that-binese-guy:

dc-vertigo-squad:

catie-does-things:

miss-bubles:

comingupforblair:

Evidently so. I have seen some people say it’s because Clark’s manner of doing it was more overtly violent so I guess the message is kill people but don’t do it in an obvious way. I imagine if he’d smiled or made a joke about it, it would have been alright.

Maybe Clark should have just waited and hoped that Zod would tire himself out or some deus ex machina would come along and make things easier for him. Apparently that’s what the REAL Superman would do.

I have long suspected that Clark was visable very upset about killing Zod, the whole mood of the thing was that it was terrible that it happened, so people came away finding that whole thing upsetting and deciding that it was because he killed despite the fact that heaps of other superheroes have killed but it wasn’t framed in such a way as to hit the audience as hard so they werem’t as upset by it on thse counts

That’s definitely a big part of it. People are also generally less precious about Wonder Woman not killing than they are Batman or Superman, for some reason. Possibly because Diana killing a male adversary can be spun as “girl power” or whatever.

But I think a large part of it in this instance is the narrative framing. Clark killing Zod is presented as tragic; Zod is a sympathetic villain and Clark clearly regrets having to kill him. Diana’s villains are more cartoonishly evil and she doesn’t show much emotion over killing them, so obviously the audience isn’t expected to either.

I never realized this but I don’t think I have seen another superhero movie where the hero is visibly upset that he had to kill the villain or that the villain died. Like in Iron Man the Iron Monger was like a life long friend of Tony and his parents but Tony still had no problem killing him at the end. Maybe Thor when Loki fell of the rainbow bridge in the first Thor film but honestly that’s it. Just another reason to love Man of Steel.

Another thing I noticed about superheroes killing villains in general is that the villain always tends to be sort of ‘dehumanized’ near the moment of their death and it is always done in a way that leaves no corpse behind so there is no evidence of the death. Ares is a good example where early on we see him as a human who attempts to influence Diana into joining him, but when she refuses, her puts on armor that obscure his face and he dies in an explosion that vaporizes him. Same thing happened in GOTG Vol 2 with Starlord’s father. During the emotional scenes he is in his human form, but when he is revealed as the villain he turns into the planet itself and he also dies in an explosion. Their characterisation also seems to be flattened at that point where early on they have depth, have understandable and even sympathetic motives, but the closer we get to the climax where they will inevitably ‘die’, the more they will start spouting generic villain lines like ‘I will destroy you!’ and things like that, and the more they lose their ‘human’ features.

I think that sort of contributes to the reason why when villains die in superhero shows we don’t tend to feel anything, because they were made flat and dehumanized moments before. That is something that Man of Steel did not do with Zod, there was a body, and it was a physical act done by Superman’s own hands, not an explosion, or an energy blast, his hands.