Man of Steel: Addressing a specific "controversy"

The biggest movie of this year so far has opened recently…Man of Steel. It destroyed the box office over the past weekend, and I was happy to be in attendance at one of the theaters. Overall, I was very pleased with the movie and had no real problems with it. However, today I found an article that caught my interest. Be warned, the following blog post does give a major spoiler of the movie, so you may want to avoid reading it if you haven’t seen it yet.

According to this article, Man of Steel “went too far” with the way that the story handled Kal-El’s (Clark, Superman, whatever you prefer) victory over his nemesis, General Zod. Basically, what happens is that Superman and Zod get into this major battle near the end of the movie, which ends with Superman breaking Zod’s neck.  My initial thought as I was watching in the theater was, “holy shit…didn’t see that coming!” Regardless, I accepted the plot point and enjoyed the rest of the movie. Fast forward to the aforementioned article, apparently people are a bit outraged by the Last Son of Krypton murdering an adversary. To put it simply, people are overreacting.

Yes, the scene is graphic; the man literally wrenches the guy’s head and breaks his neck on a zoomed-in shot with a loud, thunderous sound effect. However, if anybody was actually paying attention to the fight scene earlier, Zod does tell Kal-El that the only end to this fight will be the death of one of them. The character of Zod literally will not stop his path of destruction unless he is killed. The climax of the scene features Zod slowly shooting his heat vision towards a human family cowering in the corner of a building. Kal pleads to Zod to stop, but the heat vision inches closer and closer to the family. There proves to be two choices: either this family dies, or Zod dies. Ultimately, the Man of Steel ends the life of Zod to save an innocent family.

After he kills Zod, Kal drops to his knees and lets out an intense scream, showing his grief with the fact that he not only just committed murder, but he murdered one of his fellow Kryptonians. I personally did not view this scene as a portrayal of Superman’s heroism. If anything, this part of the movie shows Superman having a downfall more than a victory, regardless of the fact that he took care of this particular threat to Earth; but I enjoyed this take on the character.

The problem I often hear people complain about with Superman is that they can’t relate to him in any way. He’s too powerful, he’s never confused, he never strays from what is “right”, etc. When a movie finally presents a version of Superman in which the character clearly has faults and moments of questionable decisions, people complain about it. I know this specific moment in the movie is graphic (some would disagree), but it did fit with the movie very well. Kal-El is still becoming Superman; he is not yet the fully developed embodiment of truth and justice that many like to think of him as. As with any growing character, there will be moments of uncertainty, confusion, and lapses in judgment. Considering the overall tone of this movie, I’m going to take this scene as this: it was a critical moment in which a decision had to be made in one way or another. He made a decision, and now has to deal with it and learn from it in order to better his ways for the future. 

Let's all relax a bit; I'm sure we'll see a satisfying evolution of this character in the sequels.