Smallville

Does murder just mean different things on the Internet?

As for Kara, her no killing rule doesn't extend to non human life as Red Tornado, Parasite and the White Martians found out the hard way.

Oh yeah, that whole White Martian thing from early in the season was really dissonant with her actions in the finale.

It just really stuck out at me, because even if a hero doesn't kill their foes, a lot of times they don't seem to really care much about their foes unless a good portion of the episode develops them as being really sympathetic. Gotham has Gordan learning the Family-Unfriendly Aesop of 'Police brutality is a necessity to clean up Gotham', even if he's usually better about not killing opponents than the Flash.

Then Smallville had Clark check to see if villain of the week, who fried himself, was alright. And the villain was, and Clark was relieved even if he just stopped the guy from killing everyone at a school dance. It's very in character, and it's very good characterization for a superhero that's very much a paragon. And it's something I don't think we see in current superhero shows, even if the protagonist is supposed to be a paragon.

Smallville, at least the early seasons, are from a different time. Blade had proven Comic Book super heroes could work, and SpiderMan the X-Men proved it did not need an R rating; even so, such films were in their infancy, and Smallville had basically moved into the Post-Script Season format by the time The Dark Knight and the Marvel Cinematic Universe were in the planning stages and still years from release.

Take a look at what else was on TV during the first 4 seasons-the last 3 seasons of Buffy and 2 of Angel, The Sopranos were in their early run, and The Wire had just taken off. It is kind of hard to overstate how different TV series were, as well as the audience expectations-the brutal, gritty, 'realistic' tack of shows nowadays would have been out of left field if you did not watch HBO. In that respect, Smallville is very much a product of its time.

Oh, in its early seasons Smallville was trying very hard to be realistic (not often succeeding, but not knowingly embracing the absurdity of its premise the way its predecessor Buffy or its successor The Flash did). Thing is, it wasn't trying to ape the realism of gritty crime dramas, but of small-town/teen-drama shows like Dawson's Creek and Everwood that were big on the WB, along with trying to get some of the same family values cred as 7th Heaven.

Trying to mesh this with a formula that demanded a new violent criminal crop up in Smallville each and every week . . . it created some odd juxtapositions, to be sure.

Plus, while Clark stuck to a Thou Shalt Not Kill code, Love Interest Lana Lang wracked up quite the body count. It was always in self-defense; people just tried to kill her a lot.

Edited by RavenWilder on Aug 2nd 2018 at 9:08:45 AM

Also, Clark did self-defense to death a fair few people over the run, and he was pretty okay with killing aliens and robots.

That's actually pretty in line with the comics. The no killing rule has never applied to non-humans. Superman says as much in Morrison's JLA: Earth 2.

While ignoring the various super powered individuals who are of human descent but only human-adjacent now by the strictest definitions. I always found that a bit jarring in DC; people in Marvel universes seem to complain about heroes killing people much more frequently, or at least loudly. Yet there are few heroes who spend time on Earth there who have the wealth of options to defeat an opponent or defuse a situation with minimal/nonexistent risk to themselves, in the fashion of Superman or Martian Manhunter.

I don't think people in the Marvel universe are that critical of heroes using lethal force. Heroes get flack for stuff like collateral damage or when they've been accused of murder.

Even in the DCU, Superman and Martian Manhunter's abilities are only really helpful against small time, non-powered criminals. Against the likes of Doomsday, Darkseid or Braniac they're at best a temporary solution to an ongoing problem.

It's been the fundamental issue with Thou Shalt Not Kill and Technical Pacifist that the hero seems unwilling to make a killing strike personally, but there is little moral problem as the villain dies by other means. This is even if their death is otherwise directly connected to the hero's involvement or they stand by as someone else DOES kill them. It makes it seem like their creed is "I won't kill them, but their death is still the preferable resolution." Spider-Man avoids the goblin glider, which impales Green Goblin, and the reaction is mostly a "whoops."

That's where some works like Trigun are unique in that the hero is busy trying to save everyone, and is not content with tricking bad guys into killing each other.

TBF with the Spider-Man example, I think it was less 'aw yeah gonna make this guy kill himself' and more 'Spider-Sense better dodge! Oh.' Though Peter was pretty mad and had to stop himself from killing Norman in the comics.

I mean, in DC and Marvel heroes should pull their punches against lower rung guys. Otherwise you get the whole minion dilemma, where a hero won't murder the person in charge but goes through the people they hire like a hot knife through butter.

Especially when you have some cases were the minions don't know that know that their boss is a crook.

I'm looking at you Arrow season 1.

Yeah, Arrow was pretty bad about it. On the other hand, Oliver didn't really make any attempt to pretend he was a hero. He was just a guy on a revenge kick, and leaving the bosses alive to suffer the legal penalties for their crimes was usually worse.

Other shows are variously hit and miss. Flash has lots of self-defense kills and Self-Disposing Villain. Legends of Tomorrow usually doesn't bother avoiding killing anyone. Supergirl is in a similar situation as Flash, but emphasizes the morality more, which makes the inconsistencies stand out more. And Gotham has its whole "police brutality is a good thing" bullshit.

The Marvel shows are a little different. The Netflix shows give each hero a different reason for avoiding killing. Daredevil is Catholic, but he's infamous about letting other people kill for him. Jessica needed the Big Bad alive to prove his crimes, but when that went out the window she killed him. Luke Cage is basically invincible, so he just doesn't need to kill. Iron Fist mostly doesn't care, but there is a distinction made between "fighting and killing in self-defense" and "deliberately going into a fight to kill a man." In Agents of SHIELD they're all police, so they try to go for the non-lethal option but aren't too worried when they have to kill people. In Cloak and Dagger Tyrone's enemy is a dirty cop so if he kills him he'll just get killed in revenge, while Tandy wants to redeem her family name.

Flash has a lot of self defense kills, but he also outright made plans to kill dopplegangers, like the radiation man from E2.

I was looking up Smallville Season 11 on Wikipedia and I found this:

I keep forgetting how much fun this universe was.

Edited by Soble on Aug 22nd 2018 at 7:40:00 AM

Mack's lawyers defense is "Scientology did it first"

I guess I can understand the horribly twisted logic. It's a Hail Mary play to maybe get Scientology's protection. Will it work? Almost certainly not, and even if it did work, Scientology has been under more scrutiny recently, so they probably wouldn't be able to protect them.

And of course all these terrible things they've done add up to about as much time as a basic drug offense. So.

"That's where some works like Trigun are unique in that the hero is busy trying to save everyone, and is not content with tricking bad guys into killing each other.

"

In fact Vash get really emocional if the bad guy dies, going to the point he forgive a bad guy who kill a dozen in episode 12.

But yeah Smallville as a diferent beast on is time, were the idea was adapting superhero stuff to another framing rather than let comic be comic just because.

I'm currently into season 8 of my rewatch, and the show let me down by the point it had Clark go into the "You're just a machine!" justification for why killing Brainiac was fine. Then again, s7 was such a slog and highlighted all the worst parts of the show.

(I think the biggest weaknesses of the show are the horrible mishandling of the Kryptonian elements, the fatalism/prophecies/ Because Destiny Says So, and Clana. And season 7 was all about those three things.)

Started up s8, and honestly it already starts to feel refreshing. Though since I know Sam Witwer from voicing Darth Maul in TCW, I keep on mentally calling Davis Bloom Darth Maul.

A superfan called Souperboy X is putting together a 5+ hour Fan Edit mixing Smallville with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. The edit is scheduled to drop October 16th according to the fan trailers he's put together for them.

That sounds like my dream of combining Smallville's Kents and Luthors with Mo S's Krypton

Oh shit, that sounds epic. And I couldn't care less for Man of Steel. I gotta remember when that drops that day.

This was kind of touching.

And a little awkward without Allison Mack.

I was inspired a bit by the Last Son of Krypton project and made a little Fan Edit of my own, I even made some nifty "DC Fandome" ads for it as I released it on the 22nd.

19th August

21st August

22nd August (launch date)