Not to start another MoS flame war...and quite frankly I'm sick of discussing the movie....but I thought you guys might be interested in Morrison's comments on the film. Credit goes to CBM:

I kinda liked it and kinda didn't, to be honest. I feel bad because I like (director) Zack Snyder and (writer) David Goyer, and (star) Henry Cavill was really good. But it felt like one of those ones where it's like, "Bring on the second movie now that you've done this," and I don't need to see that as someone who knows all I know about Superman. For me, it was a bit "seen it before," no matter how they tried to make it a little bit different. I'm more looking forward to the Dark Knight version of Superman, the next one, where hopefully it will have Lex Luthor and be some fantastic second act.

It's a credible Superman for now. But I'm not sure about the killing thing. I don't want to sound like some fuddy-duddy Silver Age apologist but I've noticed a lot recently of people saying Batman should kill the Joker and, yeah, Superman should kill, he should make the tough moral decisions we all have to make every day. I don't know about you, but the last moral decision I made didn't have anything to do with killing people. And I don't think many of us ever have to make the decision whether or not to kill. In fact, the more you think about it, unless you're in one of the Armed Forces, killing is illegal and immoral. Why would we want our superheroes to do that?

There is a certain demand for it, but I just keep wondering why people insist that this is the sort of thing we'd all do if we were in Superman's place and had to make the tough decision and we'd kill Zod. Would we? Very few of us have ever killed anything. What is this weird bloodlust in watching our superheroes kill the villains?

I was wondering about this. Thanks.

Damn...Grant has a point...

He may be a crazy ass survivor of the Flower Child Age and only a few steps down from Alan Moore crazy, but damn it if he isn't such an eloquent writer who gets his point across clearly without insulting people for being idiots like I would, thus, blinding them to my core message.

I was wondering what he thought.

I think the first paragraph sort of highlights the problem with many Superhero movies when it comes to the first movie. The fact of the matter is origin stories are a little bland to hear - especially when its highly iconic heroes like Superman, Batman or Spiderman - and especially when we've had movies of them in the past (especially recent past).

A lot of people all ready know the origin stories. Superman is an alien sent to earth from a dying planet. Bruce Wayne watches his parents die and becomes Batman to terroize the criminals terrorizing the city. Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider and develops super powers. We know all of it - we don't want to have it retold over and over...we just want to see the heroes we love doing heroic things.

After that his comments are a little meh to me. Spent too much time discussing the killing of Zod. Superman doesn't like to kill and only does it as a last resort (which means very rarely) but he has killed before. Hell, he even kills Zod in Superman 2 for crying out loud! A movie most people love, including I.

I think less people would have a problem with the scene had it not been so personal, with Superman snapping Zod's neck after having him in a headlock. It was probably a little more brutal than people are used to associating with Superman and that's why it irked them. Personally I like it, because Zod had succumb to his madness and even says to Superman during the final fight "Either you die or I do, that is the only way this ends" or something like that.

Furthermore I think the point of the scene was to feel horrible. Its not suppose to feel good to take a life. Superman himself screams out in agony afterwards. You're not suppose to enjoy that scene, because its not something that should ever have to been done. But the reality of the situation is, Zod wasn't going to stop and Superman had no choice but to kill him the way the movie sets it up.

I loved the movie. One of the better CBM's made to date imo (its far from perfect however). But definitely top 5 for me. I don't want to make a wide accusation or start a flame war either, but I find most people who don't like Man of Steel, dislike it because they had a preset notion of how Superman was prior to the film and that any changes made by WB, Snyder or Goyer to fit the direction they wanted to go, minor or major, were unacceptable. The amount of rage over the slight changes to his suit for example has baffled me on occasion.

The first paragraph is why I hate that Batman vs Superman is what they are doing next.

@veshark: well I now love Grant Morrison again. Still not in love with his comics

People seem to forget that...CHRISTOPHER REEVE'S SUPERMAN KILLED ZOD TOO!!

He took away his powers and threw him down a bottomless pit in the f*cking ARTIC, I doubt Zod survived that.

I've been wondering what he thought and i agree with him, i loved mos but grant brings up good points,not only concerning the movie but comics and superheroes as a whole. During the superman 75 panel at sdcc a question was asked why is superman getting darker and grant answered which i thought was perfect is that he reflects the state of society at that given time, so Superman is becoming darker and ppl want him to kill even where batman's concerned wanting him to kill the joker n stuff because a majority of today's society demands that and to me at least, i find that really sad.

And ill say it again,Grant Morrison said it in not so many words...give us more superman, then bring on a team up. the dark knight quality superman sequel with Lex as the enemy,ah well that's just a dream now.

Which ones have you read? :(

@the_stegman said:

And Reeve's Superman was a lot less torn up about it :P

I like that Morrison is level-headed here though. He said that he enjoyed a lot but couldn't get into just as much. He wasn't a fan of the killing thing, but didn't go overboard calling it some character desecration or whatever. A perfectly reasonable response.

I agree. That reflecting society thing remind me of a documentary of Superheroes from the History Channel narrated by Keith David. It was awesome.

Here it is! Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked.

Wow, I agree with everything he said (hopefully bringing Batman into the mix won't ruin the the prospect of "Superman's Dark Knight"). Very eloquently put. Thanks for sharing!

Since Superman killed Zod in the comics I had no problem with him killing him in MOS

Not sure if Batman and Superman are really going to fight for the entire next film. They might have a tussle and then team up for the remainder which is what I'm hoping for like in the animated Superman/Batman movie.

@perezite: cool thanks, gonna check it out now.

@veshark: mostly his work on Batman, Arkham Asylum, Batman and Robin, Gothic, also some Animal Man and New X-Men.

I don't dislike him necessarily, just don't love him as much as others I guess :/

I've never really loved his work enough to want to read it more than once

Hope none of you have forgotten how Zod was trying to murder that innocent family with very young children? What would I have done in Superman's place Grant? I would have made the moral decision too break his neck. Save the poor innocent family or let them fry at hands of the Zod? Quite honestly, I don't see a moral conundrum there.

Check out his JLA stuff, I guarantee you'll like it. While I like Arkham Asylum, I can't really get that much into most of his Batman work either. But his JLA work is the seminal run on the League, top-notch big-scale storytelling with awesome ideas.

@veshark: I have actually read some of his JLA stuff. There's one issue I particular that is actually one of my favorite Batman moments, but other than that I wasn't really in love with it. But I also can't get into JLA, so that's not really a Morrison thing.

I wonder if his statement would be the same if he wasn't working for DC.

BB

Couldn't agree more with Morrison. I was wondering what he thought about the film. Glad to see he keeps a level head about this movie and points out exactly where it goes wrong in bringing Superman onto the big screen

Actually, in the Donner cut of Superman II, we see the US Arctic Police (I know, strange name) arrest Lex and the Phantom Zone criminals. Because Donner was kicked off Superman II later on, they cut out that part of the ending. So originally, Superman would have sent Zod off to be imprisoned as shown here

Really? Hmm, maybe then. I don't know if you've read the World War 3 arc on his JLA, but my favorite Batman moment is right there, when he beats Prometheus.

He has some good points about killing!

grant morrison is a fuddy duddy . lol

Quite honestly, I'd rather kill zod then let him kill 4 people in front of me, knowing I could have prevented it. He's on par with superman on strength, he could barely hold him. Icing him was his best option in that given situation.

Superman could have done a Bane....

@warlock360: that's not really his point, he was asking why the film makers thought they had to put him in that situation in the first place.

Not even Batman should have done a Bane. Despite him having a more lax code on killing, I still got annoyed at that scene.

@jonny_anonymous: true, but I'd still think it to be in character.

Fuddy Duddy Sliver Age Apologist.

YES!

People who thought Zod should be spared are stupid. There's no Kryptonite, no Red star in easy reach, certainly no prison to keep him in since the Phantom Zone projector was already used, and no way to reason with him.

Killing him was literally the only morally sound decision to make, and unlike Reeves whose superman depowered and murdered Zod's now helpless crew with a smile on his face, this Superman was pretty much broken by making the choice to kill someone who could not be contained, negotiated with, depowered, or otherwise dealt with without killing him.

And given what Zod could do with just a few days on Earth, he'd only become more difficult to deal with as time passed on. He had supes on the ropes with his superior skills and will to kill, if Supes let him live, eventually Zod would start closing the gap and kill Kal, at which point he punchsplodes and eyebeams humanity into extinction.

But hey, at least he didn't resort to killing right? Humanity and Clark are now dead and the Earth is a wasteland, but at least you didn't kill! That'll teach him! No wait that's stupid.

@guardian_of_gravity:

1. This isn't about whether Superman was right in killing Zod at the end, it's to do with why the writers thought they had to write it that way in the first place
2. At the end of Superman II Zod and crew are arrested by the artic police, they didn't die

The number of ways out of that situation in the movie were glaring and obvious though.

@jonny_anonymous:

1. Because someone programmed to be a warrior and supremacist and a desire to not have Superman's plot device weaknesses around made containment or negotiation impossible.

2. In a non canon deleted scene. The canonical ending is that they fell down the abyss and died from the fall. If the scene is deleted it isn't canon, period.

Batman has a more lax code of killing? Since when?

1. Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey.

2. So your saying that Dwayne McDuffie saying that Richie was a fruit in Static Shock isn't cannon even though we never really see that in the show and he said that after the fact?

In Nolan's Batman films. He let Ra'as die at the end of Begins and had no qualms with Catwoman offing Bane. Someone told me Bale's Batman had a "Rurouni Kenshin mentality of killing." Basically, he'll try to stop it, but if it happens to a bad guy, oh well.

@jonny_anonymous:

1. Oh yeah. New superpower: avoid-moral-choice-event. Whenever the hero finds himself in a situation that requires a non-black-or-white moral choice, a writer conveniently provides an unintersting alternate ending. And a smile.

2. Vomit. Non canon. Stupid.

1. Please, it would have been far more interesting to see Superman stay in character and not kill Zod rather than Snyder getting into his thick head that Superman needed a tragedy to give him his no killing code. It denotes a great lack of understanding about the character.

2. It's how the film would have ended had Donner not been kicked off Superman II. And it ties up the loose ends better than Superman II did.

@perezite:

1. Introducing Time Travel is very rarely worth the plot holes it creates. Not to mention that unless you center the story around it, it rapidly becomes a dumb plot device.

2. And is Zod ever mentioned as alive in any of the Reevesverse sequels? No he isn't.

He did stop Catwoman using a gun of the rooftop

@lvenger: Actually the donner cut was released 20 years after Superman 2 theatrical release.

So there was a Whole 2 decade where killing Zod was acceptable.

Superman 2 theatrical version is also the most well known.

@omega_ray_jay: I did say he'll try to stop it. But if he can't see any other way of stopping the bad guy like with Ra'as apparently, he'll let the bad guy die.

1. I wasn't doing anything. I was just saying random nonsense on the top of my head.

2. No. He and the other villains from Krypton aren't mentioned at all. Just like those nuclear warheads are never mentioned again.

And the crappiest.

Excuse me but have you forgotten the monstrosities that are Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? Compared to them, Superman II is a masterpiece. I really like it anyway.

I meant compared to the Donner Cut.

I'm assuming this is a sarcastic jest since Internet sarcasm can be misinterpreted very badly on occasion :P