Trama

An alien child is evacuated from his dying world and sent to Earth to live among humans. His peace is threatened when other survivors of his home planet invade Earth.

A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must now emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind.—Warner Bros. Pictures

Kal-El, son of Jor-El and Lara, is sent to Earth after his home planet Krypton leads to a complete incineration. Now taking the name "Clark Kent", he then discovers his true persona when he is guided to become Superman: A hero committed to protect Earth's fate and the harm that threatens it. However, General Zod, a citizen of Krypton and its military leader looks at Earth's fate differently and decides to use it with a sacrifice for all humans. Superman, with the help of present military and news reporter Lois Lane makes an alliance together to stop Zod from obliterating human existence.

The planet Krypton faces imminent destruction due to its unstable core, resulting from years of exploiting Krypton's natural resources and harvesting its core for energy. Scientist Jor-El tells the ruling council that they should have evacuated the planet and resettled on outposts throughout the galaxy. He asks for control of the Codex to ensure the survival of their race.

The ruling council is deposed by the rebel military leader, General Zod (Michael Shannon), and his followers. Zod wants Jor-El to join him and sever the bloodlines that caused ruin. Jor-El does not agree that Zod should play God and decide which bloodlines should survive. Jor-El manages to escape Zod, steals the Codex from its storage in the Genesys chamber and reaches home.

Scientist Jor-El (Russel Crowe) and his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer) launch their newborn son Kal-El on a spacecraft to Earth, infusing his cells with a genetic Codex to preserve the Kryptonian race. Kal-El is the first naturally born Kryptonian in centuries. Lara had already found a suitable planet orbiting a yellow star and Jor-El knew that Kal-El's cells will absorb its radiation and make him a God to the natives. After Zod murders Jor-El, he and his followers are captured by the remaining Government forces and banished to the Phantom Zone for somatic reconditioning of 300 cycles (a punishment equivalent to death). However, Krypton explodes some time afterwards, freeing them.

The infant Kal-El is raised as the adoptive son of Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane), who name him Clark. Clark's (Henry Cavill) Kryptonian physiology and Earth's yellow sun affords him superhuman abilities on Earth, which initially cause him confusion and ostracizing, but he gradually learns to harness his powers to help others. Clark has X-ray vision, can listen to multiple distant conversations at the same time, and all this overwhelms his developing senses. In an instance, the school bus falls off the bridge and into the water, when Clark pulls the whole bus to the shore and save the lives of all the kids in it.

Jonathan reveals to a teenage Clark that he is an alien and advises him not to use his powers publicly, fearing that society will reject him. Jonathan also shows Clark the spaceship that he arrived in and the key that activates it. Jonathan even refuses Clark's help years later during a tornado storm where he loses his life.

After Jonathan's death, an adult Clark spends several years living a nomadic lifestyle, working different jobs under false names, while saving people in secret as well as struggling with the loss of his adoptive father. In one instance, Clark was working on a fishing boat who is called to evacuate a burning oil rig in the middle of the ocean. Clark gets on the rig and stops it from collapsing long enough to allow the workers to escape on a rescue helicopter.

Later, at a bar, Clark learns about a military expedition in the Arctic where they have found an alien spaceship. Clark also stops a trucker who was molesting a waitress at the bar, and the trucker pours his beer on Clark. Clark walks away and later the trucker finds his rig impaled on a pole.

He eventually infiltrates a scientific discovery of a Kryptonian scout spaceship in the Arctic. Clark enters the alien ship, and it allows him to communicate with the preserved consciousness of Jor-El in the form of a hologram. Clark learns from its artificial intelligence modeled after his father Jor-El about his origins, and that Clark was sent to Earth to help guide its people.

Jor-El says that Krypton as a civilization flourished for 100,000 years during which it established outposts on distant planets (including Earth) and even used machines to convert the atmosphere of target planets to similar to that at Krypton. Jor-El says that civilization decay started when artificial population control was established. The outposts were abandoned when Krypton exhausted its natural resources. As a result, the planet's core because unstable and that's when Zod attempted a coup. Jor-El shows that the scout ship they are on has a Genesys chamber. Jor-El tells Kal to guide humans, to give them hope, so they do not repeat the same mistakes that Kryptonians did.

Lois Lane (Amy Adams), a journalist from the Daily Planet who was sent to write a story on the discovery, sneaks inside the ship. The base was led by Colonel Nathan Hardy (Chritopher Meloni) and scientist Dr Emil Hamilton (Richard Schiff). Hardy tells Lois that the object under the ice was first discovered by a NASA satellite and the ice surrounding it is 20,000 years old.

While following Clark down a hole that he drilled with his heat rays, Lois inadvertently triggers the ship's security system, and he uses his powers to rescue her from its defenses. Clark then activates the spaceship and flies it out of the Arctic to a remote location. Lois was found unconscious near the Arctic site, unharmed.

Clark wears a uniform provided by the ship's AI and begins testing his abilities.

Lois's editor Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) rejects her story of a "superhuman" rescuer, so she traces Clark back to Kansas with the intention of writing an expose. However, Lois drops the story upon hearing of Jonathan Kent's sacrifice, keeping Clark's identity safe while fueling Perry's suspicions.

Zod and his crew escape the Phantom Zone, where they were imprisoned for treason for their actions against Krypton. Zod and his crew seek out other colony worlds and eventually follow a Kryptonian distress signal sent from the ship Clark discovered on Earth. They travel to Earth to turn it into a new Krypton, possessing several Terraforming devices salvaged from Kryptonian outposts.

Zod demands that humans surrender Kal-El, who he believes has the Codex, in return for peace. Clark agrees, and the U.S. military hand him and Lois over to Zod's second-in-command, Faora-Ul (Antje Traue). Following Clark and Lois' capture, Zod's science officer, Jax-Ur, extracts some of Clark's genes so as to create new Kryptonians who will build a society based on Zod's ideals of genetic purity.

Zod reveals that he intends to use a Terraforming "world engine" to transform Earth into a new Krypton, eradicating the human population in the process, and use the Codex to repopulate the planet with genetically-engineered Kryptonians. Using the Jor-El AI to take over the ship, Clark and Lois flee and warn the U.S. military of Zod's plan, resulting in a confrontation between Clark and Zod's troops. Clark defeats Faora, convincing the military that he is an ally. Zod deploys the world engine and initiates the process in Metropolis and over the Indian Ocean.

Clark, now dubbed "Superman", stops the world engine in the Indian Ocean and also destroys the ship which carries the pivotal technology, the Genesis Chamber, to restore the Krytonian race with the Codex. The military use the spacecraft that brought Clark to Earth in an aerial strike on Zod's ship over Metropolis, returning Zod's crew to the Phantom Zone, completely thwarting Zod's plans.

Only Zod remains, and he engages Superman in an aerial battle across Metropolis. With the ship destroyed and Krypton's only hope of revival gone, Zod vows to destroy Earth and its inhabitants out of revenge. When Zod attempts to murder civilians in revenge for his defeat, Superman is forced to kill him.

Some time later, Superman continues to earn the U.S. government's trust, although evading their efforts to uncover his secret identity. To create an alias that gives him access to dangerous situations without arousing suspicion, Clark takes a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet.