When the topic came up at the fan event, though, he  took a different path, first offering his own estimate of the  Metropolis body count, and then claiming that another superhero hit --  Joss Whedon's 
The Avengers -- was less sensitive about its city-destroying violence than 
Man of Steel.
“Probably  5,000 people [(died from the Metropolis attack]. For me, that was part  of it. No, there’s real consequences … Not to compare, but if you look  at ‘The Avengers,’ they trash the city and nobody thinks about how many  people are dying.” Snyder said. "There’s a sadness at the end of the  movie ['Man of Steel']. That’s a thing that weighs on Superman.”