Why does Man of Steel get hate? Because it promises so much and delivers so very, very little. Wooden acting (which I blame largely on the directing, since all of it is wooden in an oddly similar fashion), more of that ****ing shaky-cam, disjointed-to-the-point-of-nonsense plot, that stupid tornado scene, that stupid, stupid, stupid neck-snap scene... both of which could potentially have worked, if they hadn't been so amazingly poorly done.

The tornado scene, if you weren't watching closely, was a really dumb way to commit suicide. If you were watching closely... it came across as a really dumb way to commit suicide -_-; It's possible that the senior Kent was motivated by protecting his boy, etc. etc. etc., but it's not even hinted at by the movie. What does get communicated is that he's a severely screwed up individual raising a kid who's too good for him, or... something. Somebody needed to stand behind the director and/or the screenwriter and bash them over the head with something heavy every time they tried to ram either 'u r SO SPESHUL!!!!1!' dialogue or messianic imagery into things.

As for the neck-snap scene... really, the only thing I can say about it is "OH NOES! My mighty biceps cannot overcome the power of his neck muscles, even though I'm straining against them with all my might! The only solution is to snap his neck by twisting sharply in the direction that I've already proven to be able to overcome the strength of his neck muscles!" The silly part is, the kill didn't bother me nearly as much as the moronic, illogical way that they did it. How can Superman suddenly snap Zod's neck when he couldn't even affect the speed of Zod's slow-head-turn a split-second earlier? Did someone shoot Zod in the neck with a kryptonite dart right then, or something? For that matter, why not just poke Zod in the eyes? Presumably Kryptonians still have a blink reflex, and even if they don't, if Superman jammed his thumbs in Zod's eyes, I'm pretty sure that it would cut off the heat vision PDQ, and if it did more than burn Supey's thumbs a little, well, that raises some interesting questions about just how strong Zod's heat vision was.

The other big thing that bothered me about the movie, and frankly just kicked me right out of it, was how fast Zod and not-Ursa (yes, I know Faora Hu-Ul is in the comics, but even so...) adjusted to 'and suddenly, massive sensory overload and other powers!' The movie made such a thing about how hard it was for Clark to adjust even when his powers came on gradually, and even hinted that it was rough on Zod with that fight-ending disorientation. Then all of a sudden, they were perfectly fine and shooting around in the sky like it wasn't even a thing. For that matter, how the hell did Zod even know he had heat vision? It's not like superpowers come with conveniently labelled switches inside your head... I don't remember if Superman used heat vision where Zod could see before, but it strikes me as very weird that Zod would just figure out how to shoot lasers out of his eyeballs without... y'know, years of practice. And for that matter, the decades of absorbing yellow sunlight like Superman did. Granted, that's always been a weakness of the whole 'Kryptonian villain' thing- they shouldn't be any stronger than infant Kal-El was when he first arrived, since they've had all of a few days of vitamin super-sun. But oh well.