I watched a video that went in detail about how much Zack Snyder's superman failed at this. Like in Man of Steel he does stuff Superman would never do, like get revenge on that trucker by demolishing his truck, and stealing clothes he needs from some random family instead of asking for them.
Those movies have their good points and honestly if you skip around a lot it's not that bad of a series. But they didn't understand these characters for the most part and that's why it was so disappointing.
Not really. The problem isn’t “he was a dick to a truck driver”, it was the character beats in the way the scene played out. In Superman II, when Superman was depowered, the asshole truck driver gets a cheap shot in when Clark is standing up for Lois, which knocks him down and makes him bleed. In the followup scene, before he does anything to the guy, Superman confirms that he hasn’t changed by letting him throw the first punch, and he cleans up after himself by paying the diner owner for the damages. At every step of the way, the motivations - he’s in control, not trying to be more of a dick than he needs to be, but he’s still not a total pushover.
In Man of Steel, he grabs the truck driver and tells him to knock it off, backs down to firmly asking him to leave when challenged instead of potentially killing him, then his girlfriend talks him out of doing anything else, and he goes out and makes a mess of the truck driver’s truck using the nearby power lines when he throws a glass at his head. The motivations are muddled - he wants to stand up for his girlfriend, but the movie insists he has to stay hidden, so it all comes to a head with an offscreen tantrum where he fails to do both.
I don’t think the motivation is that muddled, it’s simply human from a very grounded perspective ( which is funny for a comic book movie about space colonisers).
Clark goes on the defense of his coworker, gets thoroughly humiliated and vents in the most stupid way. The reason he’s shown to leave the job afterwards and going on the road is that he movie insists he needs to stay hidden until he’s ready to not be.
It’s kinda framed as a character failure failure, not the fact that he came to his coworker defence but the way he did so.
I find the return to the dinner in the second movie much more problematic. He comes back, immediately antagonises the asshole and starts a fight, beats the bully and waltzes out like a hero.
The bully is not even doing anything incorrect by the time Superman intervenes, he says something is garbage gets chided by the waitress, and supes immediately makes the situation worse. Purely revenge motivated, but in a much more planned and calculated fashion.
Funny enough both deal with the feelings of the man underneath the leotard but they are both framed differently.
That’s the problem, though - he’s NOT humiliated. The guy tries to push him and ends up pushed back himself, but Clark still just walks away instead of manhandling him out the bar at average-bouncer-strength - the movie ultimately says more about how that guy reacts to a fight he knows he can’t win than it does about how Clark reacts to a fight he knows he can. This is really the root of the problem - Superman in Man of Steel doesn’t know his strength well enough to use it precisely, and the movie is uninterested in teaching him that.
And I reject the notion that Superman escalated the situation by coming back in Superman II - that truck driver spent all of his scenes in the movie being a cartoonish dick to everyone around him, and the way Superman handles him is by taking his punches even when he’s weakened. That is quintessential Superman - the strength and paternalism of a god, along with the pettiness and self-sacrifice of a man.
I reject your notion hes not humiliated. The dick trucker pours a drink on his head in front of everybody and publicly emasculates him, with a very perfectly thrown can at the end for good measure. You can hear the laughs of the other patrons in the background. If that's not humiliating to you, you have the patience of a saint.
Clark in that part of the movie is not superman and he doesn't know anything except what his father told him, that he's not totally in control of his powers and has limits to his awareness. He knows that his emotions will interfere and will wreck the cunt.
Second I will disagree on you on the dinner. Superman with all the knowledge he has about his powers, goes out of his way to go to that dinner, escalates a nothing situation only to publicly humiliate and hurt the bully, and soothe his ego. He's settling a score in a very human way. Very greek god of him, but very far away of the platonic ideal of supes.
Interesting. First because Reeves isn't in that film. Christopher Reeve us. Second, in the definitive Richard Donner cut, he absolutely does not kill Zod.
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u/dumb_memes54 2d ago
Clark thanking the robots after they pick him up
It’s just the little stuff that goes a long way