At Gojira's request. A friend and I were discussing writer David S. Goyer’s recent defense of the controversial decision of Superman to kill General Zod in Man of Steel. Superman, fans say, is the pinnacle of heroic goodness, “an ideal to strive towards” as Jor-El himself said in the film, and such a perfect ideal should not take another’s life; otherwise he is diminished to being a regular man with super powers. To be fair, Superman has had one major rule in his 75 years of life: Superman does not kill. Indeed, a lot of DC characters have that rule, including Batman. But where it makes sense for Batman, because his One Rule is brought about by a traumatic childhood experience, Superman has no historical context justifying his no killing rule. He just doesn’t do it by virtue of being morally superior to mere humans. In this sense, Batman is the warped opposite of Superman, a darker, meaner, scarier Superman with no real super powers, that haunts the night, uses fear to defeat his enemies, and doesn’t kill not out of being morally superior, but psychologically averted to the concept. Superman though? Superman is a being of god-like powers, capable of moving entire planets and traveling faster than light. He doesn’t kill because he is above humanity, he is an ideal of hope, and defeats his enemies with heroism and feats of strength unmatched by any human, who fights fairly for truth, justice and the American way. The people of the DC universe idolize him, and call him the Man of Tomorrow, the man that we all hope to be like in the future. Superman was even originally intended, by writers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, to be a direct analogy to Jesus Christ (Superman’s real name, Kal-El, is actually loosely translated into Hebrew as “all that is God,” with El meaning God in Hebrew). But in Man of Steel, Superman kills General Zod. Why? Why would a being of such perfect morality, a being prophesized in the very same movie by his father Jor-El, to be “an ideal to strive towards,” kill someone, no matter how evil? It should be noted that Christopher Nolan and even David S. Goyer were originally against the idea of Superman killing Zod, but Zac Snyder, the Director and the man who came up with the idea initially, convinced them that it was the best choice. Why is that, then? Would Superman kill Zod? Truth be told, yes, and he has, at least twice before in the past. In one story, Superman kills Zod, Faora and Non with green kryptonite. In Superman II, Superman takes away Zod’s powers and throws him down an ice shelf. It has happened before, but the overall ideal that Superman doesn’t kill remains valid. Over 75 years there’s bound to be outliers, unusual occurrences. The question at hand is really, would Superman normally kill someone? And the answer to that question is a resounding no, he wouldn’t. Superman, again, is an ideal of perfection the likes of which humans most likely can’t comprehend, but we strive towards anyway (much like Jesus Christ). As such, Superman would not kill. Kal-El, however, very much would. While watching Man of Steel, I was engrossed in the character of this Kal-El person, but it wasn’t until they called him Superman that I remembered on a subconscious level that I was watching a Superman movie. “Superman?” questioned the General, disbelief in his tone. “The alien, sir, that’s…that’s what they’re calling him.” Personally, I find that scene to be one of my favorite in the movie, because it says what so many fans seem to have missed: Man of Steel is NOT a Superman movie, it is a Kal-El movie. When the officer called him Superman, I had a conscious “wait…hold on a minute” reaction. It felt totally out of place, and the General’s “are you serious?” reaction was pretty much my own. It sounded almost comical hearing that name after seeing the previous hour and a half of the film, but it established an important precedence for the film, and the wider DC universe, so many fans have completely missed. Superman is an ideal to strive towards, but Kal-El is not a Superhero. He is merely a hero with super powers. Man of Steel follows Kal-El, an alien from another world with unbelievable powers, sent to earth with a single goal in mind: protect the human race. But he doesn’t know that, because he was sent as an infant, and his real father, Jor-El, died with his home world Krypton. Despite the love and care of his adoptive parents, the Kents (who gave him his earth-name Clark), Kal-El still feels lost in this world, a world that rejects him, a world where he must hide his true identity or be forever outcast and shunned, a world where he must constantly take care not to break something, to break someone, and all he wants to know is why. “Did God do this to me?” a 14 year old Kal-El asks his adoptive father Jonathan Kent. The entire film is following this Kal-El person as he tries to find his purpose in life, speaking to the universality of the need to belong to something, a reason to exist. We see him take odd jobs, as a fisherman, a waiter and so on, trying to fit in, but his superhuman abilities grant him the capacity to help and save people in ways no human can. His very first scene has him lift an entire exploding oil rig so the workers can get to safety, and ends with a shot that parallels Jesus’ crucifixion. What did he sacrifice to warrant such an iconic shot? His secret. Every time Kal-El uses his powers to save someone, he exposes himself a little farther to humanity, sacrificing the only thing he holds dear: the secret his adoptive father died to protect. But now humans are starting to tell stories of this “guardian angel” capable of god-like feats of strength, speed, and heroism. “If you want to remain hidden forever, you’re going to have to stop saving people.” The secret is getting out. But Kal-El’s moral superiority keeps him from stopping. He feels he has the power to save people, and therefore he must. He walks the earth, a guardian of humanity, willing to risk his secret and his entire life to protect us. And then, as soon as he arrives, he is gone, disappeared into the wild once again. This is what makes the character of Kal-El so potent in Man of Steel, he has an almost mythological feel to him, a watchful guardian who walks among us, but is not one of us. But while his acts of heroism make him physically different, it is important to note that he has been raised by humans and as such is as spiritually, emotionally and mentally imperfect as any human. I love the scene where, just before the arrival of General Zod, we see Kal-El drinking a beer and watching a football game (complete with a baffled look on his face as his favorite team, presumably, screws up a play). It is a distinctly human, a distinctly American thing to imagine, having a stiff one and watching your favorite team get thrashed (or maybe it’s a distinctly Philadelphian thing), but it is another thing entirely to see a man who could single handedly outplay the entire NFL have the same experience as anyone else. It reminds us that he possess the soul of a human, even if his genes say he is a Kryptonian. At one point in the movie, we see Kal-El don the red cape of his heritage, and his eventual iconic legacy, and in that moment, he flies, up, up and away, hurtling around the earth at supersonic speeds, going faster, faster until he soars over the earth and hurls himself back towards the planet and…the scene ends. The very next time we see him, no more than five minutes later, he’s wearing jeans, a dirty T-shirt, a jacket and a baseball cap. This used to be the scene I would point too as an example of the film’s shoddy pacing, but now I look at it differently. I realize the juxtaposition of the two very different characters. Kal-El is mild, meek, somewhat lost and confused, and like Bruce Wayne playing Batman and vice versa, pulls off his secret identity quite well. But the man he was, not 5 minutes before? That was a different man entirely, full of energy, enthusiasm, power and idealism. In that scene, I believed a man could fly, and the movie juxtaposes the speed and brilliance of the first flight with mild-mannered Kal-El, hiding his face with a baseball cap, unsure of himself. It was almost jarring and I did in fact used to hate that transition, but now I realize that perhaps they were trying to prove something. I realized that we never see Kal-El put on the suit, nor do we see him take it off. Each scene with him in it, he was already wearing it, and these scenes usually open with a heroic shot (emerging from the white light, and floating above a crowd of soldiers in front of the sun). He’s different—subtly, but much different. Kal-El, as I’ve said, doesn’t joke with too many people beyond his adoptive mother. He gets into fights with his dad, cries, struggles, storms out of buildings, crushes trucks with his bare hands for revenge and so on. But in the suit, he is much more different. Henry Cavill pulls off the subtle differences quite well—he smiles more, laughs, and overall has a benevolent aura around him, particularly noticeable in the interrogation scene. When he’s wearing the cape, he is almost a different character, something more than just himself, something super….