No, these stories are about good and evil when you boil them right down to it whether YOU like it or not. Characters can be morally grey to a point but ultimately Superman, Batman and Spider-Man represent the best of humanity and Lex Luthor, the Joker and the Green Goblin represent the worst.
But the good and evil of comic book land doesn’t exist in the real world. But that’s why it’s escapist fantasy. No one is as honestly malevolent as Apocalypse or as whoeslae good as Superman. That struggle is what is innate to it. You 100 fucking percent do not WHOLESALE apply the real world to these things. That’s how the GENRE works for the purposes of entertainment which is it’s reason to exist and it’s ultimate master. And the privelage argument had jack shit to do with the discussion at hand.
Yes it’s about the justice system but not in regards to the way you are discussing it. The ways superheroes obey the law and work within it are not the ways in which the law is stacked against and immoral against people.
It is under ANY moral framework inherently wrong to steal. They stop bank robberies.
It is under ANY moral framework wrong to physically assault someone. They stop muggings.
It is under ANY moral framework wrong to cause wanton destruction for kicks. They stop rampaging mass murdering super villains.
Yoru presumption paints the law as if every single solitary part of it is unjust and bad when that is bullshit because regardless of the circumstances which drove someone to do those crimes, they are still morally wrong and should be stopped or prevented from doing those things REGARDLESS.
Therafter you work to reform the system to make it fair but the superheroes role is IN the stopping of the criminal act itself to preserve life and the well being of others.
NONE of that means they would fucking enforce gay people not being allowed to get married before this year.
The superheroes BEND the system. They don’t break it. Batman in Gotham knows the system doesn’t work but he believes in justice and does his best to uphold the law in so far as he stops the criminal element from committing crimes and attempts to prevent the cuases of crime like poverty. Spider-Man works outside the system as a vigilante but ‘the system not working’ has fuck all to do with a random bank robbery he encounters.
“You can’t base your entire argument on the current legal system of any country and then argue that the fact that that legal system is irredeemably corrupt is irrelevant to the discussion. The fact that these fictional justice systems are corrupt is totally thematically relevant to real life corruption in the world’s governments, and the stories we tell are effected by said corruption because whether you like it or not, superhero stories are about social justice.”
Yeah...but they aren’t are they?
They are NOT about social justice.
Each superhero story is about a different thing but as a genre as a whole ultimately it is about good and evil and more than that the nature of survival and the human experience. Not social justice. X-Men and Wonder Woman and other ones are to an extent but the genre as a whole is categorically not.
They are nothing more and nothing less than the exact same things the ancient myths were. Which were themselves metaphors for the human experience in particular the desire to be greater than we are.
Hercules and Sun Wukong and Superman and Son Goku are at their core the exact same thing.
Lex Luthor, muggers, the bank robbers are just the Hydra. Same goddam thing
So what PRECISLY are you advocating that a system which is corrupt and doesn’t persecute racist cops for shooting black kids is something which is bad therefore superheores shouldn’t work by it therefore Batman...should kill the Joker?
Do you see how asinine that is?
And actually I CAN base my argument upon that and then dismiss the corruption of the legal system. Know why? Because it isn’t WHOLESALE corrupt. A lot of the THEORY behind it is fine but it’s how it is put into practice that it becomes corrupt.
Unless you think it is okay for someone off the street to just see a mugger, beat them up and then kill them so they won’t mug anyone ever again?
The law is far from perfect but at least parts of it are there for genuinlywell intentioned reasons.
More than that I said the corruption of the system was irrelevant in the way YOU are discussing it. Not the way I am. It is relevant for heroes not to just kill people. It is not relevant in the context of the discussion wherein you are bringing in things like crooked judges and racist cops. Surely you can figure that out.
So stop trying to enforce Social Justice Warrior agenda on superheroes as if it is the thing they are entirely about. It’s not and it never ever was. Unless it was social justice in 1938 to capture a murderer, which legally is something the justice system would enforce and want to happen as well.
It’s one thing to applysocial justice to comics and say we need more representation. Agree there. It’s another to say that’s ultimately what all superheroes are about. It’s not.
Superman isn’t about social justice he’s about hope. Regardless of who or where you are in the world his message is be good, be kind, help one another. Social justice falls under that but it’s broad to the point where God knows how many other things do as well.
Similarly Batman isn’t about social justice, or at least not that alone he’s about justice, period. In particular he wants to bring justice to Gotham which has a corrupt legal system but is also choked by crime and poverty. He wants to make it so no one else dies like his parents did. He fights crime which is what the police SHOULD be doing but aren’t because THEY are corrupt. Not because the system inherently as originally conceived is corrupt but because they have power and abuse it by NOT bringing certain people to justice or persecuting people unfairly. Were all cops more like Jim Gordon then the system being enforced would NOT be as corrupt.
But the cops, and the superheroes, are not in charge of combating societal causes of crime such as poverty.
It wasn’t an impossible fucking fanboy standard genius. We just wanted an actual SUPERMAN movie. Captain America: the First Avenger somehow managed to strike the appropriate tone and portrayal of that character in a way which Superman should’ve hit as well. In a way that OTHER portrayals in film and TV media managed to hit.
It’s not a fucking irrational fanboy expectation for Superman to not cause 9/11 levels of destruction pornography (which was part of getting funding from United States military, which Avengers a movie which didn’t have as nice a portrayal of the military or as much destruction porn, didn’t get FYI!) and to NOT kill someone when you are trying desperately to make a fresh and definitive start for the character for a new generation.
A Superman movie like this should be comprised of all the things which quintessentially make Superman who he is. Which means STARTING with him killing which he only does EXCETIONALLy was creatively asinine.
The 1996 Superman cartoon along with the 2000s Justice League cartoons AND the first Reeve’s movie. managed to make Superman bad ass, conflicted, capable of losing, capable of making mistakes without going the MOS route.
It’s not an impossible standard it’s just good writing and good characterisation.
Watch the goddam scene again.
LOOK at how much space they had, the rubble from the pillar was in front of them but had they just walked forward or even crawled under the beam they would’ve been FINE. They were not pinned at all beyond their fear which Superman could’ve alleviate by just telling them to run.
The DCCU started with MOS. They are thus defining what the DCCU bystandards would do. And apparently yes they would stand there like idiots.
You can’t say it obviously means they were pinned because they didn’t move when we can see in the picture that they clearly are not and have a lot of room to move.
Superman has Zod on a choke hold and has enough control to turn his neck all the way around. When you can do that you have control. Which means he could control his neck and DIVERT the beams OR just cover his eyes or FLY UP!
Again you are looking at their actions as a circular argument. Superman didn’t do this therefore he MUST not have been able to. Or he could have and the movie either deliberately didn’t let him do the obvious or it’s bad writing an a plot hole. Why did the military in MOS decide to handle the more heavily guarded doomsday device in the city whilst the invincible Superman handled the unguarded one in a romote location. Well OBVIOUSLY because they had no other choice because sdfkhbsdfbifsbis?????reasons?????? Or, because it was plot contrivance and you are grasping at straws for a rationalisation.
Superman’s invulnerability allows him to survive the unfiltered ultraviolent rays of space where anyone would burn. I think it’s entirely reasonable to assume he can hold off mere heat vision for a few seconds to get them clear. And then use the sun’s rays to heal himself later on.
Superman wasn’t in control of the fight and was no match for Zod which is why he was able to over power him and snap his neck....okay...
That’s my point. The movie deliberately stacked the deck in such a way so that Superman had no choice but to kill Zod (who for another contrivaed reason wasn’t sucked away with the other kryptonians). Kryptonite and red suns be damned they WANTED Superman to kill for crass shock value when it was an asinine way to set up his character.
By your own dumb logic if everyone was put into the Phantom Zone and they don’t talk about how they could just get out again since they’ve done it once before, then it must mean they can’t get out. Which means your argument that they couldn’t putting him back into the Phantom Zone is complete horseshit.
Yes I have seen the Donner films. The films where Zod’s escape was a fluke and in the ending originally intended Superman reversed time so Zod never escaped, no one got killed and Zod was even brought back to life after
Thus mitigating the entirely out of character decision of his to kill a powerless Zod who by rights should be put on trial for crimes against humanity
