Man of Steel

Essential, and it is the film the entire DCEU is built on, including the arguments. Zack Snyder's Superman is withdrawn, uncertain and frequently told by his adoptive father that revealing himself might be the wrong thing to do, which is a deliberate inversion of the 1978 film's confidence.

The first hour is the strongest. A non-linear structure cuts between a drifter working fishing boats and oil rigs and the childhood that produced him, including a genuinely good scene of a boy overwhelmed in a classroom by senses he cannot switch off. Krypton is rebuilt as a dying technocracy with a caste system, which is more interesting than the crystal palace it replaced.

The last forty minutes are the argument. Metropolis is levelled in a fight between two people who cannot be hurt, with a scale of destruction the genre had not depicted, and the film ends with Superman killing Zod to stop him and screaming about it. Whether that is a serious examination of what this character would actually cost a city or a fundamental misreading of him has been debated ever since, and both positions are held sincerely.

Hans Zimmer's score is excellent, Michael Shannon is a strong Zod with a coherent motive, and Amy Adams is given little. Watch it before Batman v Superman, which is a direct response to it.