Man of Steel, aka Plotsmash

The attempt to revamp Superman has left me with mixed feelings.

First: I did enjoy this movie, I love superhero flicks for the sheer pleasure of seeing the comics of my childhood up on the big screen. Pure visual candy. Not all superhero movies are created equal. Some come off as corny, some come off flat, Marvel's early years before the success of Spiderman and X-men were pretty appalling. Though I would say Marvel's Avengers Arc has nailed the Superhero franchise over Nolan's Batman trilogy. Don't hate me on this, I loved the new gritty Batman movies, but Marvel has threaded it's universe together a lot better from a comics standpoint.
I went into the theater interested to see what DC would have to offer me. Snyder's films, while not always succeeding on nailing the source material, are fucking beautiful in the graphics department. The man makes the prettiest violence you ever done seen. But Snyder films often suffer from Plotsmash, cramming too many elements into the movie running time and inevitably falling short in one huge element or another. It happens in just about ALL his movies.
It also left me wondering where the writers drew their source material for the extremely Non- superman moment at the films culmination. It's hard to talk about without spoiling it soooo

*Spoiler* Do NOT read the next paragraph if you haven't seen it yet. Or do, I'm not your mother.

Don't read the paragraph, just look at this beautiful man.

Superman kills the villain. If you are not familiar with this god-like DC figure, I can understand why your reaction would be "And your point is?" 
Well Superman is the one overpowered DC character who upholds life above all else. He would never just up and murder someone. He is the hero who goes out of his way to save even the nastiest Villain to the point it becomes a character flaw. Fucking Smallville got this through their crazy mixed up plot lines but maybe Man of Steel's writers missed it. Alan Moore, the fabulous mind behind Watchmen, wrote a Superman what if comic where he does murder a heinous bad-guy when left with no feasible option and it destroys him. 

Okay it's safe again

Movie's failings: After the intense action scenes, Man of Steel delivers no fallout. This is what Avengers Nailed with a capital N and why whatever failings it did have are easy to ignore when it did such a good job representing Aftermath, something way too many superhero movies gloss over. Hell, Marvel took it a step further with Iron Man 3 and brought to light the deep mental trauma a superhero would have to deal with, especially one as vulnerable as Tony Stark, in the aftermath of a violent battle.

Movie's Success: Zod as always is a cold bastard, an nonredeemable but understandable villain. I love those kind of villains. Superman has got great villains because the hero has such high morals, so they make up for it with the dastardly and the insane. The interweaving of Clark's childhood as he tries to find himself is well done, instead of following a series of chronological flashes, they tie in his memories to how he deals with people in the now.

Biggest Success for Me!
Whether you agreed with the casting of Amy Adams or not, Man of Steel finally gave me a Lois Lane I can get behind. Lois is supposed to be a SMART, intrepid reporter. This is something just about every incarnation has failed on. In Man of Steel, Lois is still the irrepressible snoop, immediately falling into danger as she tries to uncover secret government shenanigans and is saved by a dressed down Supe. When she can't convince her editor to print her close encounters story, she hands it over to the internet and proceeds to *I shit you not* track down Clark's cross country trail all the way to his fucking front door.
Finally a proactive Lois Lane who actually acts like a fucking reporter with a soul, because not only does she find the big guy, she actively chooses to conceal his identity, even when she is threatened by her editor and then abducted by the U.S. government. FINALLY, finally, a Lois with giant balls.

This is where I tie all this into writing and character development.

As I've stated above, Man of Steel does suffer from plotsmash, especially with it's ending. Endings are tricky, I struggle with endings all the time, whether the story is a stand alone or part of a series. It is too easy to fall into the danger zone of glossing over the trauma you have just put your characters through to reach an ending that won't leave your reader as traumatized. You want them to come back for book two, not cringe at the prospect of what hellish journey your will put them through. Unless you are a George R. Martin fan, that man is just brutal and he gets away with it because he's really up front about how much he is going to fuck with his characters. You know when you pick up a Martin book, not everybody gonna make it. 

For Superhero movies, this is an especially hard task, and not every movie in the Marvel franchise came through with aftermath. Avengers shows how the battle of New York devastates the population and heroes give them hope but in Thor  they destroy an entire town and nobody bats an eyelash. 

If you ever tackle larger than life events in your story, beware this mighty pitfall. With the influx of post apocalypse literature, showing the full spectrum of human reaction to trauma is vital to the success of these stories. This is where you make 'end of the world' real for the reader, not in the over the top action and destruction, but within the minds of the characters. Literature provides an added layer to characters which movies don't by way of  their thoughts, we can usually see exactly what our protagonist is experiencing as the world falls to pieces around him.
Want a piece of literature which nails the human perspective of super heroes?

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1423101960
It's amazing I promise.

I highly recommend Hero by Perry Moore for it's characters, it's characters are absolutely amazing. The plot is your typical 'hero must save the world' with a few excellent twists but where Hero really hits home is the complexity of it's main character Thom Creed, and the aspiring heroes in his squad.

On the subject of Superman: Big Blue is secretly one of my favorite characters but perhaps not for the best reasons.
Superman is my favorite because he is probably the most difficult character to write well and not come off as completely vanilla.
Superman is a God living among men, he is invulnerable, maybe immortal, and his sneeze could kill you. He also has the morals of a saint, as I said, Superman goes out of his way not to kill people, to the point where villains use this as a character flaw against him.
This is surprisingly hard to make interesting for the 60 plus years the character has been around, often falling on the knack of making him powerless in some way to see how he deals with it. Problem is most of the time writers fail me. When Superman loses his powers, he just stops being Super and tries to be normal. BAH ! The writer's who succeed with the Superman character, like Alan Moore, get into his psyche because that is where this man is interesting.
How does a person deal with being a God when raised as a human? How do you deal when you have all these powers but still can't save everyone? When it's so easy to just up and kill the villain rather that maintain a high regard for life? Is Superman immortal? Does he have perfect control over his abilities or is it truthfully a constant struggle not to crush the ever living fuck out of people with every hug and handshake?
Superman, in my mind, is the ultimate crash test in character development. Here, I'm going to give you a God, make him interesting, make him human, make him sympathetic. Not as easy as one would think.

Source: http://www.shootbus.com/movie/superman-fail-1