Snyder's films were crap tho, and he didn't understand the characters - you can't deconstruct Superman and Batman if you don't understand Superman and Batman. Plus the lighting and pacing were awful. That's why they got shat on

he doesn't evade that criticism, but there aren't constant "scandals" around him regarding that. half the time you hear about captain marvel, it's someone criticizing her for being too powerful (sometimes with accusations of "wokeism" thrown in, but not always). nearly all the time you hear about superman, he's just there, it's a regular positive-ish portrayal you'd normally see around any character, with a bit of critique thrown in of course. that's the difference in scrutiny i'm talking about, the internet doesn't tend to blow up every time they make a superman movie the same way it blew up for captain marvel because god forbid we see a woman in the same position as supes.

(also, i suppose many of her critics were the same people who criticize stuff like female thor or black captain america by saying go make original heroes -- this is the treatment you get when you comply. underprivileged groups always get higher scrutiny, and it easily propagates to otherwise well-meaning people too.)

yeah, an important clarification on that is i base my superhero stuff entirely on movies. i made a genuine effort to get into the comics but i just couldn't -- it might just be my luck but i've literally only read either canon or good stories from marvel and dc, nothing i tried managed to hit both. but for what it's worth, i presume the majority of people are the same way, comics just don't have the same degree of mainstream cultural penetration that movies enjoy.

i do agree with you though, clark is far more interesting than superman. i used to be an ardent superman hater specifically because the movie portrayals sucked and most online fans i interacted with were like "my fictional character could totally beat your fictional character" but i do really enjoy very human stories about the dude. and hell, sometimes his powered stuff can also be kinda cool -- but the same applies to captain marvel as well and that's usually the part that people don't like to accept.