Spoiler Alert! - do not read if you have not seen Man Of Steel
So, Man Of Steel was...OK. Pacing issues aside, it was a nicely done reboot and Christopher Nolan's influence is felt greatly due to the "moderness" of the retelling of Supes' story. I'm not here to talk about how un-Superman Superman was in this film. He seemed to deliberately smash his enemies into buildings and populated areas. He only had a handful of scenes where he seemed to care for the humans' well-being (ie the oil rig scene and the small town brouhaha where he calmly says to the residents "go inside, it's not safe"). But I digress. Let's fast forward to my greatest gripe about the movie or at least its plot; why does General Zod have to recreate Krypton on Earth?
The way it's presented, Zod is genetically predestined to be Krypton's protector and will do all in his power to keep the planet's history, culture, and people, flourishing. Now Jor-El saw it fit to steal the codex (where the DNA of all Kryptonians is held) from Krypton and away from Zod and infuse it into his baby boy Kal. So after Zod sees his home planet implode, he sees no other choice but to retrieve the codex and remake Krypton by terra-forming another planet in its image, in this case Earth, where baby Kal landed.
So far so good.
Just to make things clearer let's put things in a timeline, shall we?
ZOD ARRIVES ON EARTH AND ANNOUNCES HE WANTS KAL-EL TO SURRENDER HIMSELF OR ELSE!
Zod searches for over 30 years to track Kal-El and this is still feasible since the universe is a pretty darn big place. When he finds him he straight away threatens the Earthlings without so much as a, "Hey, Kal. I'm Zod, a friend of your dad's. Listen he gave you something before he died which belongs to Krypton. It can save our people and all that, so um, do you still have it, maybe?" Instead he sends a creepy Jigsaw from Saw-like video across the planet clearly stating, "surrender within 24 hours or watch this world suffer the consequences".
KAL-EL AGREES AND BOARDS ZOD'S SHIP
...with Lois Lane in tow for a reason that escapes me - Zod apparently just wants it to happen and he's a general damn-it, so there.
KAL IS TOLD THAT HE HAS THE FUTURE OF KRYPTON (THE CODEX) WITH HIM
Zod wants it badly and makes this known by shouting a lot.
ZOD REVEALS HIS PLANS TO KAL-EL
Kal at first seems sympathetic to Zod's wish to recreate Krypton but then he is shown via some unexplained mind-meld, dream-thing that Earth is to be the new Krypton and in order to do that the humans must die and turn into a pile of skulls that act like quicksand - quicksand so strong that even Superman can't escape its pull! Superman ain't havin' none o' that!
KAL-EL REFUSES TO KNEEL BEFORE JOIN ZOD
Zod learns he can extract the codex from Kal's body. So while his mad-scientist buddy gets busy doing that on a restrained Kal-El, Zod unleashes the "world machine" and starts violently terra-forming Earth.
So now the question, why does he have to pick Earth? Is it out of spite for the El family? He could easily have told Kal-El that he can go to an uninhabited planet like say, Mars, and repopulate there. Kal would have agreed since it would mean no Earth people dying, right? It's also not like Earth is the perfect candidate to be the next Krypton. I mean if they can't normally breathe our atmosphere and see the need to do their gravity-push-pull trick, I'm sure there are other, more compatible, Superman-less worlds to do that in, no?
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