While Zack Snyder’s DCEU movies might have been incohesive in terms of plot, he did nail the casting of select characters.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane was one of them. She debuted in 2013’s Man of Steel and helped Henry Cavill’s Superman grow.

She then worked to patch the rift between him and Batman.

DCEU Fans saw Lois trying to carve out a career as a journalist at the Daily Planet. It homaged DC shows like Smallville, as Snyder tried to showcase her personal and professional lives.

The balance was off, unfortunately, Luckily for viewers who felt Adams was short-sold in the bigger scope of Snyder’s vision, they can look to HBO’s Sharp Objects to see Adams as a more human and tragic version of Lois.

What Was the Problem With Amy Adams’ Lois Lane?

Lois Didn’t Get to Fully Explore Her Journalist Path

Amy Adams excelled as Lois in the brief time that she played her, but she still got swept up in the narrative and became secondary. Man of Steel had her investigating to find out who the mysterious Kryptonian was.

After that, fans didn’t see much of her character doing anything of note. Her terrorist investigation, for example, was dropped as she became a damsel in distress for Kal-El to rescue.

Adams should have been chasing more leads later to expose Lex Luthor, working to find out if Bruce Wayne stole Kryptonite as Batman, and to discern Lex’s kidnapping of Martha.

In Justice League, all she did was calm Clark down when he was resurrected, when she could have located Steppenwolf’s lair. Lois was positioned as an iconic character and a pivot in the DCEU, only to be brushed aside.

Of course, there were behind-the-scenes conflicts between Zack Snyder and Warner Bros.

There was also a lot of reworking when Joss Whedon finished the production on Justice League.

Had Snyder been able to chart the story he wanted, per Snyder’s Justice League cut, maybe fans would have gotten a better-developed Lois.

Unfortunately, she became peripheral, with her potential wasted as she got reduced to just Superman’s love interest.

How Did Sharp Objects Create a Better Lois Lane?

Amy Adams’ Camille Has More Mental and Physical Hurdles In Solving Key Murders

In Sharp Objects, Adams played Camille, a reporter who left the city in St. Louis to head back to her small town in Missouri. There, she investigated the deaths of young girls.

As she did so for her newspaper, she had to battle demons of old. They involved alcoholism, self-harm, and revelations of a past filled with substance abuse, possible rape in high-school, and her mother, Adora, bullying her. She also lost a younger half-sister, Marian.

This gave Camille tremendous hurdles and a nuanced backstory. Camille had to navigate a lot of drama, including self-destructive flings in the present and the threat of being emotionally compromised in the case.

Adams offered up a heartbreaking, vulnerable and uncertain character that fans sympathized with as she encountered so many shady characters in the murder mystery.

This was the kind of connection DCEU fans wanted for Lois in her journey. Superman & Lois did that for Elizabeth Tulloch’s Lois, diving into the Lanes’ trauma and history more.

Sharp Objects Details

Adams’ Lois felt thin in terms of her past, barring a few throwaway lines here and there.

Such an approach could have added to her personality and explained her motivations better in life, such as why she liked Clark, why she wanted to be a reporter and why she hated capitalism and evil corporations.

In Camille’s case, the eight episodes fully fleshed out her idiosyncracies, strengths, flaws, and how she viewed things like life, love and family.

In the end, Camille’s sleuthing saw Adora thrown in jail for poisoning her daughters due to her Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Adora wanted to keep her daughters close to home, which led to Marian’s death, and the youngest sister, Amma, developing immunity in the HBO series.

Amma proved to be crucial in Camille’s detective work as well. She tried to corrupt Camille and bring back out her dark side.

The finale would see Camille taking her to St. Louis, only to find evidence and realize the teenager was the killer all along.

It was an abrupt cliffhanger to end the series, speaking to how conflicted Camille was as she ignored previous red flags. Such was the kind of family turmoil Lois encountered with her father, General Sam Lane, and sister, Lucy.

While Adams’ Lois didn’t get that kind of depth, Camille is, ultimately, a more grounded Lois whose doubt, guilt and self-loathing truly gnawed away at her mental health. That’s the kind of obstacle that would rock the usually-invincible Lois the most.