Did you miss the part where Zod said his goal was to kill every human on the planet and it didn’t matter what Superman did? How was he supposed to stop someone as strong as him from doing that without a fight of some kind, Zod wasn’t just going to politely run off like he did in Superman 2. to me it’s no different then casting the blame for civilians killed when retaking cities from the Nazis on WW2 veterans, there was no way to avoid people dying if you were doing to stop everyone from dying. I also think a lot of people were killed in Superman 2 by Zod, they just don’t show it on screen. I don’t see how Zod could have taken over the world without killing anyone and the only reason Superman was able to save people in that fight was that the Villains were more interested in him then they were in killing humans, that wasn’t Zod or any of his people’s goal in Man of Steel. “For every human you save we will kill a million more.” "if you love these Humans so much then you can watch them die.’ Those are not the words of people who are going to stop their killing spree because Superman just went away, those are the words of people who were going to kill everyone on the planet and would just keep killing if Superman wasn’t fighting them.
In Superman returns and Superman 2 Superman had sex with Louis and then wiped her mind with his drug kiss and then left her to raise his super powered baby by herself and then doesn’t even get involved in raising the kid after the kid kills a man, so there is at least one death on Superman’s hands right there, not to mention that the first part of what he did was date rape. i mean yeah Louis was sad but did she at any point give him permission to wipe her memory? the only reason she didn’t tell Superman about the kid that I can’t believe with all his powers he couldn’t have known was his, was that she didn’t know because he had wiped her memory after they had sex and I have never heard that called anything other then date rape in real life.
I am sorry if you think i am being too harsh but I just have not been able to understand the logical reason for all the hate for Man of Steel when Superman 2 is the most popular film in the franchise and I sure can’t understand how fighting a mad man to protect the whole population of the earth is a worse moral action then wiping a woman’s memory after having sex with her and leaving her to raise his super powered kid who has already killed.
Sorry it’s nothing personal I am just trying to explain why I don’t get it and I don’t think I ever will. I have tried to understand since seeing Superman 2 why some people are okay with that ending and I have always failed and then Superman Returns compounded the problem beyond all hope of repair for me. I am really glad the franchise didn’t continue down that road.