Nephthys
The Gr8est!!!!!!!!
It's actually pretty funny, I sat down to rewatch the climax of Avengers in comparison to Man of Steel to see just what about it was more heroic and satisfying to more discerning fans.
In no particular order; the following happens:
-The first Leviathan they destroy ends up exploding into a million chunks, it's corpse raining down upon a crowd of bystanders who run away in terror as it destroys a few cars.
-Hulk rampages through a crowded office building, jumps out the window onto another Leviathan, and then redirects BACK into the same office building. I can only imagine how many people were injured by shattered glass as Hulk jumps from building to building.
-Tony leads dozens of mooks and a Leviathan throughout the streets, as they explode Star Wars style into buildings and into the streets. This is despite Tony saying several times that they need to keep off the streets.
-Thor and Hulk double team another one of those stupid Leviathans, killing it and hurling its corpse down into what I can only assume is Grand Central. Once again a crowd of bystanders scream in terror as they desperately try and get away. Also worth noting that these stations were where Cap told one of the officers to start redirecting civilians to, in order to get them out of the way. Guess Thor and Hulk didn't get the memo.
It's true that the Avengers do show concern for civilians like...two times? They get some people off a bus and Cap tells some police officers to do their jobs, because apparently emergency workers have never been trained in the art of evacuating people. I guess ultimately my biggest problem with it, is that it feels so dishonest. Sanitized and squeaky clean, despite the fact that it clearly involved a death toll as large as Man of Steel's, but unlike Whedon, Goyer never shies away from the fact that it was a tragedy. Superman cries not only at the death of the Zod, but his failure to save everyone the way Jor-El knew he could. Tony thinks everyone should go out for schwarma.
Meanwhile, I sneakily re-watched the final fight in Man of Steel and guess what? Superman doesn't punch Zod through any buildings. Not one. He does smash his face into some glass windows and knock him through a few construction girders, though. What an evil bastard.
Edit: Beep Boop Boop, another great idea:
'Lex creating Bizarro (by tracking down Kryptonian technology and getting his hands on part of the Codex) would be a brilliant direction for the sequel to take. Luthor thinks he would make a better Superman than Superman, so he literally creates what he thinks is a better Superman. It thematically echoes his traditional tendency to hoard Kryptonite, in a universe where fragments of Krypton aren't dangerous because they're radioactive but because everything besides Kal-El that didn't survive Krypton is a self-destructive failure. Luthor's anti-Superman propaganda progresses so far that he actually brings into being the callous and destructive alien menace that doesn't belong on Earth that he claims Superman is; Superman can disprove this characterization by saving the people Bizarro endangers. It means that Lex Luthor makes the opposite moral decision that Clark Kent did, namely that Krypton-as-it-was should be given a second chance.
Lex Luthor, imitating the ways of Krypton: growing an unnatural Kryptonian designed to be powerful and obedient (Bizarro as a clone not of Kal-El but of Zod?), reverse-engineering Kryptonian technology, even toss in some environmental themes and have his short-sighted industrial practices echo the Kryptonians' decision to tap into their planet's core. A monumentally arrogant figure, he would believe he knows what's best for everybody, that he can assign them to particular roles rather than letting them choose; he does not believe in the people of earth as Clark Kent does. And his enforcer is a subservient Superman of his own - a twisted parody of power antithetical to wholesomeness, in the way that his own mind is a twisted parody of genius antithetical to goodness. The two characters who are the closest to being Superman's diametric opposites, playing off each other in traditional Nolanesque two-villain style, with one physical threat and one moral.
It also gives us something that Superman can punch in the third act. I like it.'