I think you're just making excuses.

Superman can't do anything to help civilians? It MUST be because he has absolutely no way of doing so while in combat. It can't possibly be because the filmmakers simply wanted a massively impressive visual spectacle.

Pssh.

Superman took the fight with Zod away from the farm and INTO town. That was unnecessary. He was able to catch Lois while she fell from the sky, but NO ONE ELSE. And then he has time to kiss! There's probably hundreds or thousands trapped or dying and he has time to kiss! After the gravity thinger was shut down, him and Zod start to go at it in the non-destructed part of town. In the aftermath, I don't remember them even mentioning the destruction and rebuilding or rescue efforts. It was just smash smash smash, which just makes it rather empty.

In the Avengers, you had a quick montage of the missing people wall and the memorials and the questions being asked about how this devastation was allowed to happened. That all took, what, 1 minute? It doesn't take much to just acknowledge the human element in that destruction.

Hopefully in the next film they'll deal with the fact that Superman was part of the reason why so much destruction happened, even if he was the good guy here. Maybe that'll be Lex's motivation.