My issue with Lois was not that she wasn't action-y. It was that she was a bad journalist. See, rather than really show her work, they inform her background by saying she's a award winning journalist. When we do see her doing work, it is nice to see her follow Clark back to his house, but that is undermined when she immediately drops the story the guy she's been following to do so. I do not recall seeing her vett the story or do any research into this man's claim. He could have just been making things up. I know there's the whole "trust each other" thing, but it's very hard to do that convincingly when someone's job is to not trust things at face value and double check them.
She then goes into her boss's office and tells him that she is just dropping a story that must have taken weeks if not months of work after leaking a story that had no (confirmed) evidence. Follow this up with her falling in love with the guy she was investigating, and I have to question how she got through journalism school. She was a walking libel suit (if not just a money sink) for anyone who hired her. The only reason she didn't have to face consequences at work for these things is the external conflict with Zod. She should have been fired.
illegitematus non carborundum est
We see her doing the footwork. The mere fact that she was able to trace this guy, after one encounter, from the Arctic (Antarctica?) back to Kansas becoming more and more specific in her inquiries to the point where she opened her conversation with Pete Ross asking about the bus incident, shows she knows how to chase a story. And that's all that's important, because this is the story of Superman and his place in the world, not Lois's investigation.
The important thing with Lois was to show that how they met, how she came to an understanding of him, and how she helped him in his journey to find a place in the world as an utterly unique being with no wise elder to turn to. We were given just enough so that it would look plausible when Lois encountered Clark in the Antarctica and then showed up on his doorstep in Kansas.
What with the origin, the set up of Zod and the plight of his race, the introduction and development of this new version of Clark, the tension between Clark and humanity, the slow road to trust, and Clark's battle with the Kryptonians, this movie was already taking on as much as it could handle if not more. Tying the conflict to the origin was already an exercise in economic adaptation.
The only way I could think of to show Lois's investigation skills more than they did would be to make her investigation (and possibly her subsequent column on it) the framing device for the story, but that suffers from two problems. First, we don't get to know the quiet and disconnected Clark as well because the whole point is that almost nobody understands him. Second, we don't get the scenes on Krypton, at least not without two layers of flashback which tends to get messy.
Just an addendum, we do see what makes Lois a good reporter, what has always been her distinction as a reporter. Lois's skill has always been doing the footwork, being persistent, and being willing to risk herself in pursuit of the story.
If we wanted an economic adaptation, we could have cut the 45 minute fight at the end shorter and put more meaningful stuff in.
Yes we see a brief montage of her telling us about superman, but what I said before still stands. She ended up wasting a massive amount of time for her paper, leaked a story that was legally libelous, and doesn't follow up on Clark because either he told her not to or she had feelings for him. That is the opposite of persistent. She only succeeds in stalking a man and showing up at his house. It shows unprofessionalism that newspapers sue employees over.
illegitematus non carborundum est
If we wanted an economic adaptation, we could have cut the 45 minute fight at the end shorter and put more meaningful stuff in.
Yes we see a brief montage of her telling us about superman, but what I said before still stands. She ended up wasting a massive amount of time for her paper, leaked a story that was legally libelous, and doesn't follow up on Clark because either he told her not to or she had feelings for him. That is the opposite of persistent. She only succeeds in stalking a man and showing up at his house. It shows unprofessionalism that newspapers sue employees over.
illegitematus non carborundum est
Great review for the movie guy. It's not just a post you could have done in the forums.
The story is about Superman, his origins and his quest to discover who is people are and his place among them, whether those people are from Krypton, Earth or both. Lois is a supporting character. The story doesn't hinge heavily on us buying Lois's awesome reporter skills. In the context of this movie, her reporter skills are just a plot device to get her into his life ("But there are any number of ways to get her into his life" "Yes but the character is already a reporter, so they went with this.")so that she can fulfill her real role, helping Superman take his first steps into the larger world. This forms a personal connection between them.
And again, we do see the most crucial thing that makes Lois stand out as a reporter. She takes risks most reporter don't. We're told she's a war correspondent. Then we're shown her sneaking around a military facility, climbing into an ice tunnel, and poking around an alien ship. After her first encounter with a man with laser beam eyes, she dedicates herself to traveling all over to find him. Persistence and risk taking. She's an adventurer, not Sherlock Holmes. And thats true to who she is in the comics.
If she was a competent war correspondent, she would know wandering around with no one else in the middle of nowhere would get you killed. Instead she goes wandering in an arctic winter by herself, where someone says staying outside can kill you. The only way she survives is a guy with laser eyes can cauterize a stomach wound, and holds her in a safe insulated place until morning. Yes this is adventurous, but for someone who we see doesn't have the sense to back away from something that looks possibly dangerous (robot who gave her said wound), she goes from adventurous to foolish in my view.
If story hinges on her bridging superman with the human world, I am worried when she is a human who lacks basic intelligence that would apply to her work and own well being. If she was much younger and lacked experiences of a war correspondent and never had any awards, or even wasn't with the Daily Planet at the beginning, her flakiness would be much less bothersome. Otherwise, our beacon of humanity seems (and this is entirely personal to me) to be a poor excuse.
With the setup the movie goes out of the way to give her, I hold her to a higher standard (that she went through four years of journalism school), and she doesn't measure up. She behaves like a greenhorn, but is very good at stalking. That actually could have been a good start if the writers chose to pursue that for an edge (as opposed to the daily planet/war correspondent/Pulitzer angle).
illegitematus non carborundum est
If they had done as you suggest, it would have been hard to justify her sticking around after things get really hairy. I would never buy that someone fresh out of journalism school would have the guts to stay in the thick of it the way she does. Being a war correspondent first lets her get her feet wet because she can start out embedded where she's relatively safe.
Lois was a good character, if not a bit bland in her delivery. I just found no chemisty between her and Superman.
Now that I will agree with Xantosfork. I felt like Amy Adam's warmth towards Superman was genuine enough and their budding friendship felt genuine but whenever it turned romantic, it felt weird, almost wrong. I can't put my finger on it.
Its almost as if she was saying to herself "he needs a friend, I can be that for him. Oops, he leaning in to kiss me . . . well he's a hero, I guess if he needs that I'll do that for him too."
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About Lois
I've seen some complaints about Lois in this movie that fall into two basic categories. The first, that Lois does nothing. The second, that she's too bland or sweet.
Addressing the first one. People making these complaints are fixated on the external conflict, Superman vs the Kryptonians but there's also the internal conflict of Superman's place on Earth and among his people. Lois' contributions in the external conflict are limited, and I'll even admit tacked on in places (you really need Lois to stick the thumb drive in the rocket because she did it once before? Pretty sure Hamilton could have figured that out.) but thats as it should be. She's a reporter with limited action experience, they let her contribute as much as a war reporter can. But for the internal conflict, Lois finds Superman, she helps him explore his options, she accepts him and he trusts her. She gives him the strength and hope to believe that he can have a place out in the open.
Regarding the second point, this is the arc Lois always goes through when she discovers Superman. We're always introduced to her as a snarky, tough as nails cynical city girl who's heart thaws when she finds that one person who is the real deal, an honestly good person who is really just here to help. He brings out that compassion in her that normally stays beneath the surface. After she gets used to the idea of Superman, we see the snarky cynical side of her reemerge, and we'll see that with her. This whole ordeal would give anybody pause, finding a saint and discovering we're not alone in the universe. Think of what catastrophes do to our own cynicism.