Okay so when it comes to Superman, I have a very external perspective. Read: I watched the movies with Henry Cavill, I read some of the pages that make the rounds on Tumblr from time to time, and that's about it
(Well I also read and wrote Superbat fanfic based on the Batfleck/Saville version, if it counts)
So my experience with Superman media is a pretty simple and clearly defined concept, and then a whole lot of comics and three movies written by people who uh... Don't like that concept. (Now don't get me wrong the Zack Snyder movies are ripe ground for fanfiction, like really great, but they are that because they're not, in my opinion, super duper good Superman movies)
The thing is, Superman is a comics character, and that comes with a bunch of goofy, bizarre or even ridiculous lore: he wears briefs on top of his suit, he has a super dog who lives in his super fortress etc. And on top of that, a lot of creators are afraid to touch the core, non goofy theme of the guy such as the worth we ascribe to certain categories of people, the responsibilities of violence, or what it means to be human, to name a few on a less personal scale (You could make a whole movie about Superman as an adopted kid for example) The way Snyder chose to deal with the goofyness was to try and erase it.
James Gunn's Superman is the first media I've personally seen that said: no actually that's the point. It's goofy and it's weird and it's the Point, it's what makes this guy Fun, and Relatable, and Inspiring, and for the next two hours you are going to watch a story about the human personification of a teddy bear pout about his super dog's behavior problems and almost cry when he's told maybe he shouldn't have saved people from genocide, and you're going to fucking buy it because if you're not willing to then why on Earth are you even watching a Superman movie?
And because the people who made this movie believed in all of that and bought into it and were delighted by it, so did I.
And that's what makes it far superior to the other Superman movies I've seen before.
