2. No Need To Yell
Michael Shannon is a great actor. I still can't believe how he got snubbed for Take Shelter. With that being said, he's less than great in Man of Steel, in fact, he's the guy who yells all the time thinking that yelling makes him villainous, but it doesn't. You know what yelling does? It makes you loud and annoying to listen to. I don't know why Goyer thought it was a good idea to have Zod repeat the line "I will find him" over and over in escalating volume, but it wasn't threatening or scary. It was redundant. Zod appears to go hot and cold; he's calm and collected in one scene and extremely angry in another. He appears to be intelligent, but at the same time indifferent to everything except his purpose. This is good, but lines like "There's only one way this ends, Kal. Either you die! Or I do" make me question his character. Shannon tries with what he has, but he's not given much to work with. We automatically assume he's the villain when he blows down doors and barges in taking control, but we don't see it or feel it. We don't really feel much for any of the characters especially Zod. Although, you may not want to sympathize with the villain, you want the audience to empathize so that the villain's actions have weight and meaning behind them. We want to hate the villain as we hate the worst part of ourselves. But the only thing we really end up hating is the yelling. It's one note, it's silly, and it's got to go, which leads to the real issue at hand...