Storywise ofcourse. But what good are decent cinematography, visuals or acting if your story isn’t solid?
It actually had a strong premise for meaningful character development: a superpowered extraterrestrial who wants to help but is held back by his father’s doubts and fears. The idea of a reluctant hero destined for greatness once he overcomes those restraints had tremendous dramatic potential. Instead, the story shifts into a demolition derby—city-leveling battles with Kryptonians that, while visually impressive, overshadow the more human and emotional aspects of the narrative. Also, if everyone is infinitely powerful, is anyone really infinitely powerful?
But that’s not even the worse of it. So here is the list of the most blatant storytelling sins that I’ve gathered:
They turned Superman into a MacGuffin*
SuperManGuffin, basically. They hid the krypton codex into the poor guy. And it’s super important all right — because now the entire Kryptonian civilization somehow hinges on him, and they’ll stop at nothing to get to him.
But why would Jor-El — his own father — do something like that to a baby? And more importantly, why would the writers do that to him?
Because now his entire identity becomes meaningless. He’s not important because of who he is or what he chooses to stand for — he’s important because of some codex no one in the audience even cares about.
But here’s the real story problem:
Villains represent hero’s shadow self
Villains—in this case, the Kryptonians or whoever they may be—should represent Superman’s shadow self: a reflection of his negative choices, or at most, the karmic baggage of his parents’ past.
If he’s a force for good in the universe, as he clearly is, the universe should respond in kind. And yet, we still have these guys coming after him with relentless aggression. Sure, they’re technically after the MacGuffin—but still.
How hard would it really be to write Superman making a bad choice—one that actually leads to the emergence of villains?
His motivation didn’t even come from him
No, Superman’s motivation didn’t come from trying to impress his mom, father, Lois, or something similar, that would come from within. But instead, his father Jor-El basically told him what to be.
“The people of Earth are different. I believe that’s a good thing. They won’t make the same mistakes we did—not if you guide them, not if you give them hope. That’s what this symbol (S) means,” said Jor-El, rather half-heartedly.
It was almost as if even Russell Crowe knew that wasn’t the way to truly motivate someone. And this whole idea of the “S” somehow representing hope? As far as I can tell, it’s not an H.
Why did they write Jor-El into the story that way, anyway? Would it really have been so impossible to make Superman a hopeful character without ever knowing his father? Or couldn’t they have introduced him in a different, less intrusive way? Because the way they handled it only dragged the story down even more.
The data dumping sin
Clark wanders into a buried Kryptonian scout ship. Jor-El’s hologram appears and just downloads the entire history of Krypton, his origin, and his purpose — all at once.
The audience gets wall-to-wall exposition:
- What Krypton was
- What the Codex is
- Why he was sent to Earth
- What Zod is doing
- Why Clark matters
And boom — the mystery, the tension, the self-discovery? All gone in 5 minutes of AI hologram monologue.
And at the end of it, the truly impossible happens.
The Superman suit from the christmas past
Jor-El presents Superman with his signature suit—no inspiration, no action, no character development leading up to it, so it ends up being symbolic of nothing.
And worst of all, it’s somehow just sitting there on a 20,000-year-old Kryptonian ship buried in the Canadian ice. How exactly is that possible? Complete with the House of El crest and everything?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m being intentionally hit with this kind of cognitive dissonance just so my conscious mind shuts off—and they sneak in some Coca-Cola programming or something.
Zod hates Clark for no reason
When you stop and think about it for more than five seconds, why do Krypton people hate Clark? He is one of them and they should trust he would want to cooperate at least a bit.
Instead? It’s just “Join us or die,” like a generic villain script written with the caps lock stuck on.
Zod literally attacks the one being who he thinks holds the only chance at rebuilding his people.
Zod’s TED talk in Clark Kent’s dreams
And here we go again—another massive info-dump, with Zod unloading his side of Krypton’s lore while Clark is supposedly unconscious.
I call that the “Dream That Isn’t” sin.
Everyone says, “Show, don’t tell,” but once you’ve written yourself into a corner a couple of times, the only option left seems to be a data dump just to get the plot moving again.
However, at this point, it didn’t even matter—the showdown between “gods” was about to begin, heartless and massively destructive.
Well, at least they managed to acknowledge the obvious Superman character development conundrum: how do you present meaningful trials and tribulations for a character who’s already great?
And for that, i give the story 2/10.
Ira
*MacGuffin – A term, coined by Alfred Hitchcock, describing a story item important to the characters and plot development but not at all to the audidence.
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