BvS David S. Goyer IS the Script Writer!

[The Guard]

1: The death was literally tacked on. In the original version they had Zod get sucked back into the Phantom Zone with everyone else, but then they rewrote it late in the game to have him not get sucked in and have an additional fight scene with Zod dying at the end.

Right, it was added in later drafts, but there comes a point when you would expect that people who wish to discuss a film and critique it would be able to separate the creative process and constituent elements of a script from the actual creative result, and not confuse the issues.

To me, it's the fact that people say "This feels tacked on", as if they are unaware that dealing with the villain is kind of an integral portion of storytelling and film, or implying that the sequence itself is shoved into the rest of the movie, when in fact it occupies its own space. I also don't think some here understand story structure as well as they thnk they do, and I don't think people used the phrase "tacked on" right in this instance anyway.

2: The film already built up to a climax with the Phantom Zone criminals getting sucked into the Phantom Zone. Then, after the natural climax of the film, we had yet another fight scene ending in the death of the main villain that wasn't demanded by the plot and didn't further any themes. How is that not tacked on? In "every other action movie ever made" the death of the main villain usually comes in the climax of the story, that's the difference.

Yes, the climax has happened. The battle between Superman and Zod and the result of it can be considered falling action, where the issues between the protagonist and the antagonist are resolved, in this case, one on one. This is a valid structural choice to make in storytelling.

It's not "tacked on" because A, it's not actually done at the very end of the movie, and the overall plot and theme of Zod's mission, involving Zod's threat to the people of Earth, is actually not resolved yet. It's not just thrown in there anymore than any scene reworking is just tossed into the script with no thought as to how that affects the flow of everything. It's also an entire sequence devoted to resolving the hero VS villain conflict, with an emotional and story flow.

I don't understand your argument. Why does the fact that it's been done before make it okay to do?

I don't think it's so much about "It automatically makes it ok or the best choice", but "Yes, yes he has" IS a valid response to comments like "Superman doesn't kill". Too many people are confusing "Superman doesn't kill" and "Superman shouldn't kill".

 

[The Question]

Right, it was added in later drafts, but there comes a point when you would expect that people who wish to discuss a film and critique it would be able to separate the creative process and constituent elements of a script from the actual creative result, and not confuse the issues.

Why should the creative process and the result be separated? The creative process is what made the result happen in the first place. They're directly related.

To me, it's the fact that people say "This feels tacked on", as if they are unaware that dealing with the villain is kind of an integral portion of storytelling and film, or implying that the sequence itself is shoved into the rest of the movie, when in fact it occupies its own space. I also don't think some here understand story structure as well as they thnk they do, and I don't think people used the phrase "tacked on" right in this instance anyway.

Simply having Zod get sucked into the Phantom Zone with the rest of the Kryptonians would have been dealing with the villain without creating such an uneven climax for the film.

And the fact that the scene "occupies it's own space" is the problem. It doesn't feel connected to the rest of the movie.

People accuse the fight with Zod and Zod's death of being "tacked on" because that entire sequence feels like an afterthought.

Yes, the climax has happened. The battle between Superman and Zod and the result of it can be considered falling action, where the issues between the protagonist and the antagonist are resolved, in this case, one on one. This is a valid structural choice to make in storytelling.

I disagree. It's not a falling action, it's a second climax. And, like, I have nothing against that in theory. I'm not super beholden to a tradition three act or five act structure, mixing stuff up is good. But in this case it really doesn't work. It's just tiring and it really reminds the viewer of the artifice. The fight with Zod doesn't feel like a logical conclusion of the plot and themes, it feels like they stuck it in there to have a another huge super powered slugfest and have the hero kill the bad guy with his own hands.

It's not "tacked on" because A, it's not actually done at the very end of the movie, and the overall plot and theme of Zod's mission, involving Zod's threat to the people of Earth, is actually not resolved yet. It's not just thrown in there anymore than any scene reworking is just tossed into the script with no thought as to how that affects the flow of everything. It's also an entire sequence devoted to resolving the hero VS villain conflict, with an emotional and story flow.

It was resolved in the original version when Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone. They changed that resolution just to have this fight scene.

Also, what do you mean when you say that the sequence has "an emotional and story flow?" That sounds very vague to me.

I don't think it's so much about "It automatically makes it ok or the best choice", but "Yes, yes he has" IS a valid response to comments like "Superman doesn't kill". Too many people are confusing "Superman doesn't kill" and "Superman shouldn't kill".

That sounds like a semantic quibble to me. When people say "Superman doesn't kill" what they mean is "Superman making a point of never consciously killing someone is a defining aspect of his character," and the fact that it's been written otherwise before isn't necessarily relevant because it can be said that those instances were character betrayals as well, and if they weren't then it can also be argued that they were handled better than it was handled in Man of Steel (which is what I think).

 

[The Guard]

Why should the creative process and the result be separated? The creative process is what made the result happen in the first place. They're directly related.

Because when you're talking about how it "feels", you tend to be talking about how it works within the film, not what you yourself know about the behind the scenes writing of the movie.

Though they're directly related, they are not the same thing.

And the fact that the scene "occupies it's own space" is the problem. It doesn't feel connected to the rest of the movie.

How is the story about the conflict between Superman and Zod shown in the "second climax", in a film which has, since the rising action began, largely focused on the conflict between Superman and Zod, somehow not connected to the rest of the movie?

I disagree. It's not a falling action, it's a second climax.

It's falling action. By definition:

the part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the conflict has been resolved.

During the falling action, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist. The falling action may contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.

If, as you pointed out, the part of the film with the World Engine and Superman stopping it and the Kryptonians being dealt with is the climax, then by definition, Superman and Zod's final encounter is falling action. Right down to the part of the relevance of the protagonist VS antagonist.

And, like, I have nothing against that in theory. I'm not super beholden to a tradition three act or five act structure, mixing stuff up is good. But in this case it really doesn't work. It's just tiring and it really reminds the viewer of the artifice.

It wasn't tiring to plenty of people who saw it. You find it tiring, and it reminds you of the arfiticial nature of film. Fair enough.

Myself, I'm an intelligent human being. I know what I'm watching. I'm watching actors and countless others presenting something that has been fabricated as realistically as possible. I don't "forget" I'm watching a movie, nor, when I reached that point, did I expect the filmmakers to make me do so. That's half the enjoyment factor of art for me, is seeing how it all came together and fits together, and so forth.

The fight with Zod doesn't feel like a logical conclusion of the plot and themes, it feels like they stuck it in there to have a another huge super powered slugfest and have the hero kill the bad guy with his own hands.

And you can say this all you want, but since a key portion of the plot and the film's overarching themes involves the difference in their ideologies and uses of power, yes, yes it does feel like a logical conclusion of them.

It was resolved in the original version when Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone. They changed that resolution just to have this fight scene.

I think its a bit naiive to think that there wasn't a fight scene between Superman and Zod in earlier versions of the script. Odds are the fight scene was simply rearranged from being in and part of the sequence with the World Engine, to being at the end of the current incarnation of the movie.

Second, you cannot take into account "What might have been" when directly assessing what is actually there in the final product.

Also, what do you mean when you say that the sequence has "an emotional and story flow?" That sounds very vague to me.

I mean that there are emotional elements between Superman and Zod that would not have been experienced or resolved if Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone.

That sounds like a semantic quibble to me. When people say "Superman doesn't kill" what they mean is "Superman making a point of never consciously killing someone is a defining aspect of his character," and the fact that it's been written otherwise before isn't necessarily relevant because it can be said that those instances were character betrayals as well, and if they weren't then it can also be argued that they were handled better than it was handled in Man of Steel (which is what I think).

Which also is not true. Superman HAS consciously killed, when he has to.

The whole "Well, I didn't like that so it's a character betrayal" is missing the whole point of it happening in the first place.

And semantics boils down to "The meaning of words". When one uses a phrase that appears to be a definitive and focused statement, it tends to be interpreted as such.

There's a lot of this kind of thing around here. It's not the fault of people who use language properly that others do not, and are lazy with their statements. No one who is not familiar with the cyclical arguments about the morality of Superman killing, etc around here would reasonably immediately grasp the larger meaning of statements such as "Superman doesn't kill" that some people have made here.

 

[ЯɘvlveR]

via reddit

 

[slumcat]

Just gotta say here that I am proud of this thread. That a thread about the writer has had more replies than the lead actor's thread is testament to the conversation going on here where the intricacies of the movie were truly being discussed.

This thread (and its continuations) is now going to be a fixture on this board and this is a great thing.

Great job all!

 

[BH/HHH]

via reddit

love it.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

And one for the MODS. :P

 

[ЯɘvlveR]

 

[DA_Champion]

I tend to agree. Fans will be fans after all, fortunately we're here to get to the root of the matter.

You go on to make one hell of an appeal to authority. Mark Waid in this case. The man has his opinions, others, his peers even, have theirs. I assume I need not appeal to the authority of Goyer/Nolan/Snyder whom are also "more knowledgeable than myself" on these matters or more to the point, Lee/Johns/Didio(creative officers on the source material) whom all of them have endorsed this film enthusiastically. I won't, seeing as how little good such an appeal will add to the conversation given how fickle all these people have proven to be and or their standing ties with time warner(Waid included).
Appealing to authority is a can of worms and because of that it's a fallacy that is avoided when possible.

Then there is the matter of Waid's much celebrated Kingdom come story arc. He should dedicate a few pages of his own blog to that book.

OK Marvin, you know what, DON'T carefully read what Mark Waid has to say, DON'T pause and consider his thoughts carefully, DON'T think of him as an authority who's words on the matter deserve reading, just dismiss him as a fickle man who has a longstanding difficult relationship with Warner Brothers who needs to look in the mirror in light of his Kingdom Come book.

 

[DA_Champion]

Because when you're talking about how it "feels", you tend to be talking about how it works within the film, not what you yourself know about the behind the scenes writing of the movie.

Movies are emotional experiences, As such, the way things "feel" matters a lot. Particularly for movies like MoS that lack any rigorous philosophical undertones necessary to make us think.

When the Zod-Superman fight happened, the viewer had just been through:
- Battle of Smallville
- Superman vs the giant metal squid
- Air force versus the Kryptonians
That was already a huge amount of action. The reaction of a huge number of people (look at reviews on youtube, etc) to the Superman-Zod fight was "oh no, not again?" ... it was like a 4th cup of coffee, it over-saturates the blood. A 4th cup of coffee is never as good as a 1st cup of coffee, even if it's made from the same beans and the same machine.

It also wasn't as well-integrated into the plot. The battle against the squid worked a little bit because Jor-El had told Clark that only by testing his powers would he ever know how powerful he truly was... and then he rose up against the gravity beam and the CGI morphed his face into that of Christopher Reeve and it looked cool. The battle of Metropolis also worked because it followed up on the military warming up to Superman in the Battle of Smallville.

In contrast, Superman vs Zod both felt tacked on and was tacked on.

How is the story about the conflict between Superman and Zod shown in the "second climax", in a film which has, since the rising action began, largely focused on the conflict between Superman and Zod, somehow not connected to the rest of the movie?

Superman vs Zod was not the primary tension of the film. The primary tension was arguably Clark trying to find his place in the world, and the Kryptonians (with Zod as a weak figurehead leader) was just a manifestation of this, a foil to humanity.

It's falling action. By definition:

the part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the conflict has been resolved.

During the falling action, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist. The falling action may contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.

Except it felt like it had the loudest sound effects, loudest music, and the most physical devastation. As such it felt like it wanted to be the primary climax.

Contrast this to the Batman-TwoFace fight in TDK which occurred after the climax involving Batman and the Joker on the roof of that office tower. That felt like falling action and further resolution. It was also related to the previous high. Both the Batman-Joker fight and the Batman-TwoFace fight concerned the soul of Gotham, albeit on different scales. Both those struggles were well-integrated into the plot.

There's a lot of this kind of thing around here. It's not the fault of people who use language properly that others do not, and are lazy with their statements. No one who is not familiar with the cyclical arguments about the morality of Superman killing, etc around here would reasonably immediately grasp the larger meaning of statements such as "Superman doesn't kill" that some people have made here.

It's not that Superman doesn't kill, it's that Superman is broadly perceived as not killing, as such having him kill in the movie creates a cheap and undeserved shock.

If you want the shock of Superman killing, make the movie lead up to it, don't tack it on to a script that has the movie lead to other things.

*****************

There are other problems with the Superman-killing-Zod sequence aside from Superman killing Zod:

• It included the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude, which removes it from the continuity;
• It included the terrible visual of Superman frying all those innocent babies in the Genesis chamber with his heat vision, as he destroyed the ship;
• It included the terrible dialogue of "Krypton had its chance," "This ends one way, you die or I die," and "You're a monster Zod, and I'm going to stop you";
• It must have killed tens of thousands of people;
• It led to the plot hole of Lois finding Clark the instant he killed Zod, which pulled a lot of people out of the film;

 

[Mjölnir]

I was making the point about the elements that make Zod a "threatening villain". Things such as his doomsday powers and weapons and capacity for destruction..etc. If you want to talk about earth not being the protagonist that's fine, I'm talking about how threatening a villain is. If a villain could destroy the planet by blinking his eyes and he was mad at wolverine, I'd be saying the same thing, "Threatening villain".
It matters little if earth is the protagonist or not.
I care plenty about character arcs, not sure when we moved on to that subject..

I was talking about Sauron being a threatening villain comparable to Zod(given all his failures) at the outset. Then you said Sauron wasn't the main villain in lotr and we started talking about how to interpret characterization for a while, then you said Sauron was comparable to the Emperor in esb. I said nope, and moved on.
That's all.

My point about the wizard vs wizard battle was that the winner won by stealing the other wizards staff and only then gaining the much needed upper hand. Walking away from that fight it's not clear that Saruman is the more powerful wizard, but rather the wizard crafty enough to steal the other wizards staff first?
This isn't all that far removed from the Queen Bavmorda vs Fin Resell situation. No clear supremacy, only circumstance and quickness to the punch.
At the end of the day, Zod beat Jor El, he did it by way of circumstance and underhanded action. If you are arguing that in order for Zod to be seen as an effectively threatening villain, he needs to win his fights with clear dominance. Same could be said about Saruman.

I've always argued that the script doesn't build Zod up well, which means that I don't think his arc is good. The threat he poses isn't really tied to him at all, any of that crew could likely have done that (as Zod doesn't seem to operate any equipment himself, he gives the orders). I've agreed that he posed a threat to Earth (otherwise there'd be no conflict at all) so that's why the issue is with his arc.

You said no and used an argument that wasn't relevant. What I said was that saying that Sauron is the active villain is like saying that Palpatine is the active villain in ESB. Both of them do nothing but send their henchmen against the protagonists. They only differ from each other in the final parts of their respective trilogies, as Palpatine actually becomes an active villain in the end when he gets "hands on" with Luke.

That would depend on interpretation of that I guess. If you think that anyone could have done that at any time and he just figured it out first, then you can say that. It's not my interpretation but the movie doesn't expand upon it. A clearer test of magical power with no "tricks" is when the fellowship tries to cross Caradhras and Gandalf can not break Saruman's spell. The end result is that Gandalf says that Saruman is the most powerful of their order and that Saruman beats Gandalf twice. Consistent writing where the characters are shown to be what we are told they are and the plot relies on those facts.

 

[The Question]

Movies are emotional experiences, As such, the way things "feel" matters a lot. Particularly for movies like MoS that lack any rigorous philosophical undertones necessary to make us think.

When the Zod-Superman fight happened, the viewer had just been through:
- Battle of Smallville
- Superman vs the giant metal squid
- Air force versus the Kryptonians
That was already a huge amount of action. The reaction of a huge number of people (look at reviews on youtube, etc) to the Superman-Zod fight was "oh no, not again?" ... it was like a 4th cup of coffee, it over-saturates the blood. A 4th cup of coffee is never as good as a 1st cup of coffee, even if it's made from the same beans and the same machine.

It also wasn't as well-integrated into the plot. The battle against the squid worked a little bit because Jor-El had told Clark that only by testing his powers would he ever know how powerful he truly was... and then he rose up against the gravity beam and the CGI morphed his face into that of Christopher Reeve and it looked cool. The battle of Metropolis also worked because it followed up on the military warming up to Superman in the Battle of Smallville.

In contrast, Superman vs Zod both felt tacked on and was tacked on.


Superman vs Zod was not the primary tension of the film. The primary tension was arguably Clark trying to find his place in the world, and the Kryptonians (with Zod as a weak figurehead leader) was just a manifestation of this, a foil to humanity.


Except it felt like it had the loudest sound effects, loudest music, and the most physical devastation. As such it felt like it wanted to be the primary climax.

Contrast this to the Batman-TwoFace fight in TDK which occurred after the climax involving Batman and the Joker on the roof of that office tower. That felt like falling action and further resolution. It was also related to the previous high. Both the Batman-Joker fight and the Batman-TwoFace fight concerned the soul of Gotham, albeit on different scales. Both those struggles were well-integrated into the plot.


It's not that Superman doesn't kill, it's that Superman is broadly perceived as not killing, as such having him kill in the movie creates a cheap and undeserved shock.

If you want the shock of Superman killing, make the movie lead up to it, don't tack it on to a script that has the movie lead to other things.

*****************

There are other problems with the Superman-killing-Zod sequence aside from Superman killing Zod:

• It included the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude, which removes it from the continuity;
• It included the terrible visual of Superman frying all those innocent babies in the Genesis chamber with his heat vision, as he destroyed the ship;
• It included the terrible dialogue of "Krypton had its chance," "This ends one way, you die or I die," and "You're a monster Zod, and I'm going to stop you";
• It must have killed tens of thousands of people;
• It led to the plot hole of Lois finding Clark the instant he killed Zod, which pulled a lot of people out of the film;

Pretty much what I was going to say, yeah.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

http://forums.comicbookresources.co...bort-the-fetuses-of-the-Kryptonian-race/page3

Most people disagree about the fetuses though. I'll have to rewatch the film.

The whole "Krypton had its chance" moment felt off, but that is a beautiful display of heat vision :/

 

[Mjölnir]

It's falling action. By definition:

the part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the conflict has been resolved.

During the falling action, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist. The falling action may contain a moment of final suspense, during which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.

If, as you pointed out, the part of the film with the World Engine and Superman stopping it and the Kryptonians being dealt with is the climax, then by definition, Superman and Zod's final encounter is falling action. Right down to the part of the relevance of the protagonist VS antagonist.

That's not in line with what I've learned about falling action. As I've been told it's when things start to slow down after all the action and things are resolved. In MoS the falling action would begin in the scene where Zod is killed. The actual fight is very action heavy and therefor a climax fight. It just feels like less of a climax since they can't top, or equal, the previous carnage.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

I personally thought that the Smallville fight should have been the final fight, or the final one should have been REALLY short.

 

[PacificBoy]

http://forums.comicbookresources.co...bort-the-fetuses-of-the-Kryptonian-race/page3

Most people disagree about the fetuses though. I'll have to rewatch the film.

The whole "Krypton had its chance" moment felt off, but that is a beautiful display of heat vision :/

This scene and Superman casually dodging the tanker made the whole final action set piece feel tacked on to me.

Sure, I feel his pain from his primal scream when he kills the last living Kryptonian, but in the same breath, I don't get how there's little to no response elicited and emoted from the hugest of decisions to destroy the genesis chamber, to wipe out his own kind to save his adopted home planet. Is he in shock? Is the kissing and flirty exchange with Lois soon after a cathartic experience? Just made me go hmmm.

Killing Zod is a powerful emotional climax, but it came out of the blue almost: Superman didn't look worse for wear during the entire fight, Zod didn't actively go after humans except in the train station; there wasn't any preceding emotional weight to the sequence leading up to it

 

[DA_Champion]

I personally thought that the Smallville fight should have been the final fight, or the final one should have been REALLY short.

It's a bit frustrating because the Smallville fight is... perfect in my opinion. I give it a 9.5/10 or a 10/10. It's well-motivated, as:
- Clark emerges to the world in his hometown where he had been hiding;
- He does make a solid effort to protect people.
- The action looks really, really cool.
- He can defeat the Kryptonians in a manner that makes sense and isn't just raw overpowering: he knows how to use his powers, he is used to them, in fact one of the final blows is from heat vision, another one is when a missile destroys Faora's mask and she gets confused;
- There is dialogue in between the action scenes, decent and well-motivated dialogue such as "this man is not our enemy" and "evolution always wins", this dialogue is also pertinent to the plot, it's not just smashing into buildings repetitively. "This man is not our enemy" shows Superman's gradual rise to some degree of acceptance within the military. "Evolution always wins" shows Faora's ddelusions, and actually highlites the problems with the Kryptonians, and they do not evolve;
- Good character moments throughout;

So the movie was doing decently at that point. Unfortunately, none of the following action scenes held to that standard, and Superman vs Zod was idiotic in the extreme.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

^ Smallville works because it combines character, atmosphere AND action. Metropolis is just buildings being smashed around until Superman is forced to kill Zod.

 

[The Question]

Honestly, there's a whole host of reasons why it would have made more sense to cut out the Metropolis fight. At this point in the story, Metropolis is just another city to Superman. Smallville is the place that means something to him. Cut out Metropolis, push the Smallville fight to the end, and use that extra space for more character development and for strengthening the audience's sense of connection to Smallville through clark. Use that time to help us get to know the characters (maybe throw in some kind of mention of Clark having studied or at least garnered some kind of skill in journalism to justify him getting a job at the Planet) and get to know why we should love the town of Smallville, Kansas. I'd even cut out the world engine stuff entirely and just have it be Superman fighting the Kryptonians for the sake of the people of Smallville, ultimately defeating them by using his ship to send them back to the Phantom Zone. Then end on Clark moving to Metropolis for the first time, and in an ideal world we save the getting to know Metropolis part for the Batman-less Man of Steel sequel and have Batman/Superman be another film in addition to that.

 

[Mjölnir]

It's a bit frustrating because the Smallville fight is... perfect in my opinion. I give it a 9.5/10 or a 10/10. It's well-motivated, as:
- Clark emerges to the world in his hometown where he had been hiding;
- He does make a solid effort to protect people.
- The action looks really, really cool.
- He can defeat the Kryptonians in a manner that makes sense and isn't just raw overpowering: he knows how to use his powers, he is used to them, in fact one of the final blows is from heat vision, another one is when a missile destroys Faora's mask and she gets confused;
- There is dialogue in between the action scenes, decent and well-motivated dialogue such as "this man is not our enemy" and "evolution always wins", this dialogue is also pertinent to the plot, it's not just smashing into buildings repetitively. "This man is not our enemy" shows Superman's gradual rise to some degree of acceptance within the military. "Evolution always wins" shows Faora's ddelusions, and actually highlites the problems with the Kryptonians, and they do not evolve;
- Good character moments throughout;

So the movie was doing decently at that point. Unfortunately, none of the following action scenes held to that standard, and Superman vs Zod was idiotic in the extreme.

I agree with a lot but the bolded part gets a bit odd since the fight takes place in Smallville because Superman for some reason decided to take the fight to the most populated place in the vicinity of the farm. That felt out of character to me.

 

[The Question]

The fact that he intentionally forces Zod through a grain silo, completely destroying it in the process, is pretty damn messed up. I know he's mad but jeez. And the train thing was ****ed up too.

 

[DA_Champion]

Honestly, there's a whole host of reasons why it would have made more sense to cut out the Metropolis fight. At this point in the story, Metropolis is just another city to Superman. Smallville is the place that means something to him. Cut out Metropolis, push the Smallville fight to the end, and use that extra space for more character development and for strengthening the audience's sense of connection to Smallville through clark. Use that time to help us get to know the characters (maybe throw in some kind of mention of Clark having studied or at least garnered some kind of skill in journalism to justify him getting a job at the Planet) and get to know why we should love the town of Smallville, Kansas. I'd even cut out the world engine stuff entirely and just have it be Superman fighting the Kryptonians for the sake of the people of Smallville, ultimately defeating them by using his ship to send them back to the Phantom Zone. Then end on Clark moving to Metropolis for the first time, and in an ideal world we save the getting to know Metropolis part for the Batman-less Man of Steel sequel and have Batman/Superman be another film in addition to that.

Oh man, I hadn't even realised that the city of Metropolis is actually meaningless at that point in the story and that we only care about Metropolis because it's relevant to us from other Superman stories ...

 

[The Question]

That I think is the strongest point of comparison/contrast between Man of Steel and the Dark Knight movies. In Nolan's Batman series, he really got you to care about Gotham. Gotham was a character in the films in it's own right. The thing I heard people talk about the most with The Dark Knight after Heath Ledger as The Joker was how amazing the city looked in the movie.

This they very much did not do in Man of Steel. I don't know Metropolis from Baltimore in this movie.

 

[TheFlamingCoco]

Honestly, there's a whole host of reasons why it would have made more sense to cut out the Metropolis fight. At this point in the story, Metropolis is just another city to Superman. Smallville is the place that means something to him. Cut out Metropolis, push the Smallville fight to the end, and use that extra space for more character development and for strengthening the audience's sense of connection to Smallville through clark. Use that time to help us get to know the characters (maybe throw in some kind of mention of Clark having studied or at least garnered some kind of skill in journalism to justify him getting a job at the Planet) and get to know why we should love the town of Smallville, Kansas. I'd even cut out the world engine stuff entirely and just have it be Superman fighting the Kryptonians for the sake of the people of Smallville, ultimately defeating them by using his ship to send them back to the Phantom Zone. Then end on Clark moving to Metropolis for the first time, and in an ideal world we save the getting to know Metropolis part for the Batman-less Man of Steel sequel and have Batman/Superman be another film in addition to that.

This is how I would have structured it. Smallville fight mostly the same, minus the tentacles and some of the mayhem on Supes' part. I would have also cut out nam-Ek. Superman destroys the world engine, which causes Zod to go to Metropolis. They face off, but Zod escapes, finds Lois and goes to the black zero to commit mass suicide. Superman rescues Lois, and the ship blows up.

And the rest can be for character development. The fight can be about a minute or two, the kidnapping, a couple of seconds. The self destruct and rescue of Lois can be about two minutes or so, at most.

And then they can kiss in an appropriate manner.

 

[The Question]

This is how I would have structured it. Smallville fight mostly the same, minus the tentacles and some of the mayhem on Supes' part. I would have also cut out nam-Ek. Superman destroys the world engine, which causes Zod to go to Metropolis. They face off, but Zod escapes, finds Lois and goes to the black zero to commit mass suicide. Superman rescues Lois, and the ship blows up.

And the rest can be for character development. The fight can be about a minute or two, the kidnapping, a couple of seconds. The self destruct and rescue of Lois can be about two minutes or so, at most.

And then they can kiss in an appropriate manner.

I'd have cut out the world engine entirely. There's no need for it. It just elevates the sense of peril in a movie where we already have indestructible super powered aliens invading the earth and overcomplicates the plot. Have the peril be that Zod and crew pose an immediate threat to the lives of the civilians around them and Superman has to stop them.

Also, I wouldn't go the mass suicide rout. I'd just stick with the Phantom Zone thing, just with Zod getting sucked in with the rest of them.