I have to admit, I’m more surprised than usual about the reaction to Man of Steel. Most of the time critical responses to highly anticipated movies are somewhat predictable; The Great Gatsby is going to generate a lot of bile, as is anything from M. Night Shyamalan, and people will be pleased even just with the fact that there are new installments of the Fast and Furious and Star Trek franchises. I expected anything with Christopher Nolan’s name attached to it would be a guaranteed home run. At the very least, I thought reactions would range from “good” to “Dark Knight good.”

Not so. Despite the few and proud voices (Jonathan Lack’s wonderful review gushes pure bliss) who were, like me, completely floored by Zack Snyder’s reboot of the Superman story, the movie currently holds a 59% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic rating of 55. That’s a lot of people who did not find it super in the least. The reviews are so split that in a lot of instances it’s as if writers had screened completely different movies. One critic will cite a particular scene as why Man of Steel got everything about Superman perfectly right, while another will cite the exact same scene, the exact same details, and use it as evidence that Snyder and company got everything about Superman entirely wrong. So since apparently people can’t even agree on what Superman is, maybe this whole enterprise was doomed to a split decision from the critical community.

Here are 5 reasons why people seem to be very divided in their reactions to Man of Steel. I’ll restrict spoilers to points #4 and 5—be warned!

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