joons:

“doing good” is not an innate thing that people know how to do. it even takes time to articulate what “doing good” would mean even if our inclination to do so is pure and selfless. does it matter more to protect the people on your street? your country? the world? is it enough to save their life or to make their lives better? do you have enough moral foresight to make those decisions? if you only have so much time, who do you spend it on?

these are the questions zack snyder asks in man of steel and batman v. superman. too often, you will see people say that, because clark is taking the time to really consider his responsibilities, he is not a good person, that he has been hollowed out to someone who disdains the people he most often helps. this is a vestige of our desire to see superheroes hatching out fully formed; all they need is a suit and a plan, and they’re good to go, with a full sense of self-sacrifice. but what clark attempts is a careful consideration of difficult moral decisions that have no clear-cut answer. if your father believes that your life will be in danger if you save him, do you respect his wishes? if the closest thing you have to your race will kill another innocent family if you don’t kill him, what do you do? if a fellow crime fighter is terrorizing a poor neighborhood with impunity, how do you stop him? is the pen actually mightier than the sword? at what point is a line crossed that says you must interfere? what if interfering makes it worse?

mos and bvs are profoundly moral movies. they are altruistic movies. they are selfless movies. superman is humble enough, caring enough, kind enough, to know when he is out of his depth, to know that he cannot simply act and rationalize it after the fact. he can do too much good to rely on his own instincts without interrogating his own motives and making sure he knows what he’s doing and why. 

if anyone tries to tell you that clark doesn’t want to help, or that zack snyder’s movies position him as a distant god who’s icked out by the commoners, rather than someone deeply concerned with making sure that harming and helping don’t end up being basically the same, then they have never considered these questions for themselves, and their superman isn’t one i would care to fight for me.