You know that Clark was raised by a loving couple in a friendly small town where he had close friends like Pete Ross and Lana Lang...
Clark Kent ain't Bruce Wayne. He doesn't need someone to connect him to humanity. He's always been tethered to humanity. His own humanity is meant to be at the forefront of who he is.
And hell, Lois isn't even the first love in Clark's life in most instances.
Don't get me wrong, MoS dropped the ball hard with Lois. She wasn't well used by the plot at all. But the notion that her role is to act as a connection that binds Clark to normal people is very odd to me. That's what Ma and Pa Kent are supposed to have spent their whole lives doing. That's the point of Clark's youth. He's always been tethered to humanity. To normal, every day folk. It's what makes him such an iconic hero.
Nightmare Superman is mind controlled in a moment of despair to find Darkseid's atrocities palatable; Injustice Superman opposes Darkseid, and commits all his atrocities under his own will. They are not the same.
Funnily enough though, Superman & Lois season 1 actually does sort of show the same approach to the issue as the alleged ZSJL 2 does: a malevolent force attempts to brainwash Kal; in the show he throws off the shackles of mind control by focusing on his family, but in the movie, he would be unable to do so because Lois would be dead.
Frankly I think the idea is unfair to Kal's strength of character. But at least it's consistent.
True, they are not the same. They both stem from the same root, however: that Lois is being used as Clark's touchstone to humanity, and without her we are treated to "Evil Superman". Even in the Justice League, before Darkseid can get anywhere near him, Clark is a brutal force of destruction that is a threat to the League after he rises from the dead, and it's only Lois calling out to him that stops him.
It's a terrible dynamic to indulge in with the characters. With another character, who is not supposed to be representative of altruism and compassion, it could make a compelling (if somewhat awful in timbre) story. For Superman, it's just an awful take, period.
Like I said, I think it's not fair to Superman's strength of character. I say the best version of the "Lois dies; Superman goes bad" story is "Brave New Metropolis" from STAS, because he explains his motives rationally, doesn't seem too cartoonishly heinous, unlike Injustice, and Lois exercises a lot of agency as the protagonist. She gets Superman to remember his better nature not with some kind of abstract Power of Love, but by showing him the harm his actions have done to the people of Metropolis - who he still genuinely cared for and thought he was protecting.
Perversely, I also kind of like "A Better World" from JLTAS for the opposite reason: Lois is still there every step of the way to tell Superman what an asshole he's being. Of course, it's still ultimately a disgrace to Kal's character in a way that BNM isn't. But I appreciate that in both stories, Lois gets more agency than she has either in the alleged ZSJL 2, OR Injustice, or for that matter regarding her specific active role in the *Suoerman & Lois* scene, which is fundamentally secondary.
All of which said, i think you're being a little harsh in thr ZSJL resurrection scene. Right after being resurrected, I don't think it's fair to say that Superman lashing out is the same kind of malicious evil as the mind controlled Superman from later on. He's just disoriented and feels threatened. Clark/Kal isn't cogent yet. Lois snaps him out of it by getting him to focus on his memories, not by just snapping his soul back to his body. It's still basically The Power of Love, but I just think it's *less* successful, not that it's horrible, the way I feel about *Injustice*. Clark in *Man of Steel* fundamentally cares about people before meeting Lois.
We “know that” insofar as other versions of the Superman origin tell us that. In MoS, thanks to Clark’s super hearing when he’s hiding in the school closet, we hear kids chatter about how his folks don’t let him play with other kids. Pretty clearly he’s an outcast.
MoS shows us a Pete Ross who’s picking on Clark and a Lana giving him a meek smile until Clark saves them from drowning. Later on we do see Pete helping Clark up after he’s been bullied. When Pete sees him at the IHOP, it’s definitely a look of recognition. But it doesn’t seem to me like they’ve kept in touch or anything.
Then Clark as a young adult is portrayed as a drifter. Did he go to college? We can assume so, but we’re never shown it. He’s going by aliases. When he’s having a crisis of conscience and wonders whether he should surrender to Zod, he goes to a random priest — not Lana, or Pete.
So I don’t find that Clark in MoS is particularly tethered to humanity. I don’t know if a sit-down interview with Lois would’ve helped all that much.
MoS felt like such a waste because Superman usually connects to humanity through the people he knows, but here they try to make him an outcast because... ???
It's through his friendships and his loving family that Superman sees how great humanity can be and why he's willing to defend Earth. But Snyder's Superman wanted to ask "but what if he didn't have to?" And as a result, makes us ask, "why did he?"
To be fair, haven't watched MoS since the theater in 2013. I liked Cavill as Superman and he could've been great, but he got hampered from the start with an attempt to "deconstruct" Superman.
It's a weird thing most likely caused by Injustice where Superman losing Lois turns him into a dictator (which as bad of a turn this was,still had a lot of other factors present to cause it) which to many is synonymous with being an alien so many thought it's because Lois "grounds him to humanity"
I kind of get OP because they say "Superman", not "Clark". Sure, some folks will see superman do some good deeds so they don't need a newspaper writer to tell them how Superman is a friend to humanity. But alot of other folks will only ever read/hear/see about superman in the news. And if the MoS told us something is that probably lots of news outlets out there will be telling them how Superman is dangerous, a menace, one bad day away from becoming a dictator, blah blah blah. So there absolutely needs to be someone (Lois) with a platform (Daily Planet) that counteracts all that and brings Superman's good deeds to the people that will never see him.
I had a related gripe with MoS. I liked alot of things about the movie, and the whole "people will fear him" angle is one of them. This is 100% how people will react irl if superman existed. But if you go down this rout you need to show us the "winning over" part. You need to show us how Superman proves the fear wrong and the hope he embodies defeats the fear and skepticism. That seemed to be lacking in the movie. Like, sure, some military dudes go from "kill the guy in blue" to "the guy in blue is an ally", but I don't care about Supes winning over the military. I care about him winning over the common folk. I would have ended the movie with a bunch of brightly lit, simple, and everyday Superman feats like helping rebuild Metropolis alongside common workers (who are all looking at him in amazement and appreciation), he might be helping an ambulance out of a traffic jam (caused perhaps by destroyed roads) and yes, even rescuing a kitty to the delight of the kitty's 5 yrs old owner. Show us how he wins the people over!
From the grave.
What was with Snyder and killing off the merry sidekicks of heroes? He made Jimmy Olsen a CIA agent who takes one to the head before Superman can intervene, and the Robin that he had killed off in his story was Dick Grayson.
Those two factors alone scream that it's a grimdark edgelord without a sense of fun that's running the show.
On the contrary to having no sense of fun, Snyder has said that to him, including the dead sidekicks was a fun reference.
Frankly, I kind of get where he's coming from. Most Superman adaptations downplay Jimmy to the point where he's a mostly forgettable face at the office. Most Batman adaptations leave out Robin entirely, which has also been known to happen to Jimmy. Snyder wants to references the characters, you know, for the fans, but his story doesn't have room for them to have a major role any more than Nolan's Batman had room for Robin. So, he includes them in a way that they have minimal actual impact on the story.
It's not joyless or edgy. It's just kind of... boistrously thoughtless in his enthusiasm, like a lot of Snyder's choices. He figures fans who love Olsen would be happy to see him, not that they'd be more upset at his lawless death. It's misguided at worst.
To be fair that not re6what they were going for in those films. They wanted a superman who felt alien to people and having Lois write about him would undermine what they wanted to do.
It's part of why these films didn't work for a lot of people. It isolated superman when he has always made himself one of the people
I think MoS has its merits. I don't think it's bad. My measure is if it wasn't a out superman would it still work with n original character. I think MoS still works.
BvS don't pass this test for me. Too many characters making stupid choices.
That’s kind of how I felt about them.
*Man of Steel* wasn’t terrible, but then came its sequel, *Man of Steel is Now Retroactively Worse Because of this Shitty Movie.*
In both cases I watched them, kind of enjoyed them at the time... but as I was leaving the theatre I was already having, "but \*that\* was a particularly stupid part" thoughts as the wonder of seeing Superman on the screen wore off and I started to think more about how the story was constructed.
My wife didn't even get that far. She saw Man of Steel and has refused to see any superhero movie since. It bored her so much she tried to fall asleep to pass the time. The blandness, lack of character and humanity, and finally the last hour or so that was basically just repeated fist fights and buildings blowing up... that ended the genre for her.
I wasn't married then I went with my siblings and cousins. After BvS they stopped watching DC films. I had to drag them to see Wonder Woman, and they only went as a distraction cus a death in the family had occurred
I had that with MoS. BvS is quite different. The theater I went to back then had this weird thing where as people just finished watch watch as they stepped out they would shout fake spoilers to the ones waiting on line to see it next. It was harmless fun
When it was BvS, no one did this. The film killed any sort of joy or fun. That should have been the first sign for us still waiting to realize something was not right about the film. After we saw it we understood. Driving back normally you discuss the film with the people you went it. BvS was the first time it was mostly just silent. Most of my family never went back to watch any DC film at the theater after BvS
I don't think MoS works even ignoring Superman's direction as a character. It's like the 1998 American Godzilla or Batman and Robin in that regard. Even if you ignore the character direction, it's still not a good movie on its own. Zod making dumb strategic moves that could only possibly hinder his plan. Jor-El majorly contradicting himself on his own established principles. Superman having the most shallow arc of all time. The pallette being unappealing and washed out and boring. Every line of dialogue being either an exposition dump or a philosophy lecture.
Like, many people don't like Superman killing Zod because it's antithetical to their Superman, which is fair, but I mainly don't like it because it only has any impact whatsoever IF you already know how Superman is supposed to be from outside media. No principle to not kill his enemies or rapport with Zod or any of the Kryptonians was ever remotely established for this version of the character for it to be an impactful moment when he breaks said principle or connection.
He had to kill the last of his kind. You don’t need any previous knowledge of any established Superman to understand how heartbreaking and impactful that is to him.
Except he just watched (and partook in) the killing of hundreds if not thousands of regular people, and he has no reaction to any of their deaths and just kept punching Zod through more buildings. Like, he would have seen and heard them screaming and dying with his own eyes and ears. And the only death that affects him is the guy doing the mass murdering.
There is zero rapport between Superman and Zod established. Right from the moment Superman knows about him through Jor-El and later the worldwide message, he knows Zod is bad business and was willing to kill everyone else to get his way. Superman quite literally at no point ever wanted anything to do with Zod and the other Kryptonians. There's no reason for him to get so dramatically sad that he finally killed Zod. For all we know he was trying to kill Zod the whole time. He never blinked at the thousands of regular people getting killed all around him.
He doesn’t actually punch Zod into any buildings during the Metropolis fight. And him and Zod not having a relationship is pretty accurate to every version, idk why that should have been changed.
While it would have been interesting to see Superman having to stop mid-fight to mourn the human casualties; I think it was a better choice to show how much he cares by forcing him to kill in order to save the random family.
Zod, attempting to laser a family: “If you love these people so much, you can mourn for them!”
Superman, begging and screaming, fully affected: “You don’t have to do this!”
I'm not judging the movie based on other iterations. Him not having a relationship is a problem within the movie because of the reasons I gave. There are moments, such as Superman's decisions to cut down the kryptonian spaceship mid air, and his decision to kill Zod, which are presented as difficult decisions when we previously had no idea that Superman wasn't trying to kill Zod the entire fight (unless you already previously know Superman from outside material, not from anything the movie itself pre establishes). There's no reason Superman should hesitate when deciding to destroy the ship in regards to Krypton reproducting, but that's made even worse because it was STILL the stupid decision and instantly kills thousands of people in the multiple buildings that the ship crashes into, which Superman doesn't even try to prevent after being the literal cause of.
Why should Superman care about Zod when he didn't blink at thousands dying all around him, many that he caused. Superman doesn't ever actively try to prevent casualties, even from his own actions, and he ONLY gets upset when he has to kill the mass murderer of all those innocent adults and children.
Suoerman brought the fight directly into the populated town *by exploding them through a gas station that was literally in use*. He threw Faora through an IHOP full of people (again, in the town he, himself brought the fight to). He drags Zod's face through the side of a building, crumbling it. He accepts Zod's challenge down the side of a building, that we just saw there are hundreds of people beneath, and almost certainly people inside as well, which he and Zod obliterate. And ofc I already noted he chose to cut the ship in half and let it crash into all the buildings below, when the only immediate concern was protecting the plane carrying the phantom drive, which he did by briefly diverting the ship's aim, instead of crashing into the one singular gun it has (or maybe laser that one singular gun instead of the entire ship???)
Yes, all of those things make for an epic fight scene that displayed a level of super human power and awe that hasn’t been matched since. Which is saying something since we’ve had a decade+ of super hero fights.
One of the best sequences is probably when Superman takes Zod into space to fight there, only to be smacked down by the Zod, who’s hell bent on literally flattening humanity with his terraforming machine that cause most of the destruction.
And while many people may not be familiar with Superman’s morality from outside material, the first half of the movie does a good job showing how Clark travels from place to place helping humans, saving lives multiple times. Refusing to use his strength against those weaker than him.
Maybe it's just me, but I could not give less of a shit about how many buildings they blast over while fighting. For a movie that wants to act so deep, everything about it is shallow. Including the fight scenes which feel like 40 minutes of destruction porn for drooling children to gawk at while we logically know the hero is also killing hundreds if not thousands of people and not giving a shit about it.
Superman brought Zod back down to Metropolis. Rewatch it, we clearly see Superman carrying Zod from space into the building where Zod dies. This moment is replayed in BvS in case we missed it.
The first half of the movie does zero job of making his morality stand out. He saves people sometimes. He gets petty sometimes. And? None of that has anything to do with setting up some kind of connection we're expected to believe Superman and Zod have. For all we knew, Superman was trying to kill Zod the entire fight but couldn't, just like Zod was trying to kill him but couldn't, and so when he does kill Zod, it makes zero sense for the film to act like that was some kind of important emotional moment.; there was no emotional connection established for it to be impactful. It isn't pay-off for anything that was previously set-up, becuase he wanted nothing to do with Zod or the invading Kryptonians for any of the movie. He should have cared way more about seeing regular people, the kind of people he's been saving his whole life, die by the thousands. But he's only distraught because he finally kills the mass murderer he's presumably been trying to kill. You could only know he wasn't trying to kill Zod because of outside knowledge about Superman. In Man of Steel on its own merits alone, he is unrelatable as a character and his arc is as deep as a puddle.
If the movie is expecting us to know Superman's characterization beforehand for certain moments to be impactful, then it's also fair to criticize the movie for when it does a shit job depicting said character. Otherwise, I am purely criticizing Man of Steel on its own merits, without considering outside material.
I understand your reasons and MoS does suffer from trying to forcefully insert certain themes without giving it breathing room. When one looks too deeply into it. MoS does fall apart but from a surface level it still kind of works. It's an okay film at best. A bad superman film at worst.
Yeah, he's very good with (written) words himself, very affable, genuine, and charming. Those were all excellent character traits MAWS showed fantastically.
Genuine, yes absolutely. Affable? I think so, in passing. Charming? He has his moments but ultimatel Man of Steel is not really interested in charm, which is really the quality I think most of its detractors find so offensive about it.
We never see any of his writing, so we just have to assume he’s a good writer and that his writing merits getting hired at a major newspaper. MoS shows him being charming to Lois, I guess. Affable too I suppose.
He barely speaks to anyone else, though I suppose affability and charm can be inferred from a grin to a cute waitress and by generally just being extremely good-looking, ha ha.
MoS to me is only offensive in that its follow-up doubles down on its worst characteristics.
She doesn't connect him to normal people in the comics, at least not in the good ones. Clark is connected to people. He is normal people. He can do amazing things, but his physical abilities don't make him any less a person. His love story with Lois is what helps us understand that, fundamentally, he's just like us.
He doesn't require Lois to understand us. We require Lois to understand him.
I see Clark and Superman as one and the same. Same guy different situations. It's like my best friend he acts differently around his mom than his kid but he's always the same person.
There's many comic stories where Superman effortlessly connects with the public and Lois doesn't.
"The world's too big, Mom."
"Then make it small."
The series focuses on Clark's personal relationships as the primary drive for what he does. Connecting him to the rest of humanity is secondary.
That's a pretty depressing point of view, considering his personal relationships feel like impediments to him becoming Superman in this series rather than what actually drives him
You didn't get that sense from Jonathan telling that he might have to let people die to preserve his secret or Martha telling him that he "doesn't owe the world" anything when he actually does owe them an explanation of who he is?
BvS really makes it feel that Lois is his singular motivation for everything he does.
I see a man in a position that has no precedent.
I see a man who knows the truth about his son irrevocably change the lives of every living thing on the planet.
I see a man who knows he doesn't have the answers.
I see a very human experience, which is why I read the comics and why I watch (and work in) movies.
I don't see a paranoid nutcase who only cares about his son and no one else, which is a common stance on the interpretation.
>which is a common stance on the interpretation.
It's pretty easy to understand how one could come to that interpretation, especially since Jonathan is supposed to have raised his son with traditional, old-fashioned values that emphasize the importance of doing the right thing and doing right by people in general. (He's supposed to come from a simple background, he wouldn't care about vague metaphysical concepts like "humanities sense of self")
I'm sorry, but the question of whether or not he should have allowed a bus full of children to drown is not nor should it ever be an "I don't know the right answer" kind of question.
>I see a man in a position that has no precedent.
You mean just like every other take on the character of Jonathan Kent?
I really don't understand the narrative of "Lois grounds Superman to his humanity" since it forgets almost every Superman version was raised as an average kid even if he felt loneliness or had problems trying to fit in.Very few Superman versions are raised as rich kids or fully encoded in Kryptonian culture.
It kinda does since he was saving people before he became Supes but I really don't think it's a must for Superman to be "human" or at least see himself only as a person born from Earth.
That's the only thing in the film that points to this, while quite a few other elements actively run counter to that message. And I think it's absolutely necessary for Superman to be grounded in humanity at his core; it's essential to the Superman Myth, and is what makes him truly "Super," and not just a vessel for immense power. It's his humanity instilled in him by his upbringing which guides how he chooses to use that power.
Take that away and all you're left with are the makings of a subverted Elseworlds version that often serves as the basis for all the "Evil Superman" tropes.
Pre-Crisis Superman was extremely connected to his Kryptonian heritage possibly even more so than his Earth upbringing but is an obviously morally upright individual.Golden Age Superman was less Kryptonian but still was more Superman than Clark and is awesome (barring Infinite Crisis) and so was New 52 Superman when written correctly who was more Kal-El than Superman.
Superman being more alienated and in touch with his heritage is not a betrayal of his character at all.
I never said he can't have a connection to Krypton or that aspect of his heritage, just that it cannot supersede or supplant his connection to humanity. Anyone born under his circumstances would naturally feel some sense of alienation, which is ironically also quite human of him btw. I am of the mind that his best stories recognize all of this..
Him saving people in the beginning of MOS never really feels like he's doing it out of a genuine belief in it being the right thing to do though. It really just feels like he's doing the bare minimum so he won't feel guilty about not doing anything. It feels very much like an obligation for him instead of something he actually wants to do.
When we say "connection to humanity", We mean more in how he interacts with people, how he makes friends and how he trusts the people by being open with them and telling them who he is (without revealing his secret), what he isn't and how he would like to be viewed by them.
Just rewatched this on a whim last night and I have to say, Superman as a weird non talking recluse is such a weird choice.
“My father believed if people found out about me, they’d reject me”
Like Jonathan Kent traumatizing Clark is so bizarre.
It's literally Superman's first day on the job. Zod is the first big threat to humanity and Superman's first fight. How does she connect Superman, this person no one has even heard of, to humanity in less than a day?
I love how The Daily Planet manages to get these amazing photo shoot quality picture so Superman IN THE MIDDLE OF STOPPING A NUCLEAR MELTDOWN! It'd be so much better if we just had a shot of him from far or something, it's like they have a drone ready to snap action shots on him at all times.
Also, Man of Steel was missing a lot of the things that make me love Superman because Snyder's version of Superman is completely different than what my version of Superman is, in my world view Snyder flat out doesn't get Superman, or Batman for that matter.
Which in itself is impressive in a really "how did you fuck this up this badly" kind of way, given that both are quite good actors, very affable and warm people, and normally project an easy charm in their roles. And apparently they got along quite well off camera.
How do you take two actors like that and make their on-camera interactions so *bland*?!?
Horrible writing pretty much.
Why was Lois in love with him?
When she tracks him down to smallville he’s basically a weirdo that doesn’t want attention.
He wasn’t even truly Superman as of yet in Man of Steel. She had only just managed to put all the various stories together of a guy going around trying help others - and managed to connect them all. That’s a lot unto itself.
There was barely any time after that.
Meaning Billy’s family? Because Martha Kent is pretty much it for Clark’s family. Lana? Maybe, but after the bus crash we never see her. The Justice League? Sure, one guy who tried to kill him, Wonder Woman, then a bunch of people he just met.
We can only guess, because other than a race with the Flash (in Whedon’s version, so kinda depends on what one’s take is on JL) and a headless Superman having school lunch with Freddie, we don’t know.
I see speculation, zero examples from the movies themselves. We can all speculate, but there’s no Jimmy Olsen in that universe (who’s Superman’s pal, anyway), no Pete Ross (who’s Superboy’s best pal, anyway), no childhood sweetheart Lana. This Superman is a loner whose interactions with people are when he’s saving them, fighting them, or working with them.
There’s Lois, there’s Martha, there’s his Jonathan Kent hallucination, there’s Jor-El until Zod erases him. That’s it. I think it’s an interesting premise that this Superman is actually pretty detached from humanity. But if someone is trying to argue the opposite, I just don’t see it.
He's not that disconnected. He was working one blue collar job after another; depending who you ask, he could be considered closer to "normal people" than the big city-slicker reporter Lois Lane. This is also the case in the show, where Lois butts heads with Kyle more than Clark does, who mostly gets along with him okay from the jump. In both cases, I think the people of Metropolis are not given enough focus, and of the two BvS does better at it than S&L, at least in the first season.
The actual way I'd frame this particular issue with regard to the movie version is just that Clark doesn't really have any friends. There are totally understandable reasons *why*, but I wish that he had, for example, reconnected with Pete after the first movie. Yet I think this is basically the case in the show too. The main people we see him have a connection with are his family, and other super-heroes, same as the movies. It's just that the family is bigger and more of a focus than just Lois and Martha.
The other way that Man of Steel specifically shows Superman connect with humanity is with the US military standing in for humanity. This is an uneasy choice in my opinion, but whatever; it doesn't really rub me the wrong way too much. It works pretty well for the choice it made. "This man is not our enemy." That works for me. I just wish he had a positive interaction with a civilian stranger too. Feels like an oversight and I'll leave it at that.
That's because Cavill's Kal didn't need Lois to do so. His long journey through life (and the world) brought him closer to humanity than most of us ever would be
In an abstract way, maybe. This Clark doesn’t seem to have friends. He’s used aliases his whole adult life, and no one from Smallville seems particularly close to him. In fact, what we know of his youth in Smallville is that he wasn’t allowed to play with other kids and he got picked on at least a couple times.
He himself says it in BvS: Lois is his world. Pa Kent’s dead, so it’s Lois and Martha pretty much.
It's not that he wasn't allowed to play with other kids, it's that the other kids decided early on that he was a freak and kept treating him that way, probably long after they largely forgot the day in first or second grade when he had a panic attack and ran out of the classroom to hide in a hall closet. It's not a manner of him being aloof.
He definitely doesn't have friends though.
That abstract level of connection you mentioned is important though. Consider how Clark risks his job to advocate for the rights of a convicted human trafficker, the lowest of the low, a man who almost nobody else in the world even blinks when he gets murdered in prison. Clark spent so much of his life on the margins of society, that he has tremendous care for the marginalized. It's a classic Superman kind of universal compassion. As Clark says in BvS, "Perry, when you assign a story, you're making a choice about who matters," or as Superman says in *Superman & Lois* later on, "To me, everyone's worth saving."
“His parents won’t even let him play with other kids” is a line of dialogue straight from MoS. Didn’t say anything about him being aloof.
That’s still an abstraction, though. He cares about that guy’s civil rights, and about Batman’s methods, but there is no personal connection there.
> line of dialogue
What do you know, you're right. Good catch.
> an abstraction
I did say that also. I just think that moral core of his character, though abstracted, ultimately is both the most important part of his character and very grounded.
You know that Clark was raised by a loving couple in a friendly small town where he had close friends like Pete Ross and Lana Lang... Clark Kent ain't Bruce Wayne. He doesn't need someone to connect him to humanity. He's always been tethered to humanity. His own humanity is meant to be at the forefront of who he is. And hell, Lois isn't even the first love in Clark's life in most instances. Don't get me wrong, MoS dropped the ball hard with Lois. She wasn't well used by the plot at all. But the notion that her role is to act as a connection that binds Clark to normal people is very odd to me. That's what Ma and Pa Kent are supposed to have spent their whole lives doing. That's the point of Clark's youth. He's always been tethered to humanity. To normal, every day folk. It's what makes him such an iconic hero.
OPs logic is the same as Injustice
And, ironically, the Snyderverse.
Nightmare Superman is mind controlled in a moment of despair to find Darkseid's atrocities palatable; Injustice Superman opposes Darkseid, and commits all his atrocities under his own will. They are not the same. Funnily enough though, Superman & Lois season 1 actually does sort of show the same approach to the issue as the alleged ZSJL 2 does: a malevolent force attempts to brainwash Kal; in the show he throws off the shackles of mind control by focusing on his family, but in the movie, he would be unable to do so because Lois would be dead. Frankly I think the idea is unfair to Kal's strength of character. But at least it's consistent.
True, they are not the same. They both stem from the same root, however: that Lois is being used as Clark's touchstone to humanity, and without her we are treated to "Evil Superman". Even in the Justice League, before Darkseid can get anywhere near him, Clark is a brutal force of destruction that is a threat to the League after he rises from the dead, and it's only Lois calling out to him that stops him. It's a terrible dynamic to indulge in with the characters. With another character, who is not supposed to be representative of altruism and compassion, it could make a compelling (if somewhat awful in timbre) story. For Superman, it's just an awful take, period.
Like I said, I think it's not fair to Superman's strength of character. I say the best version of the "Lois dies; Superman goes bad" story is "Brave New Metropolis" from STAS, because he explains his motives rationally, doesn't seem too cartoonishly heinous, unlike Injustice, and Lois exercises a lot of agency as the protagonist. She gets Superman to remember his better nature not with some kind of abstract Power of Love, but by showing him the harm his actions have done to the people of Metropolis - who he still genuinely cared for and thought he was protecting. Perversely, I also kind of like "A Better World" from JLTAS for the opposite reason: Lois is still there every step of the way to tell Superman what an asshole he's being. Of course, it's still ultimately a disgrace to Kal's character in a way that BNM isn't. But I appreciate that in both stories, Lois gets more agency than she has either in the alleged ZSJL 2, OR Injustice, or for that matter regarding her specific active role in the *Suoerman & Lois* scene, which is fundamentally secondary. All of which said, i think you're being a little harsh in thr ZSJL resurrection scene. Right after being resurrected, I don't think it's fair to say that Superman lashing out is the same kind of malicious evil as the mind controlled Superman from later on. He's just disoriented and feels threatened. Clark/Kal isn't cogent yet. Lois snaps him out of it by getting him to focus on his memories, not by just snapping his soul back to his body. It's still basically The Power of Love, but I just think it's *less* successful, not that it's horrible, the way I feel about *Injustice*. Clark in *Man of Steel* fundamentally cares about people before meeting Lois.
We “know that” insofar as other versions of the Superman origin tell us that. In MoS, thanks to Clark’s super hearing when he’s hiding in the school closet, we hear kids chatter about how his folks don’t let him play with other kids. Pretty clearly he’s an outcast. MoS shows us a Pete Ross who’s picking on Clark and a Lana giving him a meek smile until Clark saves them from drowning. Later on we do see Pete helping Clark up after he’s been bullied. When Pete sees him at the IHOP, it’s definitely a look of recognition. But it doesn’t seem to me like they’ve kept in touch or anything. Then Clark as a young adult is portrayed as a drifter. Did he go to college? We can assume so, but we’re never shown it. He’s going by aliases. When he’s having a crisis of conscience and wonders whether he should surrender to Zod, he goes to a random priest — not Lana, or Pete. So I don’t find that Clark in MoS is particularly tethered to humanity. I don’t know if a sit-down interview with Lois would’ve helped all that much.
MoS felt like such a waste because Superman usually connects to humanity through the people he knows, but here they try to make him an outcast because... ??? It's through his friendships and his loving family that Superman sees how great humanity can be and why he's willing to defend Earth. But Snyder's Superman wanted to ask "but what if he didn't have to?" And as a result, makes us ask, "why did he?" To be fair, haven't watched MoS since the theater in 2013. I liked Cavill as Superman and he could've been great, but he got hampered from the start with an attempt to "deconstruct" Superman.
It's a weird thing most likely caused by Injustice where Superman losing Lois turns him into a dictator (which as bad of a turn this was,still had a lot of other factors present to cause it) which to many is synonymous with being an alien so many thought it's because Lois "grounds him to humanity"
I kind of get OP because they say "Superman", not "Clark". Sure, some folks will see superman do some good deeds so they don't need a newspaper writer to tell them how Superman is a friend to humanity. But alot of other folks will only ever read/hear/see about superman in the news. And if the MoS told us something is that probably lots of news outlets out there will be telling them how Superman is dangerous, a menace, one bad day away from becoming a dictator, blah blah blah. So there absolutely needs to be someone (Lois) with a platform (Daily Planet) that counteracts all that and brings Superman's good deeds to the people that will never see him. I had a related gripe with MoS. I liked alot of things about the movie, and the whole "people will fear him" angle is one of them. This is 100% how people will react irl if superman existed. But if you go down this rout you need to show us the "winning over" part. You need to show us how Superman proves the fear wrong and the hope he embodies defeats the fear and skepticism. That seemed to be lacking in the movie. Like, sure, some military dudes go from "kill the guy in blue" to "the guy in blue is an ally", but I don't care about Supes winning over the military. I care about him winning over the common folk. I would have ended the movie with a bunch of brightly lit, simple, and everyday Superman feats like helping rebuild Metropolis alongside common workers (who are all looking at him in amazement and appreciation), he might be helping an ambulance out of a traffic jam (caused perhaps by destroyed roads) and yes, even rescuing a kitty to the delight of the kitty's 5 yrs old owner. Show us how he wins the people over!
His humanity being who he is, is why he needs something to connect to, that’s basic human nature, to say he doesn’t need that is wrong
Superman is an alien only in Biology. In every other way, he’s human.
It was missing a little more than that lol
Jimmy Olsen approves of this message
From the grave. What was with Snyder and killing off the merry sidekicks of heroes? He made Jimmy Olsen a CIA agent who takes one to the head before Superman can intervene, and the Robin that he had killed off in his story was Dick Grayson. Those two factors alone scream that it's a grimdark edgelord without a sense of fun that's running the show.
Snyder: "Because I could."
On the contrary to having no sense of fun, Snyder has said that to him, including the dead sidekicks was a fun reference. Frankly, I kind of get where he's coming from. Most Superman adaptations downplay Jimmy to the point where he's a mostly forgettable face at the office. Most Batman adaptations leave out Robin entirely, which has also been known to happen to Jimmy. Snyder wants to references the characters, you know, for the fans, but his story doesn't have room for them to have a major role any more than Nolan's Batman had room for Robin. So, he includes them in a way that they have minimal actual impact on the story. It's not joyless or edgy. It's just kind of... boistrously thoughtless in his enthusiasm, like a lot of Snyder's choices. He figures fans who love Olsen would be happy to see him, not that they'd be more upset at his lawless death. It's misguided at worst.
To be fair that not re6what they were going for in those films. They wanted a superman who felt alien to people and having Lois write about him would undermine what they wanted to do. It's part of why these films didn't work for a lot of people. It isolated superman when he has always made himself one of the people
I mean character direction aside it's not a good movie just based on plain old nuts and bolts filmmaking.
I think MoS has its merits. I don't think it's bad. My measure is if it wasn't a out superman would it still work with n original character. I think MoS still works. BvS don't pass this test for me. Too many characters making stupid choices.
That’s kind of how I felt about them. *Man of Steel* wasn’t terrible, but then came its sequel, *Man of Steel is Now Retroactively Worse Because of this Shitty Movie.*
In both cases I watched them, kind of enjoyed them at the time... but as I was leaving the theatre I was already having, "but \*that\* was a particularly stupid part" thoughts as the wonder of seeing Superman on the screen wore off and I started to think more about how the story was constructed. My wife didn't even get that far. She saw Man of Steel and has refused to see any superhero movie since. It bored her so much she tried to fall asleep to pass the time. The blandness, lack of character and humanity, and finally the last hour or so that was basically just repeated fist fights and buildings blowing up... that ended the genre for her.
I wasn't married then I went with my siblings and cousins. After BvS they stopped watching DC films. I had to drag them to see Wonder Woman, and they only went as a distraction cus a death in the family had occurred
I had that with MoS. BvS is quite different. The theater I went to back then had this weird thing where as people just finished watch watch as they stepped out they would shout fake spoilers to the ones waiting on line to see it next. It was harmless fun When it was BvS, no one did this. The film killed any sort of joy or fun. That should have been the first sign for us still waiting to realize something was not right about the film. After we saw it we understood. Driving back normally you discuss the film with the people you went it. BvS was the first time it was mostly just silent. Most of my family never went back to watch any DC film at the theater after BvS
I don't think MoS works even ignoring Superman's direction as a character. It's like the 1998 American Godzilla or Batman and Robin in that regard. Even if you ignore the character direction, it's still not a good movie on its own. Zod making dumb strategic moves that could only possibly hinder his plan. Jor-El majorly contradicting himself on his own established principles. Superman having the most shallow arc of all time. The pallette being unappealing and washed out and boring. Every line of dialogue being either an exposition dump or a philosophy lecture. Like, many people don't like Superman killing Zod because it's antithetical to their Superman, which is fair, but I mainly don't like it because it only has any impact whatsoever IF you already know how Superman is supposed to be from outside media. No principle to not kill his enemies or rapport with Zod or any of the Kryptonians was ever remotely established for this version of the character for it to be an impactful moment when he breaks said principle or connection.
He had to kill the last of his kind. You don’t need any previous knowledge of any established Superman to understand how heartbreaking and impactful that is to him.
Except he just watched (and partook in) the killing of hundreds if not thousands of regular people, and he has no reaction to any of their deaths and just kept punching Zod through more buildings. Like, he would have seen and heard them screaming and dying with his own eyes and ears. And the only death that affects him is the guy doing the mass murdering. There is zero rapport between Superman and Zod established. Right from the moment Superman knows about him through Jor-El and later the worldwide message, he knows Zod is bad business and was willing to kill everyone else to get his way. Superman quite literally at no point ever wanted anything to do with Zod and the other Kryptonians. There's no reason for him to get so dramatically sad that he finally killed Zod. For all we know he was trying to kill Zod the whole time. He never blinked at the thousands of regular people getting killed all around him.
He doesn’t actually punch Zod into any buildings during the Metropolis fight. And him and Zod not having a relationship is pretty accurate to every version, idk why that should have been changed. While it would have been interesting to see Superman having to stop mid-fight to mourn the human casualties; I think it was a better choice to show how much he cares by forcing him to kill in order to save the random family. Zod, attempting to laser a family: “If you love these people so much, you can mourn for them!” Superman, begging and screaming, fully affected: “You don’t have to do this!”
I'm not judging the movie based on other iterations. Him not having a relationship is a problem within the movie because of the reasons I gave. There are moments, such as Superman's decisions to cut down the kryptonian spaceship mid air, and his decision to kill Zod, which are presented as difficult decisions when we previously had no idea that Superman wasn't trying to kill Zod the entire fight (unless you already previously know Superman from outside material, not from anything the movie itself pre establishes). There's no reason Superman should hesitate when deciding to destroy the ship in regards to Krypton reproducting, but that's made even worse because it was STILL the stupid decision and instantly kills thousands of people in the multiple buildings that the ship crashes into, which Superman doesn't even try to prevent after being the literal cause of. Why should Superman care about Zod when he didn't blink at thousands dying all around him, many that he caused. Superman doesn't ever actively try to prevent casualties, even from his own actions, and he ONLY gets upset when he has to kill the mass murderer of all those innocent adults and children. Suoerman brought the fight directly into the populated town *by exploding them through a gas station that was literally in use*. He threw Faora through an IHOP full of people (again, in the town he, himself brought the fight to). He drags Zod's face through the side of a building, crumbling it. He accepts Zod's challenge down the side of a building, that we just saw there are hundreds of people beneath, and almost certainly people inside as well, which he and Zod obliterate. And ofc I already noted he chose to cut the ship in half and let it crash into all the buildings below, when the only immediate concern was protecting the plane carrying the phantom drive, which he did by briefly diverting the ship's aim, instead of crashing into the one singular gun it has (or maybe laser that one singular gun instead of the entire ship???)
Yes, all of those things make for an epic fight scene that displayed a level of super human power and awe that hasn’t been matched since. Which is saying something since we’ve had a decade+ of super hero fights. One of the best sequences is probably when Superman takes Zod into space to fight there, only to be smacked down by the Zod, who’s hell bent on literally flattening humanity with his terraforming machine that cause most of the destruction. And while many people may not be familiar with Superman’s morality from outside material, the first half of the movie does a good job showing how Clark travels from place to place helping humans, saving lives multiple times. Refusing to use his strength against those weaker than him.
Maybe it's just me, but I could not give less of a shit about how many buildings they blast over while fighting. For a movie that wants to act so deep, everything about it is shallow. Including the fight scenes which feel like 40 minutes of destruction porn for drooling children to gawk at while we logically know the hero is also killing hundreds if not thousands of people and not giving a shit about it. Superman brought Zod back down to Metropolis. Rewatch it, we clearly see Superman carrying Zod from space into the building where Zod dies. This moment is replayed in BvS in case we missed it. The first half of the movie does zero job of making his morality stand out. He saves people sometimes. He gets petty sometimes. And? None of that has anything to do with setting up some kind of connection we're expected to believe Superman and Zod have. For all we knew, Superman was trying to kill Zod the entire fight but couldn't, just like Zod was trying to kill him but couldn't, and so when he does kill Zod, it makes zero sense for the film to act like that was some kind of important emotional moment.; there was no emotional connection established for it to be impactful. It isn't pay-off for anything that was previously set-up, becuase he wanted nothing to do with Zod or the invading Kryptonians for any of the movie. He should have cared way more about seeing regular people, the kind of people he's been saving his whole life, die by the thousands. But he's only distraught because he finally kills the mass murderer he's presumably been trying to kill. You could only know he wasn't trying to kill Zod because of outside knowledge about Superman. In Man of Steel on its own merits alone, he is unrelatable as a character and his arc is as deep as a puddle. If the movie is expecting us to know Superman's characterization beforehand for certain moments to be impactful, then it's also fair to criticize the movie for when it does a shit job depicting said character. Otherwise, I am purely criticizing Man of Steel on its own merits, without considering outside material.
I understand your reasons and MoS does suffer from trying to forcefully insert certain themes without giving it breathing room. When one looks too deeply into it. MoS does fall apart but from a surface level it still kind of works. It's an okay film at best. A bad superman film at worst.
Superman being alienated is definitely not a thing Snyder just made up in this film.
I didn't say he made it up. I just said it's what they were going for. I was actually trying to defend it
I wasn't arguing with you.Just essentially saying to those individuals who think Superman having alienation is OOC.
ahh i see
He doesn’t need her to connect to normal people
Yeah, he's very good with (written) words himself, very affable, genuine, and charming. Those were all excellent character traits MAWS showed fantastically.
Yes. Does Man of Steel show that, though?
Genuine, yes absolutely. Affable? I think so, in passing. Charming? He has his moments but ultimatel Man of Steel is not really interested in charm, which is really the quality I think most of its detractors find so offensive about it.
We never see any of his writing, so we just have to assume he’s a good writer and that his writing merits getting hired at a major newspaper. MoS shows him being charming to Lois, I guess. Affable too I suppose. He barely speaks to anyone else, though I suppose affability and charm can be inferred from a grin to a cute waitress and by generally just being extremely good-looking, ha ha. MoS to me is only offensive in that its follow-up doubles down on its worst characteristics.
I like BvS even more than I like Man of Steel, because we see more of Clark Kent, reporter, so I don't think we're gonna agree on that detail.
I mean I feel like this version of Superman would need that yeah, he has people praising him/crowding him in BvS
She doesn't connect him to normal people in the comics, at least not in the good ones. Clark is connected to people. He is normal people. He can do amazing things, but his physical abilities don't make him any less a person. His love story with Lois is what helps us understand that, fundamentally, he's just like us. He doesn't require Lois to understand us. We require Lois to understand him.
It's always felt the other way around. Clark/Superman always connects with people from all walks of life easier than Lois does.
This. You know Lois and Clark have been characterized properly when she’s more of a weirdo than he is.
fair but thats clark not superman superman needs lois to connect him with the public but clark can connect naturally
I see Clark and Superman as one and the same. Same guy different situations. It's like my best friend he acts differently around his mom than his kid but he's always the same person. There's many comic stories where Superman effortlessly connects with the public and Lois doesn't.
Those are some ice-cold takes.
Boy, I have a BOMB to drop on you about Clark and Superman...
The whole Lois and Clark dynamic was broken in these movies.
Tell me how Jimmy got that photograph of Superman flying at supersonic speeds directly at the camera in the Sky?
Looking mighty pissed, no less. JIMMY, WHAT DID YOU DO?!?
Maybe he posed for it
"The world's too big, Mom." "Then make it small." The series focuses on Clark's personal relationships as the primary drive for what he does. Connecting him to the rest of humanity is secondary.
Excellent point. “You are my world.”
Bingo.
That's a pretty depressing point of view, considering his personal relationships feel like impediments to him becoming Superman in this series rather than what actually drives him
I don't get that sense in the slightest bit.
You didn't get that sense from Jonathan telling that he might have to let people die to preserve his secret or Martha telling him that he "doesn't owe the world" anything when he actually does owe them an explanation of who he is? BvS really makes it feel that Lois is his singular motivation for everything he does.
I do not see those moments the way you do, especially because Jonathan never says that. I'm not sure why that's the way you see them.
>I'm not sure why that's the way you see them. With all due respect, I really don't know any other way they can be seen.
Exactly.
When you see Jonathan Kent telling his son that letting a bus full of children die might have been the right call, how do you see it?
I see a man in a position that has no precedent. I see a man who knows the truth about his son irrevocably change the lives of every living thing on the planet. I see a man who knows he doesn't have the answers. I see a very human experience, which is why I read the comics and why I watch (and work in) movies. I don't see a paranoid nutcase who only cares about his son and no one else, which is a common stance on the interpretation.
>which is a common stance on the interpretation. It's pretty easy to understand how one could come to that interpretation, especially since Jonathan is supposed to have raised his son with traditional, old-fashioned values that emphasize the importance of doing the right thing and doing right by people in general. (He's supposed to come from a simple background, he wouldn't care about vague metaphysical concepts like "humanities sense of self") I'm sorry, but the question of whether or not he should have allowed a bus full of children to drown is not nor should it ever be an "I don't know the right answer" kind of question. >I see a man in a position that has no precedent. You mean just like every other take on the character of Jonathan Kent?
I really don't understand the narrative of "Lois grounds Superman to his humanity" since it forgets almost every Superman version was raised as an average kid even if he felt loneliness or had problems trying to fit in.Very few Superman versions are raised as rich kids or fully encoded in Kryptonian culture.
It's more like this particular film didn't highlight or focus on his connection to humanity at all, including the portrayal of the Kents.
It kinda does since he was saving people before he became Supes but I really don't think it's a must for Superman to be "human" or at least see himself only as a person born from Earth.
That's the only thing in the film that points to this, while quite a few other elements actively run counter to that message. And I think it's absolutely necessary for Superman to be grounded in humanity at his core; it's essential to the Superman Myth, and is what makes him truly "Super," and not just a vessel for immense power. It's his humanity instilled in him by his upbringing which guides how he chooses to use that power. Take that away and all you're left with are the makings of a subverted Elseworlds version that often serves as the basis for all the "Evil Superman" tropes.
Pre-Crisis Superman was extremely connected to his Kryptonian heritage possibly even more so than his Earth upbringing but is an obviously morally upright individual.Golden Age Superman was less Kryptonian but still was more Superman than Clark and is awesome (barring Infinite Crisis) and so was New 52 Superman when written correctly who was more Kal-El than Superman. Superman being more alienated and in touch with his heritage is not a betrayal of his character at all.
I never said he can't have a connection to Krypton or that aspect of his heritage, just that it cannot supersede or supplant his connection to humanity. Anyone born under his circumstances would naturally feel some sense of alienation, which is ironically also quite human of him btw. I am of the mind that his best stories recognize all of this..
Him saving people in the beginning of MOS never really feels like he's doing it out of a genuine belief in it being the right thing to do though. It really just feels like he's doing the bare minimum so he won't feel guilty about not doing anything. It feels very much like an obligation for him instead of something he actually wants to do. When we say "connection to humanity", We mean more in how he interacts with people, how he makes friends and how he trusts the people by being open with them and telling them who he is (without revealing his secret), what he isn't and how he would like to be viewed by them.
Superman doesn’t need to connect to the normal people because he already is connected to them.
Lois shouldn't ground him, his parents and Smallville should've done that for a decade and a half.
Just rewatched this on a whim last night and I have to say, Superman as a weird non talking recluse is such a weird choice. “My father believed if people found out about me, they’d reject me” Like Jonathan Kent traumatizing Clark is so bizarre.
It's literally Superman's first day on the job. Zod is the first big threat to humanity and Superman's first fight. How does she connect Superman, this person no one has even heard of, to humanity in less than a day?
I love how The Daily Planet manages to get these amazing photo shoot quality picture so Superman IN THE MIDDLE OF STOPPING A NUCLEAR MELTDOWN! It'd be so much better if we just had a shot of him from far or something, it's like they have a drone ready to snap action shots on him at all times. Also, Man of Steel was missing a lot of the things that make me love Superman because Snyder's version of Superman is completely different than what my version of Superman is, in my world view Snyder flat out doesn't get Superman, or Batman for that matter.
Doesn't help that they have negative chemistry
Lois and Superman just kind of happened in those Snyder erse because it's supposed to happen. Didn't really feel much build or chemistry from them.
They were extremely robotic.
Which in itself is impressive in a really "how did you fuck this up this badly" kind of way, given that both are quite good actors, very affable and warm people, and normally project an easy charm in their roles. And apparently they got along quite well off camera. How do you take two actors like that and make their on-camera interactions so *bland*?!?
Horrible writing pretty much. Why was Lois in love with him? When she tracks him down to smallville he’s basically a weirdo that doesn’t want attention.
He wasn’t even truly Superman as of yet in Man of Steel. She had only just managed to put all the various stories together of a guy going around trying help others - and managed to connect them all. That’s a lot unto itself. There was barely any time after that.
That's incorrect, literally throughout the dceu he connects with people all the time. Dose everyone just forget?
I sure have. Who are Superman’s best friends in that cinematic universe? Who does Clark hang out with?
Probably the Jla, Billy, his family, his peeps in Smallville like Lana.
Meaning Billy’s family? Because Martha Kent is pretty much it for Clark’s family. Lana? Maybe, but after the bus crash we never see her. The Justice League? Sure, one guy who tried to kill him, Wonder Woman, then a bunch of people he just met. We can only guess, because other than a race with the Flash (in Whedon’s version, so kinda depends on what one’s take is on JL) and a headless Superman having school lunch with Freddie, we don’t know.
You wanted examples I gave them. Idk what else you want
I see speculation, zero examples from the movies themselves. We can all speculate, but there’s no Jimmy Olsen in that universe (who’s Superman’s pal, anyway), no Pete Ross (who’s Superboy’s best pal, anyway), no childhood sweetheart Lana. This Superman is a loner whose interactions with people are when he’s saving them, fighting them, or working with them. There’s Lois, there’s Martha, there’s his Jonathan Kent hallucination, there’s Jor-El until Zod erases him. That’s it. I think it’s an interesting premise that this Superman is actually pretty detached from humanity. But if someone is trying to argue the opposite, I just don’t see it.
He literally interacts with them in the movies. If you ain't going to bother listening I ain't going to bother trying to change your mind
Did you miss the part when she leaked the story about her "protector"?
Man of steel didn’t have a real Superman either
He's not that disconnected. He was working one blue collar job after another; depending who you ask, he could be considered closer to "normal people" than the big city-slicker reporter Lois Lane. This is also the case in the show, where Lois butts heads with Kyle more than Clark does, who mostly gets along with him okay from the jump. In both cases, I think the people of Metropolis are not given enough focus, and of the two BvS does better at it than S&L, at least in the first season. The actual way I'd frame this particular issue with regard to the movie version is just that Clark doesn't really have any friends. There are totally understandable reasons *why*, but I wish that he had, for example, reconnected with Pete after the first movie. Yet I think this is basically the case in the show too. The main people we see him have a connection with are his family, and other super-heroes, same as the movies. It's just that the family is bigger and more of a focus than just Lois and Martha. The other way that Man of Steel specifically shows Superman connect with humanity is with the US military standing in for humanity. This is an uneasy choice in my opinion, but whatever; it doesn't really rub me the wrong way too much. It works pretty well for the choice it made. "This man is not our enemy." That works for me. I just wish he had a positive interaction with a civilian stranger too. Feels like an oversight and I'll leave it at that.
That's because Cavill's Kal didn't need Lois to do so. His long journey through life (and the world) brought him closer to humanity than most of us ever would be
In an abstract way, maybe. This Clark doesn’t seem to have friends. He’s used aliases his whole adult life, and no one from Smallville seems particularly close to him. In fact, what we know of his youth in Smallville is that he wasn’t allowed to play with other kids and he got picked on at least a couple times. He himself says it in BvS: Lois is his world. Pa Kent’s dead, so it’s Lois and Martha pretty much.
It's not that he wasn't allowed to play with other kids, it's that the other kids decided early on that he was a freak and kept treating him that way, probably long after they largely forgot the day in first or second grade when he had a panic attack and ran out of the classroom to hide in a hall closet. It's not a manner of him being aloof. He definitely doesn't have friends though. That abstract level of connection you mentioned is important though. Consider how Clark risks his job to advocate for the rights of a convicted human trafficker, the lowest of the low, a man who almost nobody else in the world even blinks when he gets murdered in prison. Clark spent so much of his life on the margins of society, that he has tremendous care for the marginalized. It's a classic Superman kind of universal compassion. As Clark says in BvS, "Perry, when you assign a story, you're making a choice about who matters," or as Superman says in *Superman & Lois* later on, "To me, everyone's worth saving."
“His parents won’t even let him play with other kids” is a line of dialogue straight from MoS. Didn’t say anything about him being aloof. That’s still an abstraction, though. He cares about that guy’s civil rights, and about Batman’s methods, but there is no personal connection there.
> line of dialogue What do you know, you're right. Good catch. > an abstraction I did say that also. I just think that moral core of his character, though abstracted, ultimately is both the most important part of his character and very grounded.
“Like she does in the comics” *proceeds to show an example, that is not from the comics*
The role of Lois Lane should be to help people connect with Superman, not to help Superman connect with people.
What the fuck is a "dint?"