Man of Steel. Nolan Superman Reboot.

Like the pink kryptonite that turns you gay for 24 hours?

That is the most stupid kind of kryptonite I have ever heard of.

Did Supergirl ever get affected by it?

-Borrows clinic computer-

That Kryptonite type in question was from a Supergil story that was spoofing the Silver Age.

Unfortunately, from my knowledge, no, it did not affect her.

Supergirl/Powergirl FTW.

So Supergirl is Superman's cousin and Powergirl is Superman's cousin from an alternate dimension. So wouldn't that be Screw Yourself?

I thought they were different cousins. You mean he only has one? But they don't look remotely the same!

Power Girl is supposed to be an older, alternate-universe version of Supergirl.

comics are weird.

-Still in the clinic-

Isn`t that why we love them?

edited 19th Nov '13 11:25:13 AM by SaintDeltora

Oh well.

I don't think either of them is all that interested anyway. Also Power Girl has that Sean Connery expy. What was his name again? Bartoz?

Also, I'll say it again: THIS FILM WAS FUCKING AWESOME. And the killing bit was great. Supes doesn't have an explicit rule not to kill the way Batman does, right?

edited 19th Nov '13 11:35:13 AM by TheHandle

For the same reason humans have considered it okay many times throughout history to exterminate the same species of sentient beings whose only crime is living on the land they want: because they aren't Zod's people.

He's a conqueror looking for a place to rebuild his civilization, seeing Earth and going, "This one would work great if it weren't for all the savages. Well, not my problem." He values his civilization above that of others, especially those who do not have the level of technological advancement his people have achieved.

Not everyone worships the word "sapient" as a Holy Line of Equality, abovewhich all people are inherently equal. Zod's foremost concern is restoring his race, and if he has to step on a few billion backwater savages who haven't even mastered spaceflight yet, then so be it. That's not so different from the viewpoint of many real-world conquerors throughout history.

He probably doesn't even consider them to be people.

edited 19th Nov '13 11:39:00 AM by TobiasDrake

he's usually written to follow Thou Shalt Not Kill, but General Zod was clearly past the Godzilla Threshold in the movie.

edited 19th Nov '13 11:40:52 AM by crimsonstorm15

I'm...pretty sure he does, actually.

Not that that's EVER stopped anyone who's written a single Batman movie.

Except, you know, Kryptonians are a crapload more developed than any previous civilization of ours. In fact, they have a planetary nation (but, then again, what is their military for? Alien threats? And what was the Green Lantern of their sector doing at the time?!). Point is, it's very weird for such an opulent, tech-developed, long-lived culture to be such assholes to minor cultures. You'd expect them to go the route of The Culture or something.

To be fair, he usually lets them dispose of themselves and each other. It's very neato, that way. Reckless Pacifist tendencies aside.

edited 19th Nov '13 11:44:32 AM by TheHandle

It's specifically Zod and his folks who hate all other species. Hell, Zod doesn't even like HIS OWN species. "We'll choose the PURE bloodlines" and all that.

I applaud Superman's choice to break Zod's neck. It's not that Superman SHOULD always kill villains. It's that, put in that exact situation with that context, he made the best choice available: stop Zod from causing further harm by any means necessary. If the chokeout had worked, he would have had time to find a way to incarcerate Zod, but as it was, despite Superman's best effort, Zod was actively threatening innocent lives and needed to be stopped by whatever means necessary.

Maybe there was another way to stop Zod. Maybe, given an infinite amount of time, Superman might have devised a way to render Zod unconscious right there in that moment without either losing the fight or letting Zod escape the grapple and kill more people. But planning is not a free action. In the heat of the moment, Clark had to make a judgment call, and he made it. He killed a genocidal warlord to save innocent lives, and I salute him for that decision.

Ah, yes, that indeed was pretty damned psycho.

Their culture, at least before they changed things up, was built on colonizing other worlds. Colonization is a major aspect of exactly what I described: what do you think they did to the native inhabitants of the worlds they colonized? Did they welcome them into the great Kryptonian Empire with open arms, or did they just declare, "This land is mine now." Being technologically advanced does not require a race to be peaceful; in fact, as many technological advancements come about in the name of war, it can easily mean the opposite.

A culture that encompasses multiple planets but that is not multinational can easily be expected to be a bastard to lesser cultures; if they weren't, those cultures would be a part of them, melting pot style, rather than conspicuously absent from the land that used to be theirs.

EDIT: Furthermore, Zod is a General. In any civilization, there are places where you will find fair-minded diplomats who value other cultures as equal to theirs and refuse to allow harm to others in order to advance their nation's interests, but the military is not a great place to find that. Zod's job is to protect his nation and its interests by any means necessary, and his rank means he is very dedicated to that goal.

edited 19th Nov '13 12:02:36 PM by TobiasDrake

I hadn't considered that they colonized inhabited worlds. I thought that, like us, they were surrounded by lifeless husks full of valuable minerals. Or something.

That's a pretty fucked up civilization. Thank goodness Supes was raised in Kansas rather than, say, Brooklyn. Or worse, Joisey. Or... we had Red Son for him falling in the USSR... can you imagine if he had fallen in, say, Afghanistan? A pious little Muslim with his heart in the right place and some very set ideas? I wonder if he'd be more of a dick than the really old examples of Superdickery? Or Ruwanda? Ethiopia? What if he'd been a Black boy? So many possibilities for "drop a Flying Brick to be raised among some normal rural folks and find out about his or her powers on puberty". In fact, imagine an Afghani fem!Superman. By the time she gets her powers, she's already married with children! Conflict! So much conflict!

Am I sounding like a psycho, like a writer, is there a difference?

While understandable, the US military's attitude in this film was rather obnoxious; from the protagonist's perspective, it looks like they've been thrown the idiot ball.

I contest Clark's decision to log out that sexual harassist's truck instead of beating the crap out of him. That's a Cruel Mercy that is. I'm sure he'd have rather had his arms broken than his truck.

There's also this annoying tendency by some super-badass pacifist heroes to let people much weaker than them indulge in Bullying a Dragon. If they only bothered to flaunt their strength a little and act slightly intimidating/severe/threatening, they wouldn't find themselves in nearly as many conflicual situations.

edited 19th Nov '13 12:13:24 PM by TheHandle

In this movie, he's inexperienced and up against an enemy who's as physically strong as him, so his options for dealing with the threat were limited. Presumably, in the sequel, Supes will have more experience, and the threat won't be quite the same level as Zod, so Supes will be able to find a non-lethal solution.

Boxing Lessons for Superman?

It would actually be really awesome if they had Batman teaching Superman boxing/other forms of self-defense. Not Batgod, of course, just Batman. Because that's useful information to have and would be in keeping with the kind of Batman they seem to have in mind.

wait a minute, Bats is supposed to show up in the next movie yeah? what if he gives Supes some fighting tips after they become friends?

the only thing scarier than Superman... is Superman with kung fu skills.

ninja'd.

edited 19th Nov '13 12:18:41 PM by crimsonstorm15