> I never really bought him as a
>threat; it would have been nice to see more of his military
>cunning and/or political smarts and/or brute force in the
>beginning, just to let us know that he's a problem that would
>haunt Kal-El going forward. As is, we root against Zod
>because it's Zod and we know who he is from the previous
>movie.

The lack of 'depth' I felt was adequately explained by his genetic engineering or whatever the fuck they were doing on Krypton to those babies. He wasn't a complex dude. He was driven by a singular purpose. Which doesn't always have to be as boring as it might sound.

Buuuuuuuut shouldn't that mean he'd be like, really good at his job? I mean, look at that military coup he tried to pull off in the beginning. There didn't seem to be any strategy involved at all. And that carried on for pretty much the rest of the movie. All Zod really had going for him was a lot of powerful tech and a badass crew – who, might I add, seemed to have no problem adjusting to their new superpowers, unlike Zod. So yeah, I kinda found myself wondering why they were taking orders from him. He wasn't bringing too much to the table.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we didn't just get a sci-fi blockbuster with a similar villain (bred for war, superhuman, man without a country, trying to save his people, etc.). But Star Trek Into Darkness is still pretty fresh on my mind, and I thought it did a good job making its bad guy a threat on every level.