So I finally got around to seeing this (what? I'm kind of a grownup with other things to do), and you will never get me to believe this is a Zach Snyder movie written by David Goyer. It looks, talks and feels like a Christopher Nolan movie.
Which isn't really bad in some ways. I like the way he tries to find how something would "work" in the "real world". He isn't always successful at it, but in this case, this is truly difficult material to work with.
I liked Michael Shannon and I really liked Russell Crowe. The former was easier to like because, hey, villain. The latter was more problematic, story-wise (maybe I missed it, but how the hell did he know who Lois Lane was?), but the performance was good.
I hated everything about Lois Lane. I haven't believed in the actress playing the character since Margot Kidder. She at least looked like she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Amy Adams, and Kate Bosworth before her, have never believably looked like they "lived" hard enough to investigate stuff that would have won a Pulitzer. Adams especially in this role, never struck me as anything more than a marshmallow made to make concerned faces at the right moment and be there to be the guy people told stuff to so that we, the audience, understand it. (She was taken on board Zod's ship for no apparent reason, which could have been explained away at least with a single line of dialogue that she was recognized as non-military and was there for leverage. But I felt at that point, the female sub-commander, when explaining the decision, was talking directly to the audience when she said not to question it, which...boo, Snyder. I'm liking the Nolan-brand DC movies for the fact that they keep the winking at the audience to subtleties. Don't start going all Marvel on me.)
Which, going back to the whole "problematic material" thing: Superman doesn't have a sidekick, or if he does, it ain't one that non-followers of the comics know anything about. He doesn't have an audience proxy, so while I felt the whole Lois Lane thing was unnecessary, she was a bad fit for a role that WAS necessary.
Why did we care about Perry White and the Daily Planet crew again? I mean, I understand why that stuff was there (to give us the sense that bigger, badder stuff was happening than an extended alien fight) and we're supposed to care about them because the plot says so, but still...felt like too much work to care about these people for the motivation I was given to do so. (It was my snark side that said, when Perry says "You can't run this story", I said "oh, is he going to give her the red pill now?")
I liked the Costner/Lane stuff. Lane especially. I didn't hate Cavill and I'm not the biggest fan of Reeves, so I've got no personal stake in saying "oh, well, he's just not Christopher Reeves".
Oddly, I kind of liked this movie for all the complaints I had about it. It was uneven, sure, but, like I will contend forever, this is hard stuff to make into something organic that you can gloss over with a few snarky bits of dialogue, and it was fine for what it was.