One Last Posting on Man of Steel

[Heronext]

By way of introduction, I'm not a Superman fan per se although I appreciate the place he has in the pantheon of comic book figures. Neither am I a big fan of excessive violence in movies and comics.

 

I'm not sure why people have a problem with Superman snapping Zod's neck, but don't seem to have a problem with him beating the snot out of him and countless other villains in comics over the years. In his blog post on this subject, Mark Waid says the Zod-Superman fight scene was the best super-being fight he had ever seen committed to film, just before he gives his reasons why depicting Superman taking a life to be the utmost disservice to the character. Does Superman have the power to judge the exact amount of force it takes to beat a villain into submission but not end his life? By beating the snot out of Zod what is he trying to do if not kill him? He is clearly going all out to subdue Zod by any means possible, and any one of the aggressive actions he took against Zod in that fight may have resulted in his death, intentionally or not.

 

What we really have here is a problem of comic book portrayal of violence. Without an examination of this, talking about Superman killing or not killing is jumping ahead. If Superman is truly, by character and by conscious decision, a being who never takes life, then he would likely be a true pacifist, a Buddhist, or at the very least, would have a completely different fighting style favoring non-lethal applications of force. I wouldn't have a problem with any of these characterizations if written consistently. The problem I have is with fanboys who enjoy the super-punching and super-throwing but believe counter-intuitively that this should never result in death.

 

Here are the changes I would have made. For one, the transition from fast-paced fight scene to train station submission hold was too abrupt. Superman's drawn-out "to kill or not to kill" dilemma fell flat to me. It was completely out of pace with what had come before. If Zod was to die, he should have died more gruesomely. The Seagal-esque snap of the neck felt like a let down after the exciting, over-the top destruction of the previous hour.

 

A cleverer way to defeat Zod would have been to trick him into the same vulnerable situation that Clark was in when he was on Zod's ship. In addition to being a nice callback to Superman II, it is a nice callback to the ship scene. Without a callback, what was the purpose of showing Clark as a vulnerable human?

 

I actually think Zod is the type of character, like Hitler, who would have committed suicide rather than live with the shame of his own failure. I would have had him throw himself into the black hole after Faora and his comrades. To draw out such a finish with a little drama, perhaps Zod transfers the Kryptonian Codex from Superman's body into his own, and therefore Superman tries to prevent Zod from killing himself in order to save the lives of unborn Kryptonians. Zod takes his own life and takes the lives of Kal-El's "descendants" with him. This would also be a nice unexpected twist on Zod's earlier statement that the fight would end with "one of them dead", since most viewers would assume he meant that either Superman would kill Zod or vice versa.

[Alawson453]

Ok folks no one has thought to mention that we never actually saw Zod's cold dead body at the end of movie. Snapping the neck of a normal human being we know is certain death, but what about a kryptonian under a yellow sun?

We all know how easy it is for a writer to simply come up with a reason that Zod could have survived that battle. Heck didn't Superman come back from the dead? I think Zod is made of a little tougher material and is far to important of a character in the DC Universe moving forward, especially where the movies are concerned. Can you imagine the rematch if they actually bring him back!

[Heronext]

Ok folks no one has thought to mention that we never actually saw Zod's cold dead body at the end of movie. Snapping the neck of a normal human being we know is certain death, but what about a kryptonian under a yellow sun?

We all know how easy it is for a writer to simply come up with a reason that Zod could have survived that battle. Heck didn't Superman come back from the dead? I think Zod is made of a little tougher material and is far to important of a character in the DC Universe moving forward, especially where the movies are concerned. Can you imagine the rematch if they actually bring him back!

 

Exactly, which is why it was a lame way for him to die anyway. Detractors have a point however because taking this film on its own merits, Superman's decision to take a life was obviously the main thrust of the ending.

 

More interesting: Zod throws himself into the black hole, actually portal to anti-matter universe, Michael Shannon comes back as Bizarro.

 

Also, the blood extracted from Superman on Zod's ship used to create Superboy.

[Alawson453]

Origin Bomb you make a great point, I totally forgot all about the blood they extracted once the fighting began. Oh my that does leave the door open for almost anything. I'm betting good ole Lexy Boy ends up with the blood anyone want to lay odds on that one!