T’Challa’s Heir
Superstar
Justified? Sure, the problem is how the movie treats it like a big moment and ignores everything that happened before. Superman gave zero fukks about civilian casualties throughout the battle. In Smallville he blew up a gas station. He was tossing Zod through buildings left and right.
The impact of that moment hits different, if Superman could never get the upper hand because he wouldn’t take the lethal option and was distracted during the fight because hes saving people while fighting off Zod. Then the neck snap, swelling music, and scream mean a bit more. From our context as viewers, based on everything we had seen him do up to this point, my only question is why didn’t he do it earlier?
And the lack of aftermath fukked up the moment. When Superman killed Zod and Co back in the 80s after they wiped out an entire planet, he went crazy and developed a split personality and became the Hispanic crime fighter gang buster. He then exiled himself from Earth to contemplate what he had done. The Man of Steel Superman made out with Lois in a shower of ashes and never shows any introspection about his killing outside of the scream.
So justified, sure. But the emotional response it was looking for wasn’t setup. And the long term character development it could have given us was never delivered. I know there was studio interference, but Snyder’s desire to make Dark Knight Returns leads me to believe it would have remained unexplored even if he didn’t have to include Batman.
The impact of that moment hits different, if Superman could never get the upper hand because he wouldn’t take the lethal option and was distracted during the fight because hes saving people while fighting off Zod. Then the neck snap, swelling music, and scream mean a bit more. From our context as viewers, based on everything we had seen him do up to this point, my only question is why didn’t he do it earlier?
And the lack of aftermath fukked up the moment. When Superman killed Zod and Co back in the 80s after they wiped out an entire planet, he went crazy and developed a split personality and became the Hispanic crime fighter gang buster. He then exiled himself from Earth to contemplate what he had done. The Man of Steel Superman made out with Lois in a shower of ashes and never shows any introspection about his killing outside of the scream.
So justified, sure. But the emotional response it was looking for wasn’t setup. And the long term character development it could have given us was never delivered. I know there was studio interference, but Snyder’s desire to make Dark Knight Returns leads me to believe it would have remained unexplored even if he didn’t have to include Batman.