I did a post on this topic way back in 2015. That was back before BvS came out, now my relationship to that film has become much more complicated but I remain ultimately a defender. That post was about the Comic Book precedent for specific stuff, this is about something deeper.
The problem with the way people are saying "you can't make a Superman movie like a Batman movie" the way these Snyder haters are is that they're saying it in a way that implies doing the opposite would be equally wrong. And yet it's clearly not, even according these same people.
Batman stories that are not dark and in fact pretty light have been incredibly popular and successful. From the Adam West Batman, to Batman: The Brave and The Bold to the Lego Batman movie and Batman Unlimited. And I should remind people Batman Forever was until 2008 the second highest grossing Batman movie. Not to mention that the comics themselves were consistently kid friendly for 30 years from 1940 to 1970. And along side Denny O'Niel and Frank Robbins work there was plenty of goofy Batman stuff still being made in the Bronze Age thanks to writers like Bob Haney.
There was a time when these not Dark takes on Batman were considered inherently offensive by many loud fans, insisting being not dark was the reason Batman and Robin failed. But the success of the Brave and the Bold cartoon has largely marginalized that mentality. And now the people whining "that's not my Batman" are saying it about him killing or using guns, or being too paranoid, and these people will with a straight face say Batman and Robin is a better film then Batman V Superman. Today the Bright Knight is considered equally as valid as the Dark Knight.
So no, saying "you can't make Superman like Batman" isn't sufficient reason to say a darker (emphasis on "er" since I don't actually consider Snyder's vision that dark) take on Superman is inherently wrong.
Since the Golden Age comics are the justification for saying Batman was Dark originally, here's something I'd like to point out, the very earliest Siegel and Shuster Superman stories had the same tone as the earliest Batman stories. Those stories dealt with very real issues of the time, and their Superman did not have any kind of no kill rule, they modeled him after Samson remember. And also frankly those early Batman stories weren't actually as Dark as they're made out to be, stuff happens that seems like gritty subject matter on paper, but it's actually treated about the same as the Silver Age treated it's subject matter. Don't judge a book by it's cover, the most popular Golden Age cover to Dark Batman Fanboys was on the inside a pretty ridiculous story.
And I think it's more valid to use the original creators vision as an argument for how to do Superman then it is Batman because originally Batman was a cash grab derivative character. Superman was a passion project of struggling artists who's run away success was why Batman was created to begin with.
But even if it was true that from their inception Superman was the shining hopeful one and Batman the utterly dark one. Why should a light take on a dark character be considered inherently more acceptable then a dark take on a light character?
If the objection is fear that parents and kids will assume something is okay for them based on the brand name alone. That again goes the same both ways, in fact making a kids show from a property that's dark in origin should be worse, because even as a kid I was interested in things like continuity, so yes if you show your kids a 70s Godzilla movie they might wind up asking to see the original Godzilla movie.
The fact is, lots of kids grow up to desire seeing the fiction from their childhood grow up with them. There has been a backlash against Dark Magical Girl shows kind of comparable to what we're seeing with Man of Steel's rejection. But the thing is Gundam was a darker and grittier take on a genre that had previously been consistently for children also. And thus that backlash has not been nearly so seemingly universal.
For me, the show from my childhood that I sometimes turn to precisely because I can count on it to be optimistic and fairly consequence free is Pokemon. But sometimes I myself imagine what a truly darker take on that premise could be like. It's of course already had moments that can be dark in the same way a Disney cartoon can sometimes get dark. But at the end of the day, no, I don't want it to get any darker then the darkest moments of the first 5 movies. However if a Dark and Gritty Pokemon movie becomes inevitable, I'll either not watch it, or give it a chance and not re-watch it if it fails to engage me. I'm not gonna go around saying "that's not my Pokemon" or "they ruined my childhood". My problem with Mystery of the Mirage Pokemon is not that it's arguably dark, it's that it failed to even try to be entertaining. Meaning I'd compare it to Superman Returns before I would Man of Steel.
The difference between Superman and the Magical Girl Warrior genre is not that one is a single character and the other an entire genre, Superman has produced more content then some entire sub genres. The main reason I find the people whining about Dark Magical Girls so annoying is that there is no shortage of the traditional stuff still coming out for them. We still have nearly 50 episodes of PreCure every year (that alone dwarfs the amount of Dark Magical Girl content we get each year) and two movies, plus during this time we've had a Sailor Moon revival, a Cardcaptor Sakura revival, and new stuff like Twin Angel Break and Hina Logic. And then there is stuff that tries to find a balance between these two extremes, Symphogear, Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya, and we've had new installments of the Nanoha franchise.
The problem with Superman is DC's been failing to give the traditionalists what they want anywhere. The Comics will often forget that Clark Kent is a thing, in Animation he stopped getting solo projects for a long time after MOS came out until they finally decided to take a second shot at the Death of Superman, I love that story-line but shouldn't we actually show this Superman alive first? And in Video Games it's primarily been Injustice.
The Supergirl TV show was the best the Michael Baily type Superman fans have gotten, being a mix of early Post-Crisis and Donnerverse sensibilities. But Superman himself only occasionally shows up on that. And I don't know if it's still good, I stopped following DC TV shows early in it's second season.
So I think there might have been much more acceptance of Snyder's Superman if we'd had an Animated Superman TV show in the vain of Batman: Brave and The Bold, maybe give that show's Superman a spin off. As for me, I still judge Snyder's films on their own merits, and issues aside I think it is a valid take on Superman. Here's a good video essay I watched recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKI0UO5U7qo
If your objection to the title of this post is that, "those light takes on Batman aren't exactly the same thing as a Superman story" then you've invalidated this as an argument against MOS in the first place. No MOS is not exactly like a Batman movie either, BvS gave us some scenes of what a Snyder directed Batman movie would be like, and there was nothing like that in Man of Steel.
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