The rationalizations in this thread are pretty painful. Do you people seriously believe that the filmmakers made a conscious choice of "oh, Superman is an inexperienced fighter and wouldn't think about or be able to change the venue of the fight" rather than "LET'S BLOW trout UP OH MAN THIS IS GONNA BE SO AWESOME"? Seriously? The former doesn't even begin to explain why Superman didn't even show any signs he cared through virtually the entire fight, or the complete white-washing of the death and destruction in Metropolis.

Miriel's tone may have been a bit much, but many of the so-called counterarguments here are just a rather bewildering series of "let's blatantly fabricate an ad hoc explanation so that the movie did no wrong." We're not criticizing your mother; it's a movie.