Superman in a darker tone works fine for me. A lot better than Adam West as Batman, actually. That's not what some (maybe even many) people wanted and that's fine, but that doesn't make it fundamentally wrong.
Also this
Superman is just not a character that belongs in a darker universe. It's not what made the character so popular and I think Snyder's version was so wrong that it killed the DC franchise before it even began. I think that if you can't understand the importance of Superman, you can't run the DC universe.
I think Snyder failed miserably there.
His subsequent movies followed suit. It's a Superman movie--so yeah, I do think darkness is fundamentally wrong.
Does it have to be quite as light as Reeve? No. For me, I think the tone of the 1996 cartoon was absolutely perfect.
He hid his identity, but he went out of his way to help people multiple times before Zod showed up specifically because the movie WAS exposing his general goodness, and he chose to make the leap of faith to trust humanity and reveal himself, even voluntarily surrendering to an obvious madman because he wanted to save lives.
He also explicitly inspires Lois and the military and civilian commanders he deals with ("This man is not our enemy", plus basically everything that happened on the plane at the end).
That's not Superman. I never said Superman was not good, but when it comes to his debut, the circumstances showed he was forced out of hiding. Superman should have CHOSEN to reveal himself, not have Zod do it. Let's also not forget that the movie had maximum destruction and if we are talking real world, that battle would have caused trillions of dollars of damage and thousands of lives if not more.
I still got choosebumps from that scene, same with Jonathan from Smallville. They are such a big inspiration for Clark.
I consider Jonathan's death on Smallville to be a huge mistake and a shark jumping moment, PRECISELY because he was such a great character on that show. He was so well written and so well done by John Schneider. His last action in life was so perfectly in character too. Jonathan Kent is Superman without the power. Jor-El's and Lara's genetics gave Clark the physical power, but the Kents made Clark into Superman. They raised the hero. It's such an amazing story and Snyder botched it so badly. What's worse is that Costner is an incredible choice for Jonathan. He has that warmth that Schneider had and could absolutely pull off the person that raised Superman. But the script had other ideas.
As per the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths is it not an alternate version, though? I get wanting it the way you want it but they've acknowledged multiple different Supermen across multiple universes.
This is 100 percent true. Of course there are multiple Earths with multiple Supermen. Most of them are the traditional version, but many are not (Red Son, the version where Superman is evil, etc.)
But that said, from the audience standpoint, and if they are starting a new movie shared universe, not going with the traditional version was suicide.
Those videos are great. I will say this--when John Byrne made changes to Superman, I know he kept the essence of the character. He made some changes I didn't like (cold Krypton, no Supergirl, no Superboy), but one change I loved was that the Kents were alive in Clark's adulthood. They were younger, which also made sense. Clark having the Kents in his life added to the character. I loved it. So I hated when Smallville killed Jonathan and that became a thing again.