A New Generation of Superman Fan

[manofsteel1979]

Tell that to Zod's snapped neck #MuhSuperman

Tell that to Donner Zod's frozen corpse that is laying several hundred feet below the fortress of solitude after his Supes rendered him powerless then crushed his hand, tossed him into a chasm.

Or to the green Kryptonite poisoned corpse of Zod burried under a pile of rocks on a barren wasteland after Byrne Supes removed his powers then still slowly poisoned him to death.

[Ascended]

YES! Everytime I see people bashing Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, they are doing it that way as if like Henry Cavill's Superman did nothing good at all, while pople who loved those movies are concentrated on the good stuff that Superman did. Remember that girl he saved from the burning building? One of the best scenes that everyone remembers... But why should that matter if he kills Doomsday at the end, duh?

I wonder what people wanted Superman to do in that exact situtation in Man of Steel? Keep beating Zod, who made it clear that he will kill every living human being? Let Zod kill family and later figure out how to stop him, just because? I don't remember comic book Superman every being put in such kind of a situation and Man of Steel's Superman did the right thing that was necesarry at the very moment. Was it wrong? Maybe. Did it hurt him? Definitely. Could it have been resolved without further deaths of civillians, but with Zod staying alive? Definitely not, because no Phantom Zone or Kryptonite at the moment of the movie.

Clark's been put in a no-win scenario in the comics. He threw Imperiex and B13 into the Big Bang in one case, which was intended to destroy (ie, KILL) them. He wasn't in a no-win scenario when he threw Darkseid into the Source Wall, and that's as close to a death sentence as a New God can get so I call it an execution. And done only because Clark was angry. The Bryne-era Phantom Zone criminals weren't really a no-win scenario, and I truly dislike that killing because the odds of them escaping was so slim....but at the same time I can sort of see the reasoning; if they did somehow escape and re-gain their powers Clark might never stop them again, and more to the point, leaving them on a dead world in a pocket universe means letting them starve to death, probably after eating each other. K-execution was a mercy, depending on how you look at it. Depending on how you think Clark's powers work, he allowed Russian Zod to die in a battle that might be close to a no-win scenario, or at least a fight with real crap odds.

Those "man of murder" complaints really annoy me. Superman has killed several times in the comics (not even counting the Golden Age). There is more than enough precedence for what happened in MoS. You dont have to like it, but saying its out of character just illustrates a lack of knowledge. Clark's "no kill" policy only applies until it doesnt.

[GreatKungLao]

Clark's been put in a no-win scenario in the comics. He threw Imperiex and B13 into the Big Bang in one case, which was intended to destroy (ie, KILL) them. He wasn't in a no-win scenario when he threw Darkseid into the Source Wall, and that's as close to a death sentence as a New God can get so I call it an execution. And done only because Clark was angry. The Bryne-era Phantom Zone criminals weren't really a no-win scenario, and I truly dislike that killing because the odds of them escaping was so slim....but at the same time I can sort of see the reasoning; if they did somehow escape and re-gain their powers Clark might never stop them again, and more to the point, leaving them on a dead world in a pocket universe means letting them starve to death, probably after eating each other. K-execution was a mercy, depending on how you look at it. Depending on how you think Clark's powers work, he allowed Russian Zod to die in a battle that might be close to a no-win scenario, or at least a fight with real crap odds.

Those "man of murder" complaints really annoy me. Superman has killed several times in the comics (not even counting the Golden Age). There is more than enough precedence for what happened in MoS. You dont have to like it, but saying its out of character just illustrates a lack of knowledge. Clark's "no kill" policy only applies until it doesnt.

Should we even mention that Superman killing Doomsday is considered an iconic moment in comic book history?

[The Kid]

I want Superman to have a new generation of fans but BvS didn't do him any favors. Even among the people I know like the movie, they talk about Batman and Wonder Woman before they do Superman. And this ain't the 70s anymore. Back then in pop culture, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man were pretty much the only names in the game. With the MCU, there is a hell lot more competition. Batman got lucky with the Nolan trilogy and Arkham games so he should be good. But Superman needs to quickly make an impact on the movie-going audience soon because being 'iconic' in itself doesn't really mean much

[NK1988]

It's been a long time since I saw Superman II. Is it true Superman mindwipes Lois?

Like, killing a genocidal, nigh-unstoppable maniac like Zod is one thing.

Forcing you rway into the love of your life's mind and doing what you please with it is...much more disturbing. Why isn't this brought up more?

[GreatKungLao]

I want Superman to have a new generation of fans but BvS didn't do him any favors. Even among the people I know like the movie, they talk about Batman and Wonder Woman before they do Superman. And this ain't the 70s anymore. Back then in pop culture, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man were pretty much the only names in the game. With the MCU, there is a hell lot more competition. Batman got lucky with the Nolan trilogy and Arkham games so he should be good. But Superman needs to quickly make an impact on the movie-going audience soon because being 'iconic' in itself doesn't really mean much

Which is why 5-15 minutes of Superman in Justice League should be the best minutes of the entire movie.

[DochaDocha]

YES! Everytime I see people bashing Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, they are doing it that way as if like Henry Cavill's Superman did nothing good at all, while pople who loved those movies are concentrated on the good stuff that Superman did. Remember that girl he saved from the burning building? One of the best scenes that everyone remembers... But why should that matter if he kills Doomsday at the end, duh?

I wonder what people wanted Superman to do in that exact situtation in Man of Steel? Keep beating Zod, who made it clear that he will kill every living human being? Let Zod kill family and later figure out how to stop him, just because? I don't remember comic book Superman every being put in such kind of a situation and Man of Steel's Superman did the right thing that was necesarry at the very moment. Was it wrong? Maybe. Did it hurt him? Definitely. Could it have been resolved without further deaths of civillians, but with Zod staying alive? Definitely not, because no Phantom Zone or Kryptonite at the moment of the movie.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I also have a bureaucratic sense of technical over-analysis, so combined with devil's advocate, here are some ideas for what Superman could've done without specifically going for the kill:

1) Yes, keep beating Zod senseless is an option. Again, technically speaking, if a guy says "I'm going to kill everyone," you don't know if his stance would change if you change the circumstances. Zod was in a situation where he thought he had the advantage and that he would kill Kal-El first, and then kill everyone else afterward. If Superman gets the upper hand, and then starts beating the crap out of him, it's a reasonable time to renegotiate, a sort of "surrender or take more punishment" ultimatum.

2) A fair question to ask would be could Superman have redirected Zod's heat vision so that the family could escape? If so, then snapping Zod's neck then and there was not necessarily the only option that would've allowed the family to survive.

3) Could Superman have rendered Zod unconscious? He was using a fairly typical grappling move where, if applied with enough force, one human could make another human pass out by cutting off the blood supply to the brain. Of course, that's works thanks to hypoxia, which may altogether be irrelevant to solar-powered Kryptonians, so this is less valid than 1) or 2).

I understand what Snyder was trying to accomplish here, but I would disagree from a bureaucratic and semantic point of view that Superman had no choices to save that family but to kill Zod. In fact, I have to wonder if Snyder could've even made it an accidental killing, in which Superman didn't make a conscious decision to kill Zod, but did something out of desperation with the intent to disable Zod, but it was so powerful that he ended up killing the guy. Furthermore, if an accidental killing were portrayed, it could even create a point of emphasis in the narrative that Superman has to be extra careful about unleashing his full potential, because a lack of focus is going to have unintended, catastrophic consequences.

With this in consideration, if you had to retain Zod's death at Superman's hands, I probably would've had Superman start heat visioning Zod's head and pleading with him to stop, and only after Zod's continued defiance, Superman turned up the heat (pun intended) until Zod's brain got nuked instead of painfully singed. I would liken it to some poor Chemistry 101 student trying to buffer his solution and seeing the solution remained crystal clear, but was under a time crunch so he sped up the drip mechanism on the pipette, only to see too much solute fall into the solvent and the whole thing turned rose pink and the experiment was a bust. Yes, I intentionally picked the nerdiest analogy I could come up with at this time.

#ManOfManslaughter

(j/k)

[misslane]

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I also have a bureaucratic sense of technical over-analysis, so combined with devil's advocate, here are some ideas for what Superman could've done without specifically going for the kill:

1) Yes, keep beating Zod senseless is an option. Again, technically speaking, if a guy says "I'm going to kill everyone," you don't know if his stance would change if you change the circumstances. Zod was in a situation where he thought he had the advantage and that he would kill Kal-El first, and then kill everyone else afterward. If Superman gets the upper hand, and then starts beating the crap out of him, it's a reasonable time to renegotiate, a sort of "surrender or take more punishment" ultimatum.

2) A fair question to ask would be could Superman have redirected Zod's heat vision so that the family could escape? If so, then snapping Zod's neck then and there was not necessarily the only option that would've allowed the family to survive.

3) Could Superman have rendered Zod unconscious? He was using a fairly typical grappling move where, if applied with enough force, one human could make another human pass out by cutting off the blood supply to the brain. Of course, that's works thanks to hypoxia, which may altogether be irrelevant to solar-powered Kryptonians, so this is less valid than 1) or 2).

I understand what Snyder was trying to accomplish here, but I would disagree from a bureaucratic and semantic point of view that Superman had no choices to save that family but to kill Zod. In fact, I have to wonder if Snyder could've even made it an accidental killing, in which Superman didn't make a conscious decision to kill Zod, but did something out of desperation with the intent to disable Zod, but it was so powerful that he ended up killing the guy. Furthermore, if an accidental killing were portrayed, it could even create a point of emphasis in the narrative that Superman has to be extra careful about unleashing his full potential, because a lack of focus is going to have unintended, catastrophic consequences.

With this in consideration, if you had to retain Zod's death at Superman's hands, I probably would've had Superman start heat visioning Zod's head and pleading with him to stop, and only after Zod's continued defiance, Superman turned up the heat (pun intended) until Zod's brain got nuked instead of painfully singed. I would liken it to some poor Chemistry 101 student trying to buffer his solution and seeing the solution remained crystal clear, but was under a time crunch so he sped up the drip mechanism on the pipette, only to see too much solute fall into the solvent and the whole thing turned rose pink and the experiment was a bust. Yes, I intentionally picked the nerdiest analogy I could come up with at this time.

#ManOfManslaughter

(j/k)

Zod can't be reasoned with or contained. He is genetically programmed to preserve Krypton and to conquer. He is also superpowered, so temporary unconsciousness or imprisonment won't work. Superman didn't just kill Zod because of the immediate threat to the family. He killed him because in that moment he saw that Zod would never stop and could never stop, and that even if he had saved the family, Zod would have just found another family. It would never end, so he had to end it. I thought this was an interesting take on the issue.

[beetee]

Tell that to Donner Zod's frozen corpse that is laying several hundred feet below the fortress of solitude after his Supes rendered him powerless then crushed his hand, tossed him into a chasm..

You know I've generally kept out of this... But that remark is just a steaming load. I saw it in 1980, never for one moment did I think "murder" happened. And we know for a fact that it wasn't shot that way. The scene with Zod being carried away in cuffs, was cut for time. No way was the intent to show Superman grinningly killing someone. This fake news factoid is brought up to take a steaming dump on the Donner era Superman by the MOS fan brigade. It's not that Superman hasn't killed before. But there are much better examples..... Even one from the Silver Age animated series The Adventures of Superman where he knowingly kills The Parasite.

[misslane]

You know I've generally kept out of this... But that remark is just a steaming load. I saw it in 1980, never for one moment did I think "murder" happened. And we know for a fact that it wasn't shot that way. The scene with Zod being carried away in cuffs, was cut for time. No way was the intent to show Superman grinningly killing someone. This fake news factoid is brought up to take a steaming dump on the Donner era Superman by the MOS fan brigade. It's not that Superman hasn't killed before. But there are much better examples..... Even one from the Silver Age animated series The Adventures of Superman where he knowingly kills The Parasite.

It's not fake if the final cut of the movie leaves it ambiguous with the most logical prognosis for a mortal being who plummeted a great distance in the cold being death. Even the decision to cut such an important clarifying scene speaks to the mindset of the filmmakers who, in your view, chose time over morality in terms of what was more important to them.

[Sacred Knight]

You know I've generally kept out of this... But that remark is just a steaming load. I saw it in 1980, never for one moment did I think "murder" happened. And we know for a fact that it wasn't shot that way. The scene with Zod being carried away in cuffs, was cut for time. No way was the intent to show Superman grinningly killing someone. This fake news factoid is brought up to take a steaming dump on the Donner era Superman by the MOS fan brigade. It's not that Superman hasn't killed before. But there are much better examples..... Even one from the Silver Age animated series The Adventures of Superman where he knowingly kills The Parasite.

I did. Lots of others did. Its an ambiguous scene in the way it was presented theatrically. The fact it wasn't shot that way doesn't change the impression the actual released cut made on many. And it has nothing to do with dumping on the Donner films to build up MOS. I figured Zod, Non, and Ursa died when I was little kid all the way up to the present day. This isn't something that people go back and put a new spin on just a couple years ago because they wanted to save face with Man of Steel. This has been something argued and debated long before MOS was even a project.

[FishyZombie]

I'm fine with Supes killing Zod, he basically had no choice, plus he did it in the comics and in Superman 2. And I blame the destruction of Metropolis on Zod. It's Clark letting someone get sucked into a tornado, because he didn't wanna risk his secret getting out, that killed my interest in this interpretation. And that was his dad of all people! I don't care what pretentious excuses you give about the world not being ready, To me, Superman does not put his own well being over somebody else's life.

[Superlad93]

It's not fake if the final cut of the movie leaves it ambiguous with the most logical prognosis for a mortal being who plummeted a great distance in the cold being death. Even the decision to cut such an important clarifying scene speaks to the mindset of the filmmakers who, in your view, chose time over morality in terms of what was more important to them.

I'd say such a factoid is irreverent when put into the context of its movie. The final cut of that movie is basically a cartoon that happens to be played using real people. Superman and his powers are basically magic, and work under the most tentative of explanations. I mean, even by comic book standards, flying around the world a dozen time real, real fast, and spinning it backwards, and then forwards again doesn't equal time travel. It equals everyone on the planet being dead. The world basically bends to Superman's redefined laws of reality. Thus Zod and his crew falling into nothingness is more akin to shuffling a player(s) off a stage due to their usefulness being used up, and not really murder. No one complained about it because they spent 1 and a half movies getting you used to the rules of the world.

I feel the same when people make hyperbolic statements about Superman blowing up a city and having no morals. It's all without context, and thus you can bend it to whatever suits your argument best. I mean, Tom and Jerry's pretty f$%ked up when you take it out of the context of its world.

[Flash Gordon]

Not very good quality but I'm still just going to leave this here...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x348jr3

One of my favorite episodes but also one that lingered with me.

[misslane]

I'd say such a factoid is irreverent when put into the context of its movie. The final cut of that movie is basically a cartoon that happens to be played using real people. Superman and his powers are basically magic, and work under the most tentative of explanations. I mean, even by comic book standards, flying around the world a dozen time real, real fast, and spinning it backwards, and then forwards again doesn't equal time travel. It equals everyone on the planet being dead. The world basically bends to Superman's redefined laws of reality. Thus Zod and his crew falling into nothingness is more akin to shuffling a player(s) off a stage due to their usefulness being used up, and not really murder. No one complained about it because they spent 1 and a half movies getting you used to the rules of the world.

I feel the same when people make hyperbolic statements about Superman blowing up a city and having no morals. It's all without contextless and thus you can bend it to whatever suits your argument best. I mean, Tom and Jerry's pretty f$%ked up when you take it out of the context of its world.

That's even worse, then. A Superman movie so cartoonish that it desensitizes and trivializes violence and murder is a terrible thing, in my opinion.