Man Of Steel: 5 Ways Zack Snyder (Hopefully) Has Grounded It In Reality

5. Cause And Effect

With very few exceptions, and none that I can think of right now, showing the realistic physical effects of superpowers on the very ordinary world of our experience is just not done. Movies in general favour tend to go for some sort of stylized cause and effect that has very little to do with the physics of our daily lives.

The Man of Steel, as an example, has made something of a career out of catching people in midair. But he often has to move incredibly fast to do so, and simply writing around the pretty spectacular effect a supersonic rock would have on impact with human flesh just isn't good enough. Most of us, even if we didn't take college physics can figure that out. Superman somehow needs to slow down to catch these bodies, or else he'd just be inflicting some serious blunt force trauma, at the very least. How to make that appear cinematic is up to the filmmaker's imagination. This same cause and real world effect has to hold for Superman's other powers. Something human-sized flying at very high speeds, often very close to other things, would have some very real acoustic and aerodynamic effects. Show it to us, and let us hear it. We always need to be aware of the fact that something inhuman is interacting with the world.

Just how responsible is it anyway for Supes to be turning on a broad range X-ray machine when the public are around. You get the point. These may not even be things that have occurred to you yet, but when a movie actually tries to meet your rational mind halfway by offering some sort of explanation, it goes a longer way to creating a more authentic and enjoyable experience.