Man of Steel and Superman's code of ethics - or lack thereof

There's been a raging debate going on Google+ and elsewhere on the interwebs about the conclusion to the Man of Steel movie (warning -  Spoilers ahead!).  I wrote a long response to one of the threads there, and I thought I would clone it and expand upon it here on my blog, where I have the advantage of unlimited space and also better text formatting.  Again, there be spoilers below, so stop reading now if you don't want to know how the movie ends.

First of all, as I've said before, I did not like the Man of Steel movie as a Superman film, although I thought that, absent Superman, it would have made a decent action movie.  As Superman fare, however, it was dramatically lacking, and I've already named 10 reasons why.  I'd like to expand on these points a bit, and focus on three scenes in the movie that made me want to walk out.

Walk-out Scene 1 - "Maybe"

As a teenager, Clark is on a bus that ends up sliding down an embankment and into a river.  He sneaks out the door and uses his super-strength to rescue the bus and a drowning boy.  A couple of the kids notice.  Pa Kent takes Clark aside and criticizes him, telling Clark that he must keep his powers a secret because the world "isn't ready" for him.  Clark asks what he was supposed to do. Should he have let the bus go under and all the kids drown?  Pa Kent's answer is "Maybe."

Excuse me? Maybe he should let a bunch of children die? And this coming from Pa Kent, one of the great paragons of small-town integrity in American fiction?  No, I'm sorry... this is not the Pa Kent that I know and love. There is no "maybe" about it. Innocent children are at risk. You save them now, and worry about the consequences later. Clark did exactly the right thing, but he did it against Pa Kent's advice.  Costner's Pa Kent advocated a morally ambiguous "cover your own ass" course of action for his super-powered son.  That is completely alien to the personality of Pa Kent.  Can anyone picture Glenn Ford's Pa from Donner's Superman saying "maybe" here?  Or Eddie Jones from Lois and Clark?  The whole "Smallville ethic" that Superman was supposed to have learned growing up was to help people who need it.  How does "maybe" get this done?

Back in the 1980s, Christopher Reeve was asked in an interview what advice he would give to some actor who, years in the future, would try to re-create the role of Superman.  Reeve said that the key to Superman is that he's a good neighbor.  He helps people because he can.  Reeve identified this as a core early-American value, from the time of the settlers who had no one to rely upon by each other, and who would not have survived if they hadn't been "good neighbors."  Reeve is 100% correct -- Superman is a good neighbor.  And when would a good neighbor watch a busload of innocent children go into the drink, and when someone asks "should we go in and help them," responds, "maybe?"

Walk-out Scene 2 - "Protecting your ID is more important than my life."

Following on the whole "cover your own ass" theme running through Pa Kent's advice in this movie, we see Pa's absolutely ludicrous death scene.  A tornado is coming, and everyone has taken shelter under an overpass (which, by the way, you are not supposed to do, but that's a topic for another day).  Pa Kent runs back to help rescue people but hurts his leg, and cannot get back to the overpass. The Kents all know that Clark could easily save Pa -- he could super-speed out to Pa, pick him up with one finger, and super-speed him all the way to another state in a matter of seconds, if he wanted to.  But when Clark makes a move like he's going to do just that, Pa motions him back and shakes his head.  Pa gives his life... to protect Clark's secret.  Once again, Pa's implicit advice to Clark is "cover your own ass."

Again, I almost walked out of the theater after this scene.  It once again flies in the face of the small-town American value system that Smallville and the Kents are supposed to represent -- the core values that ground Superman when he later becomes a hero.  Rather than teaching Clark that he should sacrifice everything to help people (which, by the way, is what heroes are supposed to do), the Kents teach Clark to cover his own ass, even if it means letting the people he loves die. Nothing is more important than protecting himself, not even the life of his own father. Is this, really, the lesson the Kents should be teaching Superman?

Contrast this with all the other interpretations of the Kents and Superman that have existed over the years.  This "CYOA" mentality is not simply a "new direction" for the Kents, but is at 180 degree odds with everything Ma and Pa Kent have represented since Superman's debut in 1938.  Can anyone seriously picture Eddie Jones from the Lois and Clark TV show making the same gesture? And more importantly, can you picture Dean Cain's Clark obeying it?  Not in a million years would that have ever happened.  Or compare the heart attack scene with Glen Ford in Superman from 1978, and the funeral after, where a distraught Clark says, "All those things I can do... all those powers... and I couldn't even save him."  This statement clearly shows that if Clark could have found a way to save Pa Kent with his powers, he would have done so.

This "cover your own ass" mentality that is advocated to Pa Kent, even unto his death, is at odds with everything Superman represents. It's at odds with the small-town values of the Kents. It's at odds with basic human morality, which ought to say that a life is not worth more than a freaking secret identity.  And it's at odds with what heroes are all about, because the whole definition of a hero is someone who risks his ass to help others, not someone who refuses to help others to cover his own ass.

Walk-out Scene 3 - The Killing of Zod

Superman is not supposed to kill.  It's a core element of his character -- he has a "code against killing." So when he snapped Zod's neck and then yelled in anguish, I almost got up and walked out again.

The people defending the film, and especially this scene, argue that killing Zod will teach Superman the sanctity of life.  What utter rubbish! I know killing is wrong, and I didn't have to murder someone to figure it out. What, is Superman an idiot? He can't figure out killing is a bad thing without doing it at least once?

The whole "he had to kill to decide never to kill again" argument is a rationalization.  It's probably how Snyder rationalized putting it in the movie to anyone who disagreed with it. And it's how all the people who liked the scene rationalize it to the people who didn't.  But it's a weak argument, because the vast majority of people on earth understand that you shouldn't kill without having to do it first.  By the way, I also didn't have to steal once before I figured out I shouldn't steal. Or cheat on a test before I figured out I shouldn't cheat.  Or get caught being a Peeping Thom, before figuring out I shouldn't leer at people through their windows.  I mean, come on now.

So to the Man of Steel fanboys: Look, if you like a gritty, vengeful Superman who is willing to kill, then that's fine. But don't try to defend it to those of us who don't like that type of Superman, by claiming that killing is somehow necessary for his personal growth.

"This 'Super' man is nothing of the sort."

In Superman II, General Zod mocks Superman for his heroic actions, saying to Ursa, "This 'Super' man is nothing of the sort." To Zod, the weak exist for the strong to dominate them, and if Superman were truly "super" he would rule the world.

However, to us, what makes Superman truly "super," what makes him a hero, is that he stands for all that is good and true and right. He protects innocents. He defends the weak and the helpless.  He stops crime. He tells the truth. And he always brings in his man, rather than killing.  That is how heroes do things.  That's how George Reeves did them. How Christopher Reeve did them. And how Dean Cain did them.  But it's not how Man of Steel's cast and crew decided to play things. Thus, they took the 'super' out of Superman.

The basic problem is that the people who made Man of Steel don't seem to get the character, and don't understand what makes him tick.  Superman was supposed to have gotten his morality from his adoptive parents' down-to-earth, small-town USA values. He was raised by good, honest people not to hurt others, not to tell lies, and to fight for "truth, justice, and the American Way" because that's what the Kents believe in.  Those values, ingrained into him from an early age, are the stuff heroes are made from.  Superman doesn't take over the world or do other over-the-top things (including killing) because Martha and Jonathan Kent taught him right from wrong.

Or at least... they were supposed to.  But we didn't see any of that in this movie. Instead, Jonathan Kent tells him tells him over and over again to cover his own ass, which is the antithesis of heroism.  Was it out of the urge to cover her own ass that Supergirl died in Crisis 7?   No.  Risking it all to save another person is what being a hero is all about.

And Superman is the greatest hero of all. He should not cover their own ass. He should sacrifice himself to save others.  He should die rather than let one innocent person come to harm. And every other version of Superman that has ever walked across the screen, big or small, has been that kind of hero.

But in Man of Steel, Pa Kent's advice was to let a bunch of *children* drown to protect, not even his own life, but just his secret identity? That's the kind of advice Lex Luthor would give you, not Pa Kent.  And worse, Clark followed the advice and let his own father die when he could have saved him.  There's nothing 'super' about that.

I'm glad they called this movie "Man of Steel." The character in it is not worthy of the name Superman. Or as Terrance Stamp's General Zod said back in 1981, "This 'Super' man is nothing of the sort."  You tell 'em, Stampy.