Before saying anything, I should admit that I'm not a Superman fan - this was the first time I've deliberately watched a Superman movie. The other times, the kids were watching on TV and I caught a few scenes here and there.
I've also never read a Superman comic. In fact, my entire knowledge of the Superman mythos comes from Lois and Clark.
And now, MoS.
I enjoyed it. A lot. Maybe being ignorant of how things have been portrayed in the past freed me to accept it at face value.
On the characters - Lois grew on me as the movie progressed. By the end, she seemed enough like Lois to be Lois. I'm not a huge Russell Crowe fan, but I liked him as Jor-El. I was disappointed when he died so suddenly and was glad when he returned to give direction to both Lois and Clark. I thought Jonathan was OK - different, but OK.
The one character I couldn't warm to was Martha. Not really sure why.
I would have cut out about half of the Zod/Superman fight. Having said that, my 19yo son thought the fighting didn't go long enough! I thought it was cool the first time the tar on the road crumbled as Clark slid along it. By the 10th time, I was over it.
The mass destruction of the buildings went on too long. I wasn't concerned about possible human deaths because I assumed they'd been evacuated. Did we see any actual bodies/deaths? I can't remember any. For me, Clark killed Zod because he was directly threatening the nearby family. That didn't really make a whole lot of sense if many thousands had already been killed off-camera.
I had no problems with Zod's death. He laid down the ground rules - that it would finish when someone died. Better him than Clark.
