Man Of Steel tried to do many things with Superman: it was an attempt to Nolan-ify Kal-El in the style of The Dark Knight Trilogy; a lead-in to an expansive Cinematic Universe to rival Marvel's (one thing it actually succeeded at); but above all else, it strived to move the character on from the legacy-defining Christopher Reeve movies. So much of the popularly-accepted status quo for the character comes from that series of movies, especially Richard Donner's landmark original, and so Zack Snyder went to great efforts to make sure his version was, above all, unique. And boy did he do that; Jonathan Kent and Jor-El now preached opposite lifestyle messages, the Fortress of Solitude shifted from ice castle to spaceship, and Superman himself went from bastion of peace, justice and the American way to a pretty nasty piece of work. Yet, when all was said and done, with Metropolis saved (read: not totally destroyed) and the villain stopped (read: brutally murdered), Clark Kent still goes to work looking exactly like Superman, just with glasses. Why, that's pretty... old fashioned of you, Kal. That's not the half of it. For all Zack Snyder's attempts to distance his new, 21st take on the Last Son of Krypton from the world's oldest boy scout persona, he still managed to take a lot of obscure narrative and character elements from the Christopher Reeve series for both his standalone reboot and Dark Knight versus Batman V Superman.
