cool to go out with an awesome final line. But the thing about sacrificing yourself is that it must only be yourself doing the sacrificing or it looks dickish, not heroic. Blowing up the governments foremost science(?) expert is an incredibly awkward epitaph to have, especially when it could have been avoided.