I disagree. Pa Kent died because he wanted to protect his son’s secret. Immediately before the tornado showed, they were discussing him becoming a farmer, he wanted Clark to have a normal life and not be an outcast and he would rather die. It follows closely from the earlier scene where he saves the kids on the bus and when asked if he should have let them die he said “…maybe” He may have been wrong, but at least he wasn’t a hypocrite. It also gives us more depth to the limitations of Superman.
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No, I get that: whatever he was publicly doing when the tornado hit, he was going to wave his son back to preserve the secret. I’m just saying that, so long as he’s going to die while saving a life, he could’ve been rescuing a scared little girl or hauling an unconscious kid who probably isn’t li’l Lex Luthor out of a wrecked car.
The film does a good job showing that there are things to sympathize with in Zod. We should genuinely feel with him, IMO, in the monologue he delivers while crouched on the ground just before the final fight. (“You’ve taken my soul away from me” or something like that–with his soul being his charge to protect the people of Krypton.)
But Jor-El didn’t just selfishly choose his kid, he believed (as it turns out, correctly, and presumably for good reasons) that no one on the planet would be surviving, and that the codex was headed for destruction in any case. He did what he could to guarantee the destruction wasn’t complete.
And while it’s true Zod was “just” trying to re-assembe Krypton somewhere else, he wanted to do so at the expense of an entire planetary race. Jor-El’s plan, instead, involved bringing back the people of Krypton to live peacefully with the other race. That seems better.
(It occurs to me you may be assuming that reassembling the race was Zod’s plan all along. But do we know that to be true from the film? In any case, there’s still an important good/bad dichotomy between Zod and Jor-El. Zod wanted to reassemble the race as-is. Jor-El believed it was irreparably broken by its genetic engineering, and would only repeat the tragedy if reassembled without ending the genetic engineering policy. Bit more of a philosophical dispute, that, but still one that seems to me to justify Jor-El’s course of action.)
Fair enough, if he’s going to risk his life, it would make sense to risk it for a person rather than a dog. It may have been better to have been a trapped kid instead.
At the same time though, I think that’s part of the flaw of his character, that he taught to Clark, in the same way that Clark can’t not save people, Jonathan Kent selflessly saved even the dog without regard to the consequences, where it might not have felt like all that much of a sacrifice if he’d saved a kid. It fits right in with how Clark protected people without even a second thought about himself, like in the scene with the guy harassing the waitress, he did enough to protect her but trashed his truck over it and had to go hide again. Really, the only difference is that Superman usually isn’t seen with being careless in just jumping in headfirst because he’s invulnerable, but really he was still being careless with his life, at least the part that matters, being stable and happy and fitting in.
Still, as compared to a heart attack, I think Jonathan Kent dying that way helped to establish an extra limit on his power. I don’t think we really need to establish that his strength can’t save someone from a heart attack, but it did help to see that he did at least struggle with keeping his secret and that using his powers served to isolate him.
You do have to figure that at this point, anyone who cares to know can figure out that Clark is Superman.
Lois had to do some hard work to backtrack him, but the destruction of Smallville points pretty conclusively to Superman having grown up in that area. And presumably not everyone associated with moving his original ship out of the barn died in the C-10 kamikaze move.
I wouldn’t worry too much about economic depression. Humans have been left an incredible trove of alien technology, including millions of tons of some super-metal that apparently doesn’t exist on earth. Even the mere “existence proof” that aliens exist, that interstellar travel is possible, etc. would be an enormous boon to science and technology.
With the exceptions of his fathers’ deaths, I thought the movie was great.
Jor-El:
I don’t have a quibble with Zod killing him, but it should have gone down differently. I enjoyed that Jor-El was beating the shit out of Zod for a bit, but that shouldn’t have been possible, with Zod born to be a warrior and Jor-El born something else. Zod should have dominated the fight completely.
I also didn’t care for the killing blow – everyone’s staring at Kal-El’s pod blasting off, and all of a sudden Zod seizes the moment to stab him right in the gut. Jor-El shouldn’t have died because he was distracted, he should have died because he was bested in combat. It was cheap.
Jonathan Kent:
If keeping your son’s origin and abilities a secret is worth dying for, it’s also well worth letting the damn dog die and not putting yourself or Clark into that situation in the first place.
There’s some irony to his death, too. Jonathan jumps into the tornado to save the dog, and forbids Clark to save him because no one will accept him if he reveals himself. His death is presumably what pushes Clark into leaving Smallville and living the life of an anonymous, transient laborer. No one knows him, no one is close to him, no one takes care of him. He’s completely alone. Isn’t this the life Jonathan was afraid he would have? The lesson didn’t sink in, either – Clark’s still running around saving people and not hiding his abilities.
It could have been a meaningful death if it were a bunch of kids that Jonathan went to save, as a callback to the “Should I let them die?”/ “Maybe” conversation he and Clark had earlier. But it wasn’t.
I’m concerned for how this sets up the next MOS film. This wasn’t a small-time, set-up thug who put the city in mild danger. This was the literal reshaping of the planet, an intended genocide. A city was decimated, tens of thousands died, and Superman actually killed his foe. You can’t have him toying with Mxyzptlk next time. It might be that nothing short of Darkseid teaming up with Doomsday will feel like an appropriate sequel to this. Ignoring, of course, the fact that there has been no good comic-book superhero movie that had two main villains.
I’m pretty sure it’ll be Lex Luthor. Zod was his physical equal and, like you said, nobody short of Lobo or Darkseid can come close to that. But if they use the Luthor who ran for (and eventually became) President, he’ll be able to attack him in ways that Clark won’t really be able to counter. Like someone said upthread, they’ll have to cast someone who will be as good at playing Luthor as Heath Ledger was at playing the Joker. I’m confident they’ll cast well, and that I’ll love it.
Just a little more info on Pete Ross for those who care.
I basically stopped buying comics in the early 80’s so have never got into all the plot twists and the infinite earth crisis thingo, so all my recollections are of reading of the Superman of the 60’s and 70’s.
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie now, thanks to all for the reviews.
Yeah, before he floated out of the ship, he beat us in the head with the crucifix pose. I also saw a hint of it when the kids were bullying him on the fence. Also, when he told the cop to ‘do what he had to do’, I felt some Judas vibes going on. Really, it was shot all through with Jesus stuff.
You may have missed a movie called The Dark Knight. I hear the actors who played the villains did a pretty good job.
I came into this thread thinking most would be complaining about how Lois Lane found out who Superman was right away. Usually the deviations from canon cause the biggest uproar. I had no problem with the destruction. I thought it was well done and fits the modern comicbook movie version of reality. Multiple Superman strength people fighting will cause a lot of damage.
I really loved it. I liked the way it took existing mythology and managed to give it new twists without making major changes or just retelling the whole story yet again. I could have done without the shakycam, but I thought the emotional punches it threw were a nice change for the Superman franchise.
I also have to say that when Henry Cavill smiles, I feel like I got punched in the ovaries. That man is too damn handsome.
Oh, and someone upthread was saying that they thought Pete Ross was a character invented for Smallville. It’s been covered that Pete has been around for a long time–Chloe Sullivan was the new character (who I think has since started appearing in comics, but I’m not keeping up with print like I used to).
All in all, definitely better than Superman Returns, which I liked at first and then liked less every time I thought about it after that. I am absolutely looking forward to sequels, because the concept of Superman struggling with morality and his own emotions is more interesting than the character’s been in a long time.
