Batman V Superman: Ranking Every Movie From Worst To Best

13. Man Of Steel

Man Of Steel gets a lot wrong, and much of it falls in the lap of Snyder, whose trademark style leaves the movie a dreary, over-the-top mess, but I think its central misunderstanding is taking the baton from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy and desperately trying to be revisionist. Because the Reeve movies remain the definitive take of the character, there's a clear, conscious effort to be as different from that as possible. Much of it has a grounding in the comics (a Kryptonian ship being the Fortress of Solitude), but the ideas are so jumbled, happening only because DC thought they needed to distance themselves from the boy scout image, and thus not fully fleshed out. The school bus scene leaves all of Smallville knowing Clark is Supes, while the death of both Pa Kent and Zod come from contrived set-pieces so convoluted there's easy get outs that avoid death. There is a chance that, as the original progenitor of the emergent DC Extended Universe will become better regarded as time goes by - like Iron Man it'll be lauded for what was achieved afterwards - although with the premature soft-reboot Batman V Superman going even worse, that's unlikely.