Superman's killing Zod in 'Man of Steel' was justified, and other random 'Batman v. Superman' thoughts

Say "Uncle"

My review of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was thorough, but it left unsaid some random thought fragments I have about Batman, Superman, and Batman vs. Superman. If I didn't have a blog, nobody would ever hear these half-developed thoughts, and they would wait forever in my mind's inner recesses, primed to leap out at the first conversational opportunity. But now I have a blog --which you must know, since you're reading it right now--so I can publish these thoughts and make myself think that they're being read, even if they really aren't. At any rate, here they are, in no specific order:

-As I teased in the title of this blogpost, I didn't really have much of a problem with Superman killing General Zod in Man of Steel, and that's not because I really liked Man of Steel (I didn't). Superman was in a difficult moral situation: Zod was threatening to kill more innocents, and made it clear he wouldn't stop unless he himself were stopped.


I think that scene is actually one of the best moments--maybe the best moment--in what I consider a mediocre (at best) movie overall. Plus, morally speaking, you could make a principle of double effect case that Superman made the best choice in a difficult situation (and was pretty anguished about it). Finally, it's worth remembering that Superman pretty clearly killed Zod the last time they fought in film (the critically-beloved Superman II), in arguably murkier moral circumstances, while smiling:


There are many arguments against Man of Steel, but Superman's killing Zod is not one of them.

-Although my review of Batman v. Superman was pretty scathing, and although I greeted the movie's initial announcement and ongoing production with much skepticism, I tried really hard to like it. And part of me wanted--and maybe still wants--to give it the benefit of the doubt. Alas, Batman v. Superman made that very hard to do. In my review, I included one paragraph of pure positives:

All sorts of convoluted things happen to get us to the point where Batman and Superman actually fight. Some of them are intriguing. The opening scenes of the film, which restage the final battle of Man of Steel from the ground-level perspective of Bruce Wayne, portray a unique helplessness and impotence in the face of catastrophe (although so did The Avengers, really). Bruce Wayne himself, to whom we are introduced in this sequence, is, once again, an interesting character, and does a fine job with the Wayne/Batman the script asks him to play. Every once in a while, Luthor, despite his bizarre characterization, says something mildly clever ("The shortest distance between two points is a straight path...and the straightest path to Superman is a pretty little road called Lois Lane"). These and other elements hint at the good movie that is buried somewhere deep within Batman v. Superman.

I wanted to make this paragraph longer. I thought there must be more justification than that to my somewhat ineffable feeling that Batman v. Superman is better than I thought it was. But there wasn't. Or, at least, I couldn't think of anything else to put in that paragraph.

-It was weird seeing Batman v. Superman in Washington, D.C. It's not a spoiler to reveal that many of its key scenes are set (but I don't believe were actually filmed) there*. It was weird to run by some of these places the very next day**. I had a similar sensation when I watched the similarly-D.C. set Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But by that point, I had only spent two summers in the city, and I saw The Winter Soldier while I was living in California.

-Before I saw Batman v. Superman, I wrote in praise of the first time the two characters met in the DC Animated Universe. You can read that full article here. I'm particularly proud of my close reading of this scene:

You have Batman’s brutality and brooding, matched with its own theme, set against Superman’s gentle, optimistic, yet firm overtures, musical and otherwise. The untrusting loner Batman rebuffs him violently; Superman, miffed, restrains himself but still physically checks Batman, and uses X-Ray vision to discern his secret identity. “I won’t have vigilantism in my city,” Superman protests. But Batman catches Superman off-guard; Superman then fails to notice both Batman’s furtive exit and Batman’s tracking him to his own apartment. When Batman learns Superman’s secret identity through “powers” of his own, Superman can only utter a bitter “Touché” in acknowledgement of an equal.

I also made some predictions about how Batman v. Superman would measure up to the cartoon:

If Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice’s trailers are any indication, Snyder will replace Batman and Superman’s unique, contrasting themes with a leaden darkness. He’ll replace their complex dynamic with heightened asymmetry: an overpowered Superman and a mecha-Batman. He’ll replace a faux-antagonistic friendly rivalry with an actual fight, aspiring to impossible pretensions of realism. We’ll probably not learn more about Batman’s and Superman’s characters from Snyder’s bombastic set piece battle than from the cartoon’s brief initial confrontation.

Each of these predictions proved accurate. I don't have much to add to my own words aside from that, except for more praise of the cartoon. Seriously, it is awesome. Watching it again, well over a decade after I saw it for the first time, I was even more impressed with it than I expected to be (similar to what happened when I rewatched Samurai Jack). I was particularly surprised that the cartoon confrontation had some sequences that live-action films appeared to steal decades later, including:

-A superheroic rescue of the President of the United States in Air Force One (reworked in Iron Man 3)
-The Joker appearing by surprise at a gang meeting, overcoming initial skepticism/the threat of brute force, and taking over the gang (reworked in The Dark Knight)
-The Joker appearing by surprise at a rooftop banquet at which Bruce Wayne is in attendance, and forcing a main character off the roof in an attempted murder (also in The Dark Knight)

The people behind the DCAU not only mastered the basics of storytelling. They also really figured out how to treat those characters seriously while not getting lost in pretentiousness at the same time. I stand by my assertion that they would do a better job with the emerging DC Cinematic Universe than Zack Snyder. Don't believe me? You can watch the whole thing here.

-I really hope that future DC movies aren't all like Batman v. Superman. The outsize role Zack Snyder is playing in building that universe suggests they might be; the fact that DC is hiring very stylistically diverse directors and (supposedly) giving them creative freedom suggests they might not be. We'll see, I suppose.


*It is, however, a spoiler to reveal that the U.S. Capitol Building explodes. My theater was completely silent when that happened.
**Including a funeral scene that rips directly off of the one in the far-superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.