Story, villain problems continue to plague the DCEU

(Photo by Keith Tsuji/Getty Images)

Man of Steel

For Man of Steel, there was an opportunity to open up the storytelling. Instead, the decision was made to re-hash the villain from Superman II (1980) – General Zod. Superman’s rogues gallery isn’t the deepest (especially compared to Batman), but he has other villains who have not yet seen the big screen.

Villains like Bizarro, Parasite, or Metallo would have been cool to see on the big screen. But what these characters could have provided was a smaller story for the new Superman to battle.

Instead of General Zod transforming the Earth into a new Krypton and causing a world level threat, this Superman could have fought off a city-wide threat. It is easy to understand why these filmmakers want to make the biggest threat possible: it should result in something spectacular on-screen. And, at some level, every Superman movie has ended with a large threat.

But with Man of Steel, the third act of the movie is just noisy and hard to follow, as Superman has to overcome such great odds to defeat Zod. The first parts of Man of Steel are about Clark Kent trying to figure out his place in the world as a hero. It is actually a decent idea and done well, and different from previous iterations of the character – at least on the big screen.

But then with the third act, Superman faces a threat that is big enough for a team of heroes (ala the Justice League). Here, there is a lesson from the beginning of the MCU with Iron Man (2008). The villain Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) and Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) have a very localized fight at the end of that movie. It isn’t about a worldwide threat, but about who is going to control Tony’s new arc technology.

That ending of Iron Man is easy to follow, and it has the proper amount of stakes for a new hero. Man of Steel goes right for the biggest possible fight – a fight that has haunted the DCEU ever since.