1. Where's The Hope?
The Problem You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders. Thats a great quote from Russell Crowes Jor-El, on par with Marlon Brandos They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son. When I heard Crowe say that in the trailer, accompanied by Superman saying that the S on his chest means hope, I thought that meant they werent going to forget what Superman is supposed to stand for. But aside from those pieces of dialoguethe hope never comes. And whats really annoying is Snyder showed in several scenes that he is capable of doing it. When Superman learns how to fly, when hes saving people from the oil rig, we see these flashes of wonder and awe. But Snyder never sticks with it.
The Fix This goes back to a classic piece of writing advice: show, dont tell. You cant just say Superman will inspire us and give us an ideal, and then completely fail to deliver on it. You need to show us
why Superman is an ideal to strive towards. Because the only ideal I saw is win by any means necessary, and that is not an ideal that we should strive for. Show us what it is about Superman that makes him the ideal. Christopher Reeve made us believe that a man could fly because he gave us hope. Dont get me wrong here, Man of Steel was highly, highly entertaining. But it was not hopeful, it did not leave me with the sense of wonder that a good Superman story should leave me with.