re: Superman Was Too Powerful to be Interesting in Man of Steel

I've read every post here and I have really enjoyed the differing opinions.

I so old I saw Supreman! The Motion Picture at the Broadmoore Twin in Baton Rouge opening night. As a kid walking out of there, I believed a man could fly. I've read comics as far back as I can remember. I started with DC, and as I matured, I leaned more towards Marvel. My favorite titles were X-Men, Daredevil, and Spider-Man.

I actually liked large parts of Superman Returns. The part where he is attempting to save the airliner may be the best portrayal of how I think Superman's flight would look. It's epic.

I was disappointed with certain portions of Man of Steel. The main issue I had was with him killing Zod at the end. One of the things that makes Superman a Hero is that he DOES have near omnipotence, and yet he chooses to hold himself back. He always finds another way. There's no way Superman would have held a running battle in the heart of Metropolis like that. He would have done everything he could to lure Zod out to some wasteland like a desert or Antartica or something. He certainly wouldn't have carelessly used skyscrapers full of people as part of the fight. (For those that reference the cartoons here, those are written for children, MoS went out of it's way to be more "adult" with it's dark serious tones). And Superman would have found another solution besides killing Zod. My friend and I were discussing this and in just a few minutes of back and forth I came up with a much better ending. Zod wanted to bring back the Kryptonian race. He was pissed because Kal-El had the Codex and that prevented him from doing what he was bred to do, to fight for, protect, and promote his race. During the story Zod talks about finding dead and abandoned scout ships all over the galaxy. All other Kryptonians are supposedly dead. Why not have Superman uncover a clue that there may be another lost colony out there somewhere. As Superman beats Zod to the point of having "won", with Zod now threatening to eyelazer some innocents because he feels his purpose for living is over and WANTS Superman to kill him, Superman uses his intellect and reason, not brute strength to convince Zod that he still has a reason to exist. He can use these new super powers to go out and find the last Kryptonian outpost.

He doesn't have to kill, he's above that. He is the ideal, and THAT'S what makes him Superman, not the physical powers. And he learned those ideals and morals from Paw fricking Kent, not Jor-El dammit.