It is impossible to make Superman cool. Yes, he is one of the most iconic superheroes of all time, but he's stuck as the gallant straight man to Batman's Dark (and brooding) Knight. In fact, one of the things that makes the superhero mythos so interesting is that all superheroes are flawed and must suffer in order to gain their powers — Batman watches his parents die, Green Lantern has a life-ruining ring, and the freakin' Swamp Thing is a genetically mutated bog creature. (That's just DC; Marvel's lineup includes entire families being murdered and attacks by radioactive spiders as power origins.) But Superman is just born*. Which doesn't give him the drama and relatability of, say, Bruce Wayne. (Not to mention the fact that you can majorly revamp the Batmobile to be the Tumbler...but those wrestling boots? Not much hope for them.)
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Yet, here is Zack Snyder, auteur behind other comic book classics such as 300 and The Watchman, taking a page from the book of Terrence Malick and rebooting, for the fourth time in two decades, Superman. The very attractive Henry Cavill plays this iteration of Clark Kent, the Smallville-by-way-of-Krypton resident who is just trying to figure out why and how he can fly, set against a stark midwest backdrop.
The difference between this and past Superman interpretations are both good and bad: It's good that Christopher Nolan is producing, because no one knows a reboot quite like the man behind The Dark Knight. It's bad because, after Sucker Punch and Watchmen, Zack Snyder has proven he has a lot of style...and not much else. (Though, his Dawn Of The Dead is fantastic.) As for Cavill himself, it may be a little blasphemous to have the man representing, "truth, justice, and the American Way" be, you know, British.
Check out the trailer below and watch Snyder revel in the "man" in Man Of Steel...a 'man', we have to note, who doesn't actually exist.
*He does survive the destruction of his entire planet and species, but he doesn't know about that until later.