General Zod and his men arrive and attempt to shoot down the pod, but are unsuccessful, but General Zod does manage to kill Jor-El by stabbing him. General Zod and his army are encased in ice, and banished to the Phantom Zone for their crimes and sent into space in a ship. Moments later, the planet Krypton explodes and Lara looks on and is engulfed in flames. .
Kal-El's pod makes its way to earth and crash lands in Smallville, Kansas. Kal-El grows stronger because of his exposure to Earth's sun. Kal-El is raised as Clark Kent, the son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, who find him and raise him as their own son. The movie really starts with to pick up pace with Clark Kent as a man, played by Henry Cavill, on a fishing boat and he saves some crewmen on another ship when the ship is on fire. The tanker ship explodes and he is drifting in the water, his arms outstretched. He emerges from the water, and moves from town to town trying to keep his abilities a secret. The tanker exploding has made news all around the world and everyone is wondering the identity of the person who saved them. .
The audience sees a flashback of a bus accident when Clark was a child, and how he pushed a bus out of a river and saves the students. A boy who bullied Clark named Pete, is drowning in the river, having been swept out of the bus, Clark pulls him from the water, and goes home. Clark is scared of his emerging powers and asks Jonathan, his earth father, "Why would God do this to me?" Jonathan responds that Clark must keep his powers a secret until the world is ready to accept him and that right now, he does not believe they are ready. We then flash forward to the present and we meet Lois Lane, an ambitious journalist who works for the Daily Planet, a newspaper in Metropolis. Lois is on an expedition of a military base who has uncovered something they cannot explain. Lois sneaks inside the base and finds technology decades beyond earths, she is attacked by some tentacle shaped robots and is choked, and she is saved by Clark.