6 Reasons Why Zack Snyder Saved Superman

5) He Defines Clark By Restraint, Focus And Gentleness.

Clark Kent, being a Kryptonian whose powers under a yellow sun are immense, could easily play into common comic tropes of idealized hypermasculinity. His portrayal could have reeked of privilege, as a white-passing man with physical power. A White Savior trope, too, could have been in evidence, with the idea that Superman defines what is good and moral, and those morals are absolute.

Instead, Zack Snyder puts a laser focus on subverting that trope and that privilege. He focuses on Clark’s immigrant heritage in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman – but most clearly in the former.

However, the entirety of Batman V Superman is about asking what Superman should do. The character of Senator Finch explicitly states these themes. “We’ve been so caught up in what Superman can do, that no one has asked what he should do,” she says toward the beginning of the film. Later, she adds, “in a democracy, good is a conversation, not a unilateral decision.” She dies for that belief, collateral damage in Lex Luthor’s war against Superman.

Additionally, this film canonizes a rejection of the “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” hypothesis, which holds that Superman can’t possibly have sex, or enjoy sex, with a human woman, because he would break her if he was not extremely gentle with her. By making a point of showing that Lois and Clark do have sex, Zack Snyder tells us that Clark enjoys being gentle with her.

This subverts the idea that sex, for a man, is about his pleasure as opposed to his partner’s. Again, this directly conflicts with an image of Superman as an icon of idealized male power fantasy. By differentiating Superman from that fantasy, it defines Superman as something different, and given his position as the iconic superhero, that both matters and is appropriate.