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Post #905182

Author
DrCrowTStarwarsreborn
Parent topic
Ranking the Superman films
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/905182/action/topic#905182
Date created
7-Feb-2016, 12:28 AM

suspiciouscoffee said:

For the record, I am honestly not Anti-Zod Killing. There were probably 5 or 6 different alternatives in that situation but the idea they were going for is a good one, if execution isn’t great.

But… did you just compare MoS to “older comics”? How old are we talking here? You seem to have a strange definition of old. Radio dramas I cannot compare because I have not listened to those but when I think of Golden, Silver, Bronze, or even modern comic Superman, I don’t think of anything close to what MoS gave.

No, I wouldn’t be mad at a cop for breaking my window, I’d be mad if the cop blew up the neighborhood to catch one guy.

I would like to know what those options were when Zod was seconds from killing two kids and he had proved he was as strong as Superman and he was a better fighter and that was the first time Superman had the upper hand in the fight.

Oh and you only have to look at the ending of Superman 2. In that movie Superman throws a petty bully across a truck stop and into a pinball machine is such a manor that if it didn’t out right kill the man it would leave him crippled for life, then he just turns around and smiles about it.

At least the Superman in man of Steel is really upset by what just happened, the Superman in Superman 2 just grins about what he did.

Then there is Zod’s fate at the end of that same movie, after Zod has lost his powers and is no threat to anyone first Superman breaks his hands in a manor where the sound of the bones being crush can be heard all the way across the room and Zod is clearly in extreme pain, then he tosses Zod and his followers who are no direct threat to anyone and could be taken to jail, into a pit made of solid crystal that we can’t see the bottom of to either die when they hit the ground or slowly freeze to death. Remember how weak Clark was after having his powers removed, that is how weak Zod and his followers are so there is no way they lived, and that scene of them being taken away is a deleted scene and deleted scenes can’t be counted or we may as well count ideas from other drafts of the screenplay as well, so based on what we see on screen Superman kills a Zod who is no threat to anyone and he is grinning ear to ear while he does it, and yet he lets Lex live, when he fired off two nukes in the last movie.

In the comics and radio shows of the 40s Superman was always beating up petty thugs and wife beaters and the like who were no threat to him in order to in his words “Give them a taste of their own medicine”, then he would beat people up to get information out of them, and threaten to do things like toss them ten miles out into the ocean and leave them to drown, or drop them from the top of a skyscraper, and these were mostly people who didn’t pose any kind of threat to him. Then there is the one case in the radio show where after a gangster has used Krytonite on him and he gets his powers back he fulfills he promise of getting revenge by killing all the gangsters in the hideout who now pose no threat to him. Superman could reach the levels of Jack from 24 if someone made him mad.

Now even if Superman stuck to the moral code that has been laid out by some in the old movies(and he didn’t)that code was an invention of the 1970s almost 40 years ago, so if it is okay for a film maker to pattern Superman after a 40 year old version of the character like in say Superman Returns, is it really wrong for another film maker to go back 70 years and pattern their big screen version of Superman after the version in the 1940s?

Please understand I am not saying anyone has to like it, everyone has their favorite versions of long running fictional characters. I am just saying that the version in Man of Steel is legitimate, it’s just it’s a version that hasn’t been seen in a while and I can’t see that anything he did was any more morally wrong then anything done by any other big screen version of Superman and remember Superman the movie is one of my top ten films of all time, so I have nothing against the Reeve version of Superman. I just don’t have anything against the other versions as well.

To be honest I have to say I think the radio version, where spies and gangsters, and hate groups are huge problems Superman has to deal with and they sometimes get him mad, is the most interesting and my favorite version of the Superman universe. Then again that is just me and I am not known for being too smart so your taste may vary. I would say if you can get a hold of them give the old radio shows a chance, once you get passed some of the more childish early episodes and the show comes into it’s own it does some very brave and adult takes on problems like corrupt city officials and hate groups, and it makes for some exciting stories and they do proper crossovers with batman and robin that make sense and work. It really is a good show and well worth the listen and a lot of the elements that make up modern Superman were invented on the show.

Oh well I guess we will all have to agree to disagree. I think taking the long view Superman didn’t do anything wrong in Man of steel and it wasn’t out of character.

I think one of the points of Man of Steel that we will not see for a while is that it was trying to prove to the average person that the old stand up bit about Superman not needing a Justice League is wrong and that there can be threats that will be too much for him and he needs help with, i think that is the way these films are going but that is just speculation, so i think we will just have to disagree on this point.