Superman V.S The Elite

[Independent George]

I oppose Capital Punishment on principal, so saying it's Gotham's fault for not executing The Joker bugs me a bit. I reject the nothing that the state has any more of a right to kill someone like that then Batman does, if you think they should be allowed to there is no reason to not let Batman in my view.

There is a big difference between:

1. Arresting, trying, convicting, then executing a prisoner after multiple appeals.
2. Killing a perpetrator in the heat of the moment in order to protect another's life
3. Killing a perpetrator who has surrendered.

Whether you support or oppose capital punishment, there are still clear lines between all three scenarios (though, as in the real world, #2 tends to have a lot of ambiguity in practice). I can easily imagine scenarios where Batman is forced to make a choice between using lethal (or potentially lethal) force to stop someone, and still have it be in character. It is much harder (but not impossible) to create that same scenario for Superman simply due to his power set; he inevitably has options that Batman doesn't.

When we are arguing about whether a superhero should kill a villain, we are generally talking about #3. Superman might have been justified in killing Atomic Skull while they were fighting (following real-world lethal force statutes), but not after he had been defeated.

The bigger moral dilemma would be this: what if they had legalized executing supervillains who met a certain threshold. In that scenario, does Superman have an obligation to turn him over to the state, knowing he will be executed? What if the villain is nigh invulnerable, and the only person who could conceivably kill him is Superman? What if the state is incapable of either killing the villain, or holding him prisoner; Superman then offers to hold him prisoner in the fortress of solitude. If the villain then escapes and kills someone, is Superman then morally responsible for refusing to kill as demanded by the state, in a situation where guilt is absolute?

Those are far more interesting questions to me than the idea that Superman is expected to kill someone so that society doesn't have to sully its own hands.

[Mecha82]

but again, no one ever complained when the Christopher Reeves version of Superman killed Zod even though that Zod was no longer an immediate threat.

and I haven't seen all the MCU movies but even if what you say about Captain America is true, there are still examples in the other movies in that series. Iron Man and Pepper killed Iron Monger, the Guardians of the Galaxy killed Ronan and Ego and this is one of the ones I haven't seen yet still but didn't they kill all the henchmen aliens in the first Avengers?

and back to DC, there is the Wonder Woman animated movie from ten years back, no one ever complained about her killing there, and not just Ares but random members of his cult too.

I didn't get around to this part in my first post till I edited it so let me just hit the high points.

The audience sees Zod take a fall of unkown height to land in an unkown location. Can you find me a clip from the movie (or any of the ones that follow) of anyone ever directly talking about Zod being dead? Because if there is no such evidence, then the most logical thing to assume is that he isn't, and instead he simply fell into something that would break his fall but not be fatal and Superman flew him to prison of screen.

For Iron Man and Pepper killing Iron Monger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZt_Ab9StwU

Iron Monger is winning this fight and about to kill Tony. Those two know that the button will shut down his suit, but have no way of knowing that he'll fall forwards instead of backwards, or that even that falling forwards would end up being fatal to him, since I'm sure there are a dozen different ways that the Iron Monger suit could have ended up cushioning his fall and keeping him alive if he hadn't fallen directly into the Arc Reactor. There's no reason to assume that either Tony or Pepper have the sort of surefire knowledge that pushing the button will kill Iron Monger as opposed to how much knowledge Superman has that snapping Zod's neck will kill him.

From Guardians of the Galaxy, its worth pointing out that the audience isn't going to hold the Guardians whose leader describes himself as "An a-hole, but not 100% a dick" to the same moral standards as Superman. Guardians of the Galaxy is about a bunch of people learning to slowly but surely become barely functional members of society ("That doesn't follow, I want it more!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fHPaYglCUw ) so we are not surprised when they kill their villains and see nothing out of character or objectionable when they do it.

As for the first Avengers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0xhkLQZ9_0

All the alien soldiers stop moving when their mothership is destroyed. Given movie logic there is no reason to assume that said aliens aren't actually just more organic looking robots since they behave the exact same way the battle droids do in Episode 1 when their own mothership is shot down, much like how Manchester Black in this Superman movie points out that the huge cockroach things Superman was fighting don't have brains, thus he doesn't need to worry about holding back...



In short it all boils down to three questions.

1: Do I hold this character up to be a role model.

2: Do I believe they knowingly killed someone of human level intelligence.

3: Do I believe that they had other options?

If any of the above questions are answered "No" then odds are most of the audience are willing to go along with it.

The Superman killing in Superman 2 gets a "No" to the second question from me because I don't believe he actually killed Zod.

But the Superman killing of Zod in man of Steel is three "yes"s and that is why so many people have a problem with it.

you didn't respond to my comments about the animated Wonder Woman movie.

again, everyone else I know of assumes Zod died in Superman 2

and wile their movies try to paint them as anti-heroes, I really don't see the Guardians of the Galaxy as that different from Iron Man. speaking of, I am pretty sure the Arc Reactor blast is what killed Iron Monger and not the fall and for whatever reason, I thought killing him was their intention.

and speaking of DC animation, in the DCAU continuity, Superman is not only willing but very much wants to kill Darksied, he's almost gleeful at the thought of ending the New God, and yet it was never shown as a bad thing.

I haven't seen the animated Wonder Woman movie, can you find me a clip of the kill in question so that I can better comment on it from a position of knowledge?


As for viewing Guardians of the Galaxy as such moral paragons that you have problems with them killing people the same way that others (like myself) have a problem with Superman killing people... if that is how you view it I understand, but I can't control how other people see various movie characters. I can only say that I never saw them that way and that is why I have no objection to them killing villains, even though Ronan was very much in a defeated state where there were now plenty of options other than killing him on the table.


As for Superman and Darksied, please show me when he is willing and able to kill him at the same time.

The only time that I'd say he'd really be "able" to kill Darksied was at this point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWcmwlpjQo

Superman has Darksied utterly and completely beaten, but rather than finish him decides to go with "do with him as you will" turning Darksied over to society (just the society of Apokolips rather than Earth) to make the final decision, and even when his slaves show far more care and comparison to Darksied than he ever would for them, Superman does not go back on that choice though he could have easily flown down, grabbed Darksied away from them and took him some place private to kill him.

Superman may hate Darksied (and after everything Darksied has put him through he has every reason to) but we applaud the fact that Superman refuses to let that hate drive him to do things to Darksied that he wouldn't do to normal criminals, as opposed to Batman being willing to grab a gun against him in Final Crisis. This is the kind of stuff Chuck talked about in the review, we can see Superman have that desire to further brutalize Atomic Skull after he defeats him... but he shows self control and makes the morally right choice to stop inflicting violence once there is nothing more to be gained from it.

As for Iron Man, you'll need to clarify what you mean by the "arc reactor blast" do you mean the pillar of light that shot into the sky, or do you mean the explosion that happened when Iron Monger crashed into it?

I'm pretty sure there was no reason to assume the former would kill Iron Monger, and the latter it is to me unreasonable to argue that Tony's plan was to have Iron Monger fall into said reactor, because the plan started with just being shutting down his suit, and it was only his position that lead to it happening, and as I previously mentioned it would be all too easy to imagine Iron Monger falling into just random bits of Stark Tech and surviving but with his suit shut down he's arrested by SHIELD. In short there were too many ways for him to have possibly survived for me (YMMV) to treat it as a murder.

I don't have problems with the Guardians of the Galaxy killing their villains, my point is I wouldn't have a problem with Superman or Batman killing either. because I'm not so far up my own ass about morals that I don't know the difference between premeditated murder and justified homicide.

and Superman leaving Darksied to his slaves still would have been a vigilante killing outside of due process.

and when Darksied actually died in the cartoon, Superman wanted to go into the exploding asteroid to make sure Darksied was dead and I always assumed it wasn't for pragmatic reasons but for revenge reasons.

and here is the Wonder Woman movie clip where she killed Ares, couldn't find the other instance, though. Ares here is already depowered and begging for mercy from Zeus like happened in the movie's prologue when Wondy decapitates him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoFjSbMT3Eg

I have no problem with it because Ares could easily become a threat again but my question is why the "heroes must never kill, ever, even in self defense" crowd didn't have a problem with it.

and every time, EVERY time the question of weather superheroes should kill, they don't present the opposing side of the argument as anything but strawmen. eve there was every a superhero story that presented the side of the argument in favor of killing reasonable, please tell me.

and again, because say, Gothem City's government is so corrupt, it can't be trusted to ever kill the Joker for Batman, leaving it up to society in this case is a lost cause and wile this isn't literally what's happening, the Joker might as well be murdering innocent people every second of every day, he's a danger to society just by existing.

Thing about Darksied is that in comic books only his avatar can be killed because he is God that exist in another universe as him actually entering to any other universe would make that universe collapse so he needs avatars that are much weaker than his true form. So really he can't die and killing avatar only slows him down. After all Darsied is.

As far as people not having problem with Wonder Woman killing Ares in that animated movie goes I think that it's because people know who and what she is as well as how she was raised thus having context to that scene helps. Besides I find that scene symbolic considering that her mother killed her and Ares' son same way in prologue. Context is important.

If you want to see Batman who kills you either need to read old Gold Age comic books were he kills criminals including Joker or read All-Star Batman & Robin (ASBAR) by Frank Miller because in that he straight up kills people and acts un-heroic. Why? Because that's what Frank Miller thinks that Batman should be like.

However thing about Batman not killing comes down to what Chuck said in his review about how that's not heroes' responsibility and that society has no right to force that on them because really it's society's responsibility. Heroes like Batman and Superman act within law because it's not they job to be judge, jury and executioner like those edgy anti-heroes do. Them acting within law is part of what makes them heroes and better than those that they fight against.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

However thing about Batman not killing comes down to what Chuck said in his review about how that's not heroes' responsibility and that society has no right to force that on them because really it's society's responsibility. Heroes like Batman and Superman act within law because it's not they job to be judge, jury and executioner like those edgy anti-heroes do. Them acting within law is part of what makes them heroes and better than those that they fight against.

again, leaving it up to society in super hero universes is a lost cause because the status quo of prisons made of wet paper and an almost zero percent success record for rehabilitation will never change.

[iwfan53]

but again, no one ever complained when the Christopher Reeves version of Superman killed Zod even though that Zod was no longer an immediate threat.

and I haven't seen all the MCU movies but even if what you say about Captain America is true, there are still examples in the other movies in that series. Iron Man and Pepper killed Iron Monger, the Guardians of the Galaxy killed Ronan and Ego and this is one of the ones I haven't seen yet still but didn't they kill all the henchmen aliens in the first Avengers?

and back to DC, there is the Wonder Woman animated movie from ten years back, no one ever complained about her killing there, and not just Ares but random members of his cult too.

I didn't get around to this part in my first post till I edited it so let me just hit the high points.

The audience sees Zod take a fall of unkown height to land in an unkown location. Can you find me a clip from the movie (or any of the ones that follow) of anyone ever directly talking about Zod being dead? Because if there is no such evidence, then the most logical thing to assume is that he isn't, and instead he simply fell into something that would break his fall but not be fatal and Superman flew him to prison of screen.

For Iron Man and Pepper killing Iron Monger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZt_Ab9StwU

Iron Monger is winning this fight and about to kill Tony. Those two know that the button will shut down his suit, but have no way of knowing that he'll fall forwards instead of backwards, or that even that falling forwards would end up being fatal to him, since I'm sure there are a dozen different ways that the Iron Monger suit could have ended up cushioning his fall and keeping him alive if he hadn't fallen directly into the Arc Reactor. There's no reason to assume that either Tony or Pepper have the sort of surefire knowledge that pushing the button will kill Iron Monger as opposed to how much knowledge Superman has that snapping Zod's neck will kill him.

From Guardians of the Galaxy, its worth pointing out that the audience isn't going to hold the Guardians whose leader describes himself as "An a-hole, but not 100% a dick" to the same moral standards as Superman. Guardians of the Galaxy is about a bunch of people learning to slowly but surely become barely functional members of society ("That doesn't follow, I want it more!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fHPaYglCUw ) so we are not surprised when they kill their villains and see nothing out of character or objectionable when they do it.

As for the first Avengers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0xhkLQZ9_0

All the alien soldiers stop moving when their mothership is destroyed. Given movie logic there is no reason to assume that said aliens aren't actually just more organic looking robots since they behave the exact same way the battle droids do in Episode 1 when their own mothership is shot down, much like how Manchester Black in this Superman movie points out that the huge cockroach things Superman was fighting don't have brains, thus he doesn't need to worry about holding back...



In short it all boils down to three questions.

1: Do I hold this character up to be a role model.

2: Do I believe they knowingly killed someone of human level intelligence.

3: Do I believe that they had other options?

If any of the above questions are answered "No" then odds are most of the audience are willing to go along with it.

The Superman killing in Superman 2 gets a "No" to the second question from me because I don't believe he actually killed Zod.

But the Superman killing of Zod in man of Steel is three "yes"s and that is why so many people have a problem with it.

you didn't respond to my comments about the animated Wonder Woman movie.

again, everyone else I know of assumes Zod died in Superman 2

and wile their movies try to paint them as anti-heroes, I really don't see the Guardians of the Galaxy as that different from Iron Man. speaking of, I am pretty sure the Arc Reactor blast is what killed Iron Monger and not the fall and for whatever reason, I thought killing him was their intention.

and speaking of DC animation, in the DCAU continuity, Superman is not only willing but very much wants to kill Darksied, he's almost gleeful at the thought of ending the New God, and yet it was never shown as a bad thing.

I haven't seen the animated Wonder Woman movie, can you find me a clip of the kill in question so that I can better comment on it from a position of knowledge?


As for viewing Guardians of the Galaxy as such moral paragons that you have problems with them killing people the same way that others (like myself) have a problem with Superman killing people... if that is how you view it I understand, but I can't control how other people see various movie characters. I can only say that I never saw them that way and that is why I have no objection to them killing villains, even though Ronan was very much in a defeated state where there were now plenty of options other than killing him on the table.


As for Superman and Darksied, please show me when he is willing and able to kill him at the same time.

The only time that I'd say he'd really be "able" to kill Darksied was at this point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWcmwlpjQo

Superman has Darksied utterly and completely beaten, but rather than finish him decides to go with "do with him as you will" turning Darksied over to society (just the society of Apokolips rather than Earth) to make the final decision, and even when his slaves show far more care and comparison to Darksied than he ever would for them, Superman does not go back on that choice though he could have easily flown down, grabbed Darksied away from them and took him some place private to kill him.

Superman may hate Darksied (and after everything Darksied has put him through he has every reason to) but we applaud the fact that Superman refuses to let that hate drive him to do things to Darksied that he wouldn't do to normal criminals, as opposed to Batman being willing to grab a gun against him in Final Crisis. This is the kind of stuff Chuck talked about in the review, we can see Superman have that desire to further brutalize Atomic Skull after he defeats him... but he shows self control and makes the morally right choice to stop inflicting violence once there is nothing more to be gained from it.

As for Iron Man, you'll need to clarify what you mean by the "arc reactor blast" do you mean the pillar of light that shot into the sky, or do you mean the explosion that happened when Iron Monger crashed into it?

I'm pretty sure there was no reason to assume the former would kill Iron Monger, and the latter it is to me unreasonable to argue that Tony's plan was to have Iron Monger fall into said reactor, because the plan started with just being shutting down his suit, and it was only his position that lead to it happening, and as I previously mentioned it would be all too easy to imagine Iron Monger falling into just random bits of Stark Tech and surviving but with his suit shut down he's arrested by SHIELD. In short there were too many ways for him to have possibly survived for me (YMMV) to treat it as a murder.

I don't have problems with the Guardians of the Galaxy killing their villains, my point is I wouldn't have a problem with Superman or Batman killing either. because I'm not so far up my own ass about morals that I don't know the difference between premeditated murder and justified homicide.

and Superman leaving Darksied to his slaves still would have been a vigilante killing outside of due process.

and when Darksied actually died in the cartoon, Superman wanted to go into the exploding asteroid to make sure Darksied was dead and I always assumed it wasn't for pragmatic reasons but for revenge reasons.

and here is the Wonder Woman movie clip where she killed Ares, couldn't find the other instance, though. Ares here is already depowered and begging for mercy from Zeus like happened in the movie's prologue when Wondy decapitates him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoFjSbMT3Eg

I have no problem with it because Ares could easily become a threat again but my question is why the "heroes must never kill, ever, even in self defense" crowd didn't have a problem with it.

and every time, EVERY time the question of weather superheroes should kill, they don't present the opposing side of the argument as anything but strawmen. eve there was every a superhero story that presented the side of the argument in favor of killing reasonable, please tell me.

and again, because say, Gothem City's government is so corrupt, it can't be trusted to ever kill the Joker for Batman, leaving it up to society in this case is a lost cause and wile this isn't literally what's happening, the Joker might as well be murdering innocent people every second of every day, he's a danger to society just by existing.

and even a Disney Junior show of all things has the kind of message I wish Superhero stories would tell. and it could be considered a superhero show and thus not a random example, just one that's only about magic based heroes.

in Elena of Avalor, the evil sorceress Suriki took over the titular kingdom murdered the King and Queen, imprisoned the title character in and the rest of her family in a fate worse then death for over forty years. when Elena returns, they defeat Suriki non fatally but Suriki just comes back and eventually gets a hold of the most powerful dark magical artifact in existence. and in a battle, Elena killed Suriki as per the word of the creator when some ambiguity arose. and Elena had been completely willing to kill Suriki from the very start both out of a desire to protect her kingdom as Crown Princess and out of revenge but the show never once gave any moral handringing about how this was a bad thing.

First of all I probably use the phrase "we" or "us" in several places in this post when really I mean "I" or "my view is".

I'm sorry about that, will go back and fix it eventually.

Anyway.... Superheroes have a chance to inspire and speak to us in a way that spy /soldier fiction never can because they can show us how to not just be stronger or smarter than our foes... but better, so much better that they don't ever need to kill their foes to defeat them. At some point I can dig up the necessary Movie Bob clip in his review of Batman V Superman (well less of a review and more of a dissection /autopsy given that is made up of three parts roughly an hour and a half long each) that speaks to how there is some great and wondrous about certain superheroes that is lost when we see them actively killing their foes.

So yeah, its not about morals, its about setting a better example, yes Batman would be justified in killing the Joker (he'd be found not guilty and carried out on the shoulders of the jury to the nearest bar to celebrate) but sometimes "good enough" actually isn't.

Counter point, what would "due process" actually be for Darksied? He's not a citizen of any nation on Earth, and since it would be super awkward story telling to bring in the Green Lantern Core (though he had met them by that point in the cartoon) where could he best be judged and suffer justice for his actions?

Superman decided that the best he could do was to throw Darksied to the mercy of those he had been so mercyless to... and was bitterly shown that his servants still cared for Darksied, but to his credit Superman did not change his mind when he saw his choice had a different outcome than he expected.

Also narratively speaking "he's all yours"/"do with him as you will" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoWithHimAsYouWill moments are always acceptable from the heroes (Iron Man has one in his first movie) because even if they are themselves extra legal vigilante killings, they are also an example of karma that few find objectionable.

Give me the superman clip that you're talking about and I'll give you my comments.

Watched the Wonder Woman clip, yeah that actually was a pretty bad (as in not justified) killing from someone who would I expect better of. I'd need to watch the entire movie to see how quickly Ares can recover from a hit like that/how willing he is to actually stay surrendered, but Diana really should have used her lasso to restrain him and capture him. I would totally say that is out of character for her, badly written, and everything I say about Superman's killing of Zod in Man of Steel, it probably just drew less attention because it was a straight to video movie rather than a major cinematic block buster, and nine times out of ten people take animated movies less seriously than they do live actions one.

I hate that some people consider Wonder Woman as "the killing Superhero" as a way to make her seem different from Superman and Batman.

Although I'm not 100% certain of this I'd be willing to bet that It is largely because of an incident back in the comics that as I understand it went like there, there was a mind controlling supervillian named Maxwell Lord. He used his powers to control Superman's mind and was making him kill people. Wonder Woman bound him with her lasso and asked him what she could do to make him stop.

"Kill me."

So Diana killed him.

The Lasso of Truth being the Lasso of Truth this means that there was 100% literally no other way to possibly save the day, thus it was an acceptable killing in my book (see the "three questions", but a lot of people like to take it to the extreme of having Diana kill lots of people.


As for you needing to find a story that presents an argument in favor of killing, wouldn't most Punisher stories qualify in that regard?

The fact that supervillains can escape at any time so that more stories can be told with them is a necessary convention of comics and to look too closely at it or to examine it for great societal that the author clearly never intended is to be so busy examining the roots of a tree that you've completely lost sight of the forest. There are no good answers to that situation, and if you want to let it drive you to a point where you believe that the answer to society's problems is not a Superman but a Strongman, then you are free to do exactly that, I can't stop you.

I haven't watched the show you're talking about but let me give you my feelings.

Superman and Batman are stories that take place in the modern world with fantastical trappings.

Because they take place in the modern world and are often about stopping criminals rather than fighting wars, heed should be given to modern laws and customs like due process and criminals /villains having a chance to not be punished by imprisonment but reformed by it.

In stories that are set in a fantasy setting or a setting where those systems have been actively torn down it is much more acceptable to kill your foes.

Aragorn is pretty much the nicest guy imaginable to the point that he's never shown being seriously tempted by the One Ring, but he still kills several hundred orcs and I don't have a problem with that, and it isn't just because they're orcs.

[RobbyB1982]

In Superman 2, Supes didn't kill Zodd or his lieutenants. (Nor did Lois.) There's footage that didn't make it to the theatrical cut but shows on tv all the time that shows them being carted off by the arctic police after its all said and done.

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/images/chris-reeve-movies/ric21.jpg

I don't know how much deleted scenes "count", but it was clearly the filmmaker's intent that they be alive at the end, and instead of that footage hiding in a bin it made it to the longer tv cuts pretty much immediately.

Of course the Donner cut reuses the "travel through time" ending so who knows how that works, but Donner has been pretty clear he would have done *something* else for the ending had he actually finished the film, since it did after all get moved up to the first film.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Aragorn and Kirk are largely incorruptible by magic. Unlike Superman.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't know how much deleted scenes "count", but it was clearly the filmmaker's intent that they be alive at the end, and instead of that footage hiding in a bin it made it to the longer tv cuts pretty much immediately.

Someone brought it up here already. Their line of reasoning was that it was the higher ups that decided to cut the scene.

I buy that reason to include it because it was a creative decision to make it and include it in the first place, where it's just more of a marketing decision by the executives to dismiss it.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

but again, no one ever complained when the Christopher Reeves version of Superman killed Zod even though that Zod was no longer an immediate threat.

and I haven't seen all the MCU movies but even if what you say about Captain America is true, there are still examples in the other movies in that series. Iron Man and Pepper killed Iron Monger, the Guardians of the Galaxy killed Ronan and Ego and this is one of the ones I haven't seen yet still but didn't they kill all the henchmen aliens in the first Avengers?

and back to DC, there is the Wonder Woman animated movie from ten years back, no one ever complained about her killing there, and not just Ares but random members of his cult too.

I didn't get around to this part in my first post till I edited it so let me just hit the high points.

The audience sees Zod take a fall of unkown height to land in an unkown location. Can you find me a clip from the movie (or any of the ones that follow) of anyone ever directly talking about Zod being dead? Because if there is no such evidence, then the most logical thing to assume is that he isn't, and instead he simply fell into something that would break his fall but not be fatal and Superman flew him to prison of screen.

For Iron Man and Pepper killing Iron Monger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZt_Ab9StwU

Iron Monger is winning this fight and about to kill Tony. Those two know that the button will shut down his suit, but have no way of knowing that he'll fall forwards instead of backwards, or that even that falling forwards would end up being fatal to him, since I'm sure there are a dozen different ways that the Iron Monger suit could have ended up cushioning his fall and keeping him alive if he hadn't fallen directly into the Arc Reactor. There's no reason to assume that either Tony or Pepper have the sort of surefire knowledge that pushing the button will kill Iron Monger as opposed to how much knowledge Superman has that snapping Zod's neck will kill him.

From Guardians of the Galaxy, its worth pointing out that the audience isn't going to hold the Guardians whose leader describes himself as "An a-hole, but not 100% a dick" to the same moral standards as Superman. Guardians of the Galaxy is about a bunch of people learning to slowly but surely become barely functional members of society ("That doesn't follow, I want it more!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fHPaYglCUw ) so we are not surprised when they kill their villains and see nothing out of character or objectionable when they do it.

As for the first Avengers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0xhkLQZ9_0

All the alien soldiers stop moving when their mothership is destroyed. Given movie logic there is no reason to assume that said aliens aren't actually just more organic looking robots since they behave the exact same way the battle droids do in Episode 1 when their own mothership is shot down, much like how Manchester Black in this Superman movie points out that the huge cockroach things Superman was fighting don't have brains, thus he doesn't need to worry about holding back...



In short it all boils down to three questions.

1: Do I hold this character up to be a role model.

2: Do I believe they knowingly killed someone of human level intelligence.

3: Do I believe that they had other options?

If any of the above questions are answered "No" then odds are most of the audience are willing to go along with it.

The Superman killing in Superman 2 gets a "No" to the second question from me because I don't believe he actually killed Zod.

But the Superman killing of Zod in man of Steel is three "yes"s and that is why so many people have a problem with it.

you didn't respond to my comments about the animated Wonder Woman movie.

again, everyone else I know of assumes Zod died in Superman 2

and wile their movies try to paint them as anti-heroes, I really don't see the Guardians of the Galaxy as that different from Iron Man. speaking of, I am pretty sure the Arc Reactor blast is what killed Iron Monger and not the fall and for whatever reason, I thought killing him was their intention.

and speaking of DC animation, in the DCAU continuity, Superman is not only willing but very much wants to kill Darksied, he's almost gleeful at the thought of ending the New God, and yet it was never shown as a bad thing.

I haven't seen the animated Wonder Woman movie, can you find me a clip of the kill in question so that I can better comment on it from a position of knowledge?


As for viewing Guardians of the Galaxy as such moral paragons that you have problems with them killing people the same way that others (like myself) have a problem with Superman killing people... if that is how you view it I understand, but I can't control how other people see various movie characters. I can only say that I never saw them that way and that is why I have no objection to them killing villains, even though Ronan was very much in a defeated state where there were now plenty of options other than killing him on the table.


As for Superman and Darksied, please show me when he is willing and able to kill him at the same time.

The only time that I'd say he'd really be "able" to kill Darksied was at this point....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWcmwlpjQo

Superman has Darksied utterly and completely beaten, but rather than finish him decides to go with "do with him as you will" turning Darksied over to society (just the society of Apokolips rather than Earth) to make the final decision, and even when his slaves show far more care and comparison to Darksied than he ever would for them, Superman does not go back on that choice though he could have easily flown down, grabbed Darksied away from them and took him some place private to kill him.

Superman may hate Darksied (and after everything Darksied has put him through he has every reason to) but we applaud the fact that Superman refuses to let that hate drive him to do things to Darksied that he wouldn't do to normal criminals, as opposed to Batman being willing to grab a gun against him in Final Crisis. This is the kind of stuff Chuck talked about in the review, we can see Superman have that desire to further brutalize Atomic Skull after he defeats him... but he shows self control and makes the morally right choice to stop inflicting violence once there is nothing more to be gained from it.

As for Iron Man, you'll need to clarify what you mean by the "arc reactor blast" do you mean the pillar of light that shot into the sky, or do you mean the explosion that happened when Iron Monger crashed into it?

I'm pretty sure there was no reason to assume the former would kill Iron Monger, and the latter it is to me unreasonable to argue that Tony's plan was to have Iron Monger fall into said reactor, because the plan started with just being shutting down his suit, and it was only his position that lead to it happening, and as I previously mentioned it would be all too easy to imagine Iron Monger falling into just random bits of Stark Tech and surviving but with his suit shut down he's arrested by SHIELD. In short there were too many ways for him to have possibly survived for me (YMMV) to treat it as a murder.

I don't have problems with the Guardians of the Galaxy killing their villains, my point is I wouldn't have a problem with Superman or Batman killing either. because I'm not so far up my own ass about morals that I don't know the difference between premeditated murder and justified homicide.

and Superman leaving Darksied to his slaves still would have been a vigilante killing outside of due process.

and when Darksied actually died in the cartoon, Superman wanted to go into the exploding asteroid to make sure Darksied was dead and I always assumed it wasn't for pragmatic reasons but for revenge reasons.

and here is the Wonder Woman movie clip where she killed Ares, couldn't find the other instance, though. Ares here is already depowered and begging for mercy from Zeus like happened in the movie's prologue when Wondy decapitates him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoFjSbMT3Eg

I have no problem with it because Ares could easily become a threat again but my question is why the "heroes must never kill, ever, even in self defense" crowd didn't have a problem with it.

and every time, EVERY time the question of weather superheroes should kill, they don't present the opposing side of the argument as anything but strawmen. eve there was every a superhero story that presented the side of the argument in favor of killing reasonable, please tell me.

and again, because say, Gothem City's government is so corrupt, it can't be trusted to ever kill the Joker for Batman, leaving it up to society in this case is a lost cause and wile this isn't literally what's happening, the Joker might as well be murdering innocent people every second of every day, he's a danger to society just by existing.

and even a Disney Junior show of all things has the kind of message I wish Superhero stories would tell. and it could be considered a superhero show and thus not a random example, just one that's only about magic based heroes.

in Elena of Avalor, the evil sorceress Suriki took over the titular kingdom murdered the King and Queen, imprisoned the title character in and the rest of her family in a fate worse then death for over forty years. when Elena returns, they defeat Suriki non fatally but Suriki just comes back and eventually gets a hold of the most powerful dark magical artifact in existence. and in a battle, Elena killed Suriki as per the word of the creator when some ambiguity arose. and Elena had been completely willing to kill Suriki from the very start both out of a desire to protect her kingdom as Crown Princess and out of revenge but the show never once gave any moral handringing about how this was a bad thing.

First of all I probably use the phrase "we" or "us" in several places in this post when really I mean "I" or "my view is".

I'm sorry about that, will go back and fix it eventually.

Anyway.... Superheroes have a chance to inspire and speak to us in a way that spy /soldier fiction never can because they can show us how to not just be stronger or smarter than our foes... but better, so much better that they don't ever need to kill their foes to defeat them. At some point I can dig up the necessary Movie Bob clip in his review of Batman V Superman (well less of a review and more of a dissection /autopsy given that is made up of three parts roughly an hour and a half long each) that speaks to how there is some great and wondrous about certain superheroes that is lost when we see them actively killing their foes.

So yeah, its not about morals, its about setting a better example, yes Batman would be justified in killing the Joker (he'd be found not guilty and carried out on the shoulders of the jury to the nearest bar to celebrate) but sometimes "good enough" actually isn't.

Counter point, what would "due process" actually be for Darksied? He's not a citizen of any nation on Earth, and since it would be super awkward story telling to bring in the Green Lantern Core (though he had met them by that point in the cartoon) where could he best be judged and suffer justice for his actions?

Superman decided that the best he could do was to throw Darksied to the mercy of those he had been so mercyless to... and was bitterly shown that his servants still cared for Darksied, but to his credit Superman did not change his mind when he saw his choice had a different outcome than he expected.

Also narratively speaking "he's all yours"/"do with him as you will" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoWithHimAsYouWill moments are always acceptable from the heroes (Iron Man has one in his first movie) because even if they are themselves extra legal vigilante killings, they are also an example of karma that few find objectionable.

Give me the superman clip that you're talking about and I'll give you my comments.

Watched the Wonder Woman clip, yeah that actually was a pretty bad (as in not justified) killing from someone who would I expect better of. I'd need to watch the entire movie to see how quickly Ares can recover from a hit like that/how willing he is to actually stay surrendered, but Diana really should have used her lasso to restrain him and capture him. I would totally say that is out of character for her, badly written, and everything I say about Superman's killing of Zod in Man of Steel, it probably just drew less attention because it was a straight to video movie rather than a major cinematic block buster, and nine times out of ten people take animated movies less seriously than they do live actions one.

I hate that some people consider Wonder Woman as "the killing Superhero" as a way to make her seem different from Superman and Batman.

Although I'm not 100% certain of this I'd be willing to bet that It is largely because of an incident back in the comics that as I understand it went like there, there was a mind controlling supervillian named Maxwell Lord. He used his powers to control Superman's mind and was making him kill people. Wonder Woman bound him with her lasso and asked him what she could do to make him stop.

"Kill me."

So Diana killed him.

The Lasso of Truth being the Lasso of Truth this means that there was 100% literally no other way to possibly save the day, thus it was an acceptable killing in my book (see the "three questions", but a lot of people like to take it to the extreme of having Diana kill lots of people.


As for you needing to find a story that presents an argument in favor of killing, wouldn't most Punisher stories qualify in that regard?

The fact that supervillains can escape at any time so that more stories can be told with them is a necessary convention of comics and to look too closely at it or to examine it for great societal that the author clearly never intended is to be so busy examining the roots of a tree that you've completely lost sight of the forest. There are no good answers to that situation, and if you want to let it drive you to a point where you believe that the answer to society's problems is not a Superman but a Strongman, then you are free to do exactly that, I can't stop you.

I haven't watched the show you're talking about but let me give you my feelings.

Superman and Batman are stories that take place in the modern world with fantastical trappings.

Because they take place in the modern world and are often about stopping criminals rather than fighting wars, heed should be given to modern laws and customs like due process and criminals /villains having a chance to not be punished by imprisonment but reformed by it.

In stories that are set in a fantasy setting or a setting where those systems have been actively torn down it is much more acceptable to kill your foes.

Aragorn is pretty much the nicest guy imaginable to the point that he's never shown being seriously tempted by the One Ring, but he still kills several hundred orcs and I don't have a problem with that, and it isn't just because they're orcs.

the Punisher is usually portrayed as barely not a villain who kills for pleasure regardless of that not being my idea of the character. I want a character in favor of killing that is in all other aspects, as heroic as the regular DC cast of characters and not written to fall off the slippery slope just to make his side wrong. or at least, have the story end with no definitive answer, neither side of the argument is presented as completely right or wronb.

and about my Elena of Avalor comparison, Avalor does have a form of due process and an early episode, Elena argued with her council in favor of giving a seemingly mindless monster a chance to help resolve the current conflict peacefully. but Suriki was a different situation, she was killed without a second thought. and besides, Avaloran society in general is more like societies from the 19th century with magical trappings, not Middle Earth.

and TV Tropes said Suriki's death was a case of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped. as in it was a good thing to teach young audiences that sometimes (SOMETIMES) deadly force is necessary to protect yourself and/or others.

[Darth Wedgius]

I liked the movie, and I think it did a good job with its material in the time available. The review was great, with important reminders not to look at the world through bile-colored glasses. I don't know if that applies as much in a comic book setting with supervillains where things might be getting worse, but the real world is the one we tend to live in and need to react to more, anyway.

Should superheroes kill?

If it's necessary to save someone else from death or great suffering, I'm OK with it. Superman has very rarely killed because he doesn't want to and he's powerful enough to usually have other options. In the comics, he's killed some Kryptonians from an alternate reality, and in Man of Steel he was faced with an equally powerful foe who had made it his mission in life to kill humans.

Some say superheros should never kill, under any circumstance. I don't agree with that, but I can see the appeal, especially for some of the more idealistic characters like Superman. At times, in some versions, I think that's been his policy. I understand that in one comic, that was his policy for himself, but he understood that not everyone is bulletproof, and he said that he couldn't hold others to that standard. I don't have a problem with someone holding that standard any more than I have a problem with someone who can fly and shoot heat rays from his eyes.

Should superheroes kill so that voters and judges and juries don't have to dirty their hands? No.

Oddly, in the Justice League episode "Twilight" (no, not an MLP crossover), Superman arguably crosses a line that I don't think he does in most versions. He's going to kill Darkseid. It could be argued that Darkseid is a threat beyond the legal system to handle, and that's probably right, but I think Supe's motivation was probably personal. Darkseid used Superman to cause a lot of suffering and he killed Turpin as nothing more than a final "fuck you" to Supes. Not a lot was said about it, and Batman stopped him before the killing blow could be landed.

Of course, Darkseid is more or less the god of tyranny, so maybe there was no hope of getting a reformed Darkseid. Because, like I said, it wasn't an MLP crossover so Fluttershy wasn't available.

[Independent George]

Hey, can you guys edit your quotes a bit? It's getting hard to read this thread.