A lot of pearl clutching and catching of the vapors has been happening with Superman fans since the opening of the MAN OF STEEL movie a few weeks ago largely because of an action that Superman takes at the end of the film. Turn back if you have yet to see the movie or have a general aversion to spoilers because there is a big one after the jump.
OK, so at the end of MAN OF STEEL during the climactic battle between Superman and General Zod, Superman is forced to snap Zod’s neck to keep Zod from using his heat vision to murder a group of innocent bystanders. This act seemed perfectly reasonable to be based on the circumstances yet some folks (mostly longtime comic book readers or devoted fans of the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve movies) lost their minds in righteous outrage that Superman would actually kill someone.
“Superman doesn’t kill!”
“Superman always finds a way to stop villains without killing them!”
“Superman killing Zod was totally out of character!”
Well I hate to break it to the folks that got upset at Superman taking a life but MAN OF STEEL was not the first time Superman has ever killed anyone and to drive the point home even more it wasn’t even the first time that Superman has killed General Zod!
For the comic book readers: back in the 1982 when legendary comics pro John Byrne was in control of the character he had Superman kill Zod and his Kryptonian cronies.
Zod and his pals were doing awful things like they are known to do (it involved genocide on the Earth of a pocket universe…don’t ask) and after a prolonged battle Superman was able to not only defeat them but make them powerless using Gold Kryptonite (again…don’t ask). Superman locks up the powerless Kryptonian criminals on the now lifeless planet Earth and you’d think that would be that but nope it’s not. Zod boasts that Superman is a big pussy and sooner or later Zod and his pals would get their powers back and come to Superman’s universe where they would do the same thing to his Earth that they did to the one they were presently on. That threat was the straw that broke the camel’s back so Superman whipped out some Original Formula Green Kryptonite and killed all three of the bad guys.
This act sent Superman on a tailspin where he had a psychotic break becoming a rough-edged vigilante known as Gangbuster who was a bit more extreme with the bad guys than Superman would normally be and then he exiled himself from Earth for a bit.
Now for the Donner/Reeves fanboys we come to SUPERMAN 2: In this film Zod, Non and Ursa have taken over the USA, beaten up Superman, kidnapped Lois Lane and dragged taken Superman adn his lady love to the Fortress of Solitude to use some wacky machine that would take away Superman’s powers but instead Supes pulls a switcheroo and the bad guys lose their powers instead. It is then that Superman decides the best course of action to dealing with a powerless Zod is to break his hand and then chuck him into a bottomless chasm. Then he watches as poor dimwitted Non tries to fly and ends up falling into the same bottomless chasm that Superman just tossed Zod into. Not wanting to be left out of what had become quite the bloodthirsty date night, Lois took it upon herself to knock Ursa down the bottomless chasm too.
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Why Superman didn’t continue his wanton supervillain slaughtering and get rid of Lex Luthor too I will never quite understand.
Now there are some who will be quick to point out that Richard Donner filmed scenes showing Zod, Non and Ursa being hauled off to jail but to that I say bullshit!. The movie that the world watched had Superman murdering Zod, doing nothing to prevent a mentally challenged adult from killing himself and then having a look of smug self-satisfaction as his girlfriend kills the remaining bad guy.
So to all of the whiners upset over Superman killing I say: Suck it up! Superman has plenty of blood on his hands over his 75 years of existence and most of it is General Zod’s.
Crustula 
I read the issue you’re referring to, Derek. I’ve loved Superman comics for as long as I can remember and I can honestly say that I had no problem with the scene in Man of Steel.
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I didn’t expect so many people to lose their shit over his killing Zod. it seemed like a perfectly acceptable thing for Superman to do even discounting his previous kills in other movies and the comics.
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Killing Zod was just the tip of the emo iceberg with Man of Steel. Aside from the fact that Superman was told by his father that he’s supposed to be the guardian of his adopted homeworld, and represent hope, the entire middle section of the film was Clark showing absolutely no regard for the safety of others while battling the Kryptonians, collapsing skyscrapers in Metropolis, dragging the battle through strip malls in Smallville. Some hero. Of course, that crazy super-destruction gives the film the only thing it had, eye-candy, because it had little heart and soul and zero intelligence: this is the stereotypical film that people who look down their noses at superhero material think all of it is, and they were proven dead right.
At no point did Kal try to draw them out and away, nor did we see any sort of remorse on his part for his actions. We just moved on like nothing happened — except for Clark showing up for his first day of work dressed, of course, in head-to-toe black.
What was Clark ‘supposed’ to do? He shouldn’t have been put in that situation by the writers in the first place. If that’s the way to make Superman ‘relevant’ to a modern audience, snapping necks, that’s a poor reflection on our culture.
This entire film was a weak-ass attempt at making Superman more ‘cool’ to a certain demographic, which was apparently thirteen year olds who haunt Hot Topic and listen to A Bullet For My Valentine. I got disgusted about the second time the word ‘dick’ was used in the dialogue — as, I think a lot of people were — I saw the film at a drive-in and there were several families with kids that packed up and left at about the halfway point through the film.
Superman is pretty much a thing for kids — whether actual kids or those that are kids at heart, and it would’ve been nice to have one superhero that was a little on the wholesome, fun, retro side. Disney / Marvel was smart enough to tone down some of the elements of Iron Man to make it have a more family-friendly appeal — yeah, seeing Tony’s ‘Demon in a Bottle’ alcoholism would’ve been a powerful story, but they decided not to take it there, and clearly they didn’t need to. It’s a pretty sad statement when Tony Stark is a better role model than Clark Kent.
My level of respect for Chris Nolan is non-existent. It’s really not that hard to do Batman right, Superman *is* a little more of a challenge, and rather than go for the golden ring, he and his writing pal Goyer copped out and went for lowest-common denominator.
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See I tended to give the movie a pass on the whole collateral damage/taking the fight away from bystanders stuff because I looked at this as not even Superman: Year One but rather Superman: Day One. Clark had never been in any type of a fight before let alone with people who had the same powers as he does and who are trained in battle so he didn’t perform like the fully formed Superman that we are all familiar with would perform.
And that being said there were examples of Clark trying to take the fight away from Smallville when he tried to fly away from the Big Kryptonian but got grabbed and grounded plus during that fight he was trying to protect the soldiers. As for the Zod fight, well I don’t think Zod was going to give him a chance to fly away to a deserted location and doping so was out of the question anyway because Zod made it known that he planned on killing as many humans as possible so while Superman is flying to the Sahara Zod would have probably stuck around Metropolis murdering people.
And I recall that in Superman 2 a veteran Superman did nothing to lead the Kryptonians away from Metropolis for their fight either so I can give a complete rookie Superman a break.
I guess the way a person feels about this movie has more to do with preconceived notions about Superman and what one was expecting in this new version. I liked the Donner/Reeve movies but that depiction was not what I consider the de facto Superman because it was far too cheesy and full of cornball for me so I was not looking for a continuation of that vibe in Man of Steel. what I was looking for was to finally see a Superman movie that actually showed Superman in action sequences that let the character cut loose power wise and this movie delivered that in spades while at the same time I enjoyed the slight tweaks to the mythology of the character especially the new take on the Lois Lane relationship.
And I really don’t look for a movie based on a comic book to have be “family friendly” that idea is what made Iron Man 3 such a disaster as a film and it was only made entertaining off the strength of Robert Downey Jr’s great performance and the enjoyable action sequences.
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That argument has been laughable ever since I saw bad reviews for the film. I did research and counted 13 deaths by superman and like you said he killed Zod in superman II 😀
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