Superman destroyed Metropolis
- Thread starter Ranorak
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Sorry for the doublepost. I didn't notice this one while I was typing.
Except he didn't do that. Hell, he didn't even look straight at that family he was ostensibly going to kill with his death-glare, which leads me back to an old argument I've made before: Zod wasn't actually interested in killing humans. The damage he inflicted seemed collateral to me. I think his goal was to try to force Kal-El to kill him so he, Zod, wouldn't have to live with having failed his mission and being deprived of his people and his planet forever. I am deeply disappointed Kal-El did not figure this out.DrOswald said:
You are aware that 'maybe' doesn't mean 'yes', right? As I said earlier in this thread: 'Pa Kent DID NOT tell Clark to let those kids die, he said MAYBE, meaning I DON'T KNOW. He doesn't have all the answers, he knows that sometimes Clark is going to have to make hard decisions. He knows that the world might react negatively to him (and as shown in the BvS trailer, they will), so for him to reveal himself at such a young and impressionable age is a bad idea.'Casual Shinji said:
That is possible, but if that is true then he was not shy about letting humans die (or even causing their direct deaths) as part of his suicide by superman.JimB said:
I think we can say for sure that during the fight Zod was not particularly interested in killing humans. He might have gone on to murder the entire species if he won, he might have not, we can't really know. What we do know is that he was not bothered in any way about the humans dying - and he was perfectly willing to cause thousands of them die to get what he wanted, even if what he wanted was suicide by superman. Saying that what Zod really wanted was to be killed by Superman doesn't really fix anything. If Superman stopped trying to kill him I see no reason Zod would not force the issue by whatever means he had available, ie, killing humans until Superman was forced to deal with it.
How can you say Zod wasn't willing/trying to kill humans? His terraforming device was going to kill every human on the planet so that Kryptonians could live there. That pretty much shows his willingness to kill humans. He didn't give a damn about them. Now I do agree that he was likely trying to just die in a Blaze of Glory kind of way. Dying in battle like the warrior he was, but he didn't care if he killed people in the process. Humans were already a liability to his plans. Those plans being ruined wouldn't suddenly make him feel that sparing humans was the way to go.DrOswald said:
You know, I am fine with Superman killing Zod, and I am fine with their fight leveling an entire city. The thing that bothered me was that he never gets out of his way to protect anyone. Granted, my memories of the movie are a little far, and can't recall details as well as people that just watched the DVD, but I seem to recall the final fight as a pure brawl like there was no one there aside of them. At no point (up to the final moments) Superman has to stop fighting to keep a plane full of people out of danger, or push Zod aside to prevent him from crashing into an orphanage or anything. In fact, everything that they throw at each other is shrugged aside as if it were empty props...
Not that it would fix the movie, but it would make the whole "I choose to break this Kryptonian guy neck to save this family" angst a little more earned, because up to that point neither of them cared a lot about how many people were killed on one side or another.
And erase everything about Dad Costner. His character writing was god awful. He makes stupid choices all over the movie and raises his son to have the moral compass of a paranoid, apathetic bastard. How he grows up to be a beacon of hope instead of a reclusive, fearful screw up is beyond me, because it likely won't be from quality moments like "maybe you should have let you classmates die a slow death instead of helping them", and "don't come, because we all know you could save me in the blink of an eye without no one even noticing, but watching me die dramatically knowing that you could prevent it but didn't because people are bad and fearful, is a more important life lesson".
Not that it would fix the movie, but it would make the whole "I choose to break this Kryptonian guy neck to save this family" angst a little more earned, because up to that point neither of them cared a lot about how many people were killed on one side or another.
And erase everything about Dad Costner. His character writing was god awful. He makes stupid choices all over the movie and raises his son to have the moral compass of a paranoid, apathetic bastard. How he grows up to be a beacon of hope instead of a reclusive, fearful screw up is beyond me, because it likely won't be from quality moments like "maybe you should have let you classmates die a slow death instead of helping them", and "don't come, because we all know you could save me in the blink of an eye without no one even noticing, but watching me die dramatically knowing that you could prevent it but didn't because people are bad and fearful, is a more important life lesson".
Actually, I specifically said he was willing to kill the humans. From my post:Happyninja42 said:
"he was perfectly willing to cause thousands of [humans] to die to get what he wanted"
And that was specifically about during the fight. For the revival of Krypton he was clearly willing to kill all the humans.
What you may be misreading is when I said that during the fight Zod was not interested in killing humans. He was concentrated on Superman at that point for whatever reason. He doesn't go out of his way in the slightest to kill even one human, except at the very end of the fight when superman has him in an immobilizing hold, and even then that is only because it is the only action available to him.
Now, I am reasonably sure that Zod would have gone on an apocalyptic rampage if he won, but I have heard the suicide by superman theory before and I can't discount it completely. There is a major difference between destroying an intelligent species to save your own and destroying an intelligent species out of spite. But either way I don't think it changes anything.
My apologies, my comment was directed at JimB's quoted comment that you quoted. Where he said that Zod didn't want to kill humans. I quoted one layer too deep with that. My bad.DrOswald said:
I agree that he didn't really care about killing humans during the brawl, in the context of that being an objective. But he never once showed any reservations about a death toll. That was all I was trying to point out. That a guy willing to, and actually initiating a global genocide device, is more than willing, and not worried about, killing a handful of people directly.
My only real issue with the Zod killing scene is Clark's anguished cry after he killed him. I don't really get why this was supposed to be so overwhelming for him. I mean he'd already destroyed an entire ship, thus dooming the entire Kryptonian race to death, (and thereby commiting the same act of genocide that Zod was planning), and if I recall correctly, had already killed a few of Zod's henchmen (I might be remembering that bit wrong, maybe they died to the humans, *shrugs* I can't remember). So then why is Zod's death the only one that has this tragic "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" howl from him? The only thing I can think is that since Zod was the last Kryptonian aside from him, killing him meant he was completely and utterly alone. Or perhaps it was this was the first moment he had to actually process all that he had done, and it just hit him hard that he single handedly murdered his entire race. And I can get that I guess, but I dunno, thematically, as an audience member, it just didn't seem to fit the flow of the narrative at all.
I am personally partial to the idea that it was the first real moment he had to process all that had happened, but I completely agree that the big no was a stupid move. I don't think it worked at all. I think a far better thing to do would have been to have him fall to his knees as if exhausted and just start silently weeping. Perhaps after a few seconds Lois could have come over to comfort him.Happyninja42 said:
I honestly don't think they could have handled the situation much worse than with a big no.
Agreed.DrOswald said:
I disagree. It means the problem is not a genocidal madman; it means the problem is a suicidal one, which in turn means the issue isn't his hate but his pain. Pain can be cured. Hate, not so much.DrOswald said:
I only bring that up because it was a chance for the movie to earn the right to call Kal-El "Superman" in some way other than as an embarrassed, apologetic joke, and it spectacularly flubbed because there was just too much 9/11 symbolism to film.
I didn't. I said he was interested in it during that fight. If, during the final fistfight, his goal was to kill humans, then he did a remarkably incompetent job of it.Happyninja42 said:
The reason why I say it does not fix anything is because I don't think it matters if he is genocidal or suicidal, the damage he is causing right now overrides that consideration. Even if Superman knew for sure that Zod was temporarily insane with grief people are dying. For every minute the fight drags on many more people die. How many hundreds of lives is the life of Zod worth? Bringing it to a stop, even if it means killing Zod, is the right call. Or at least the better option available of 2 very shitty options.JimB said:
So, A, you were wrong. B, that's a really shitty reference. If you can name once where Chewbacca was lured by a steak, or even distracted, then that might be a relevant statement. C, good luck getting a clear sightline on a super fast speeding dude at long distance with laser vision and not causing more unnecessary collateral damage. D, what's stopping him from just shooting back? Or human shields?JimB said:
So, you're trying to say, a fight between people that are essentially godlike by our power scale, won't cause any collateral or civilian losses? Bro, just because you don't want the fight to have consequences, doesn't mean it won't.JimB said:
And while i'm at it, you can try to keep brushing me off as a callous son of a ***** who is making excuses for why they died, no, i'm just not in a dreamland where conflict doesn't have losses. It just comes with the territory of super people having a punch up.
Okay, so, let's amuse your notion Kal-El didn't care enough to try and keep people out of harm's way. What would you suggest he do to help during that fight, and keep it reasonable now, remember Supes just stopped a genocidal supermachine, flew around a planet and I think found Zod in a half destroyed city. How would you keep people out of harm's way in that situation? And if you fall back to hitting him out of the city, how would you keep Zod away?JimB said:
The film or the show? I thought the old movie was okay, certainly not as bad as people say. I haven't seen the Netflix series yet, but I intend to. I was skeptical after flash/arrow/AoS ect, but I've heard great things. The character is certainly interesting.Ishal said:
I should have specified the Netflix series.Fox12 said:
Let me just say this: the series is legitimately compared to The Wire. I don't know if you watch much television, or if you've seen The Wire, but it's widely considered to be one of the best shows ever. I recently watched it, and came to understand the praise (even if I like Breaking Bad and the Sopranos better) but that's neither here nor there.
But it's true.
- Both shows deal heavily with corporate collusion and it's relationship to the drug trade
- Both deal with the cost of unchecked crime on a community and it's police force
- Both deal with the unintended adverse consequences of one man trying to change the above
- Both shows have a protagonist that does good things but needs to admit to himself that it's for the wrong reasons
The comparison to The Wire isn't done to just state the thematic similarities, though. It's made because if you stripped away all the trappings that place it within the MCU, you'd still have a TV show that finds itself beside Breaking Bad, MAD MEN, Sopranos, and The Wire. It's quality television. And it's also quite violent.
My favorite part of the whole thing was the way they portrayed Wilson Fisk. Vincent D'nofrio was GOAT-tier acting in this show. I was floored.
Valid point but on the other hand, he was fighting General Zod. General. Zod. A guy smart enough to just vape civvies until Superman got in close enough to deal with. Zod was going to kill ALL of the humans, so a couple thousand here and there wouldn't have been a big deal. So you could look at it like this: Superman did his best to keep Zod constantly engaged so that Zod wouldn't have time to come up with a strategy. If Superman had let the pressure off, Zod would probably have just out maneuvered him and won.Casual Shinji said:
I still haven't seen Man of Steel and I'm not even planning on watching Superman v Batman; I'm just going to sit back and watch the forums and news articles and wait to hear if I'm correct in my assumptions that Superman v Batman isn't setting up for a Justice League movie but a Justice Lords (and possibly Amazons Attack) movie(s). The evidence to my assumptions have been spelled out about; nobody knows Superman was protecting them; they just know this Superman guy (wasn't he arrested?!) was involved in a fight that leveled half of the city. The fight didn't end until one of the Alien guys had his neck snapped.
I think that's only true if you consider punching Zod to death to be the only valid approach, regardless of circumstance, to which I vehemently disagree. Now, please don't think I'm arguing that this would have prevented each and every death that occurred in the brawl, but talking to Zod, reasoning with him while attempting to physically contain him, would have had a positive effect. It might not have convinced Zod to stop, but it surely would have brought Zod's rage to focus on Kal-El, who, frankly, can take it; I don't remember Kal-El being so much as bruised by the end of the fight.DrOswald said:
Wrong about what? What are you talking about?Chaos Isaac said:
Uh, in Return of the Jedi, right before the Ewoks captured him in a giant net by hanging a dead animal from a rope. Did you just forget that scene, or are you seriously going to be so hyper-literal you need to argue about whether Chewbacca was lured by fresh meat because the meat hadn't been boned yet? Because if the latter is the level of nitpicking we're indulging in, I am going to accuse you of arguing in deliberate bad faith and have no more to do with you.Chaos Isaac said:
Please consider that Kal-El can move at the same velocities Zod does, and that further, when moving at those speeds, Kal-El's vision is quick enough that Kal-El can still react to objects that appear in his sightline. For you to argue that Zod can move faster than Kal-El can look at him when Kal-El has already demonstrated his eyes are faster than his body is nonsensical to me.Chaos Isaac said:
Early in the fight, Zod was unable to use heat vision. Perhaps he would have learned while he was being set on fire, but I tend to assume that would distract him rather than help him concentrate.Chaos Isaac said:
Then he is pinned down, because the second he harms his shield, he gets set on fire again.Chaos Isaac said:
That is not at all what I said, and I challenge you to quote the line where I said or even implied that. I said Kal-El should be held responsible for his role in all the preventable deaths he participated in.Chaos Isaac said:
Then you are excusing Kal-El from taking responsibility for his actions because it's some inevitable force of nature in which his decisions play no part. Spin it as pragmatism all you like, but it's what you're doing.Chaos Isaac said:
I have listed several things I think he could have done. You quoted some of them in the paragraph you wrote this in response to. If you are not going to pay attention, Chaos Isaac, then I do not believe I will continue to engage you.Chaos Isaac said:
Thank goodness, 'cause you're really not engaging. Also, way to go assuming i've read all your posts before I made my original comment.JimB said:
Seriously, what I did read... wasn't that viable. To me, you don't seem to take more factors into play, such as mental and emotional status, experience, and condition into play.
I mean, the whole, spinning things endlessly without actually addressing them to dismiss the point under false pretenses got really, really old. I never said he shouldn't take responsibility or face the consequences. By all means, he should. But trying to actively blame him for deaths that weren't under his control is silly. "You can do better, you nitwit." Is a fine comment, but you seem to be going, "It's all your fault, idiot, god why can't you save all those people while a super person is punching your face in, jackass." And, ignore the smart-ass tone that I put that in, it's honestly how I abbreviate things.JimB said:
But I would have to disagree with that, as I see that as kind of the point. Superman is not competent enough to do any of that kind of thing yet. He doesn't think that much beyond the moment, as shown when he takes out a dudes truck or a satellite. That kind of thinking is, as of yet, beyond him. He's in the fight, and trying to settle that, and beyond that, he can't really address the rest on the fly yet.
That's just my opinion though.
I'm not gonna lie. Good catch. I seriously forgot about that. I've only seen that movie like... 3 times? 'Cause it's terrible. And when I say terrible, I mean the Ewoks destroyed that movie and I skip over anything that happens on Endor. 'Cause it's bad.JimB said:
Irrational dislike. Maybe. What doesn't involve Endor is pretty cool.
I had written more, but honestly we're just arguing pointlessly with differing viewpoints, and the rest doesn't matter. (Though, you seemed to not have considered the city factor in the city - laser vision lure thing)
I didn't even make it to a lot of these complaints to be annoyed by them. I was there on day one, first showing I could get to. I loved the Krypton sequence. I was digging Crowe as Jor-El, I thought Shannon was doing great as Zod. I liked the visual departure from the crystaline look the Donner movies had for Krypton. It puncutated the re-boot well. I could have done without the freaking dino-riders... but OK, you have to engage the "PWHOAR, AWESOME" dudebro crowd so why not? I was distracted by the VERY annoying and pervasive shaky-cam. But hey, "the planet's kerploding" so it made some kind of sense.
And then Earth... and the camera's still bouncing around like someone set it on a running unbalanced washing machine. Its not even an action shot. Clark talking to dad, neither moving at all, camera work that looks like an iphone video shot by a parkinson's patient. Clark talking to mom, no action, camera still shaking. Clark talking to Lois, no one is moving, camera still shaking.
What is the freaking point of that. Why make your movie, a summer blockbuster even, so painfully ugly to look at? I didn't even notice complaints like too much destruction, or dad says buskilling is maybe ok, or the tornadocide. Those might have bothered me, but I didn't even notice. I was too busy wondering when the camera was going to STOP SHAKING. Or "Why is it shaking NOW." It never stopped, it shook for the entire run time. AND NOBODY, not fanboy one, has EVER given me a GOOD reason for it. A reason that makes sense in the REAL WORLD. People say things like "its for added realism" which is boneheadedly stupid. That's exactly what I need in my alien superbeing facepunching movie... "realism." "I could totally get into Dragonball... IF ONLY IT LOOKED MORE REALISTIC," SAID NOBODY... EVER!
That's why I hated Man of Steel. A summer blockbuster has only 1 expectation it has to meet for me. It has to be eye candy... AT LEAST. MoS looked like crap from start to finish, entirely visually unpleasant. Can't really tell from trailers how shaky BvS is going to be. But I'm not going on day one. I'll wait and watch for proof that Snyder doesn't have his hamfists on the shaky-cam button. Then I might give it a chance.
And then Earth... and the camera's still bouncing around like someone set it on a running unbalanced washing machine. Its not even an action shot. Clark talking to dad, neither moving at all, camera work that looks like an iphone video shot by a parkinson's patient. Clark talking to mom, no action, camera still shaking. Clark talking to Lois, no one is moving, camera still shaking.
What is the freaking point of that. Why make your movie, a summer blockbuster even, so painfully ugly to look at? I didn't even notice complaints like too much destruction, or dad says buskilling is maybe ok, or the tornadocide. Those might have bothered me, but I didn't even notice. I was too busy wondering when the camera was going to STOP SHAKING. Or "Why is it shaking NOW." It never stopped, it shook for the entire run time. AND NOBODY, not fanboy one, has EVER given me a GOOD reason for it. A reason that makes sense in the REAL WORLD. People say things like "its for added realism" which is boneheadedly stupid. That's exactly what I need in my alien superbeing facepunching movie... "realism." "I could totally get into Dragonball... IF ONLY IT LOOKED MORE REALISTIC," SAID NOBODY... EVER!
That's why I hated Man of Steel. A summer blockbuster has only 1 expectation it has to meet for me. It has to be eye candy... AT LEAST. MoS looked like crap from start to finish, entirely visually unpleasant. Can't really tell from trailers how shaky BvS is going to be. But I'm not going on day one. I'll wait and watch for proof that Snyder doesn't have his hamfists on the shaky-cam button. Then I might give it a chance.