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The Winter Soldier Vs. Man of Steel

HaplessCrewman

Commander
Red Shirt
[SPOILERS]

Pretty interesting article on the differences between the ending of The Winter Soldier and Man of Steel.

The article posits that MOS exhibited a basic mis-understanding of Superman whereas TWS stayed true to Captain America's belief system.

Do we go to superhero films to see our heroes break their own rules or to see their beliefs challenged and find a way to uphold them? Frankly, I had no problem with Superman killing Zod - it was Kal-El's obliviousness (or dis-interest in) all the carnage he was causing that makes me think that this version of Superman is fundamentally different from what has come before.

http://screencrush.com/captain-america-man-of-steel/

I'll bet DC is envious of Cap's box office success and fan praise. Marvel's going to clean up this summer with Spider-Man, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc - all with nary a DC film in sight.
 
I think the differences are a little too large to make an effective comparison. Then again, I found it hard to blame those deaths on Superman given the stakes involved.
 
Superman could easily have forced that fight to take place elsewhere. Throwing/Carrying Zod out of the city for instance. We've seen it done in comics/toons before.
To just stay in the city knocking over buildings with civilians around was spectacle the filmmakers wanted but it showed a lack of understanding on what Superman would do to protect said civilians any other time.

MoS is one good, really good hour, hour+ and one very pedestrian hour with numbing violence for the sake of it without really progressing the characters.

Cap:TWS is so much more a complete film.
 
I think in MoS they were trying to show just how destructive a battle between super-beings would really be in a city.
 
Eh, I don't really see the comparison.

The article shoots down its own premise about Superman killing Zod vs. Captain America not killing Bucky by pointing out that they're completely different situations. By that point Cap had already neutralized the threat posed by the Helicarriers, so he could afford to spare Bucky's life. But I got no indication that Cap wasn't willing to kill Bucky if necessary to save civilian lives on the ground had he continued to prevent him from disabling the Helicarrier. He didn't want to, but he would have if necessary, and in fact almost did. Likewise, Superman had an ongoing threat to civilians both on the micro-scale with the family Zod was threatening and on the macro-scale in that the Phantom Zone was closed and no prison on Earth could adequately hold Zod, so he remained a threat to the planet. Superman clearly didn't want to kill him, but he had to.

Now, as far as your point, I think it's often forgotten that the Superman we see in MoS has only been flying for a matter of weeks at most when the attack begins, and had never encountered nearly equivalently powered beings before, not to mention so many of them. His inexperience leads him to not know his own strength when throwing Zod across the corn field, and allows him to get tossed around by the professionally trained Kryptonian soldiers. I don't think he was indifferent to the destruction, as witnessed by his telling people to hide, by him saving falling soldiers, by him preventing planes from being knocked out of the air, and by rescuing Jenny from beneath the rubble. He's simply never dealt with this many foes with this much power before, and he's inexperienced and overwhelmed. People say, well why didn't he lead them out of the city, but I think he was trying to do that with Zod, and Zod kept forcing him to stay within the city to stop him, sometimes physically throwing him back within the buildings. In Superman II, Superman was fortunate that his enemies all attacked one at a time and with really slow, simple to deflect attacks. This was a completely different animal.

Likewise, the situation with the Helicarriers could have been pretty devastating to Washington had they simply chosen not to remain hovering over the Potomac and Theodore Roosevelt Island. Frankly, Cap and friends got lucky on that score, especially when they all careened down into the water and fortunately right back into the SHIELD Triskelion which had been evacuated of all the good guys (hopefully). They were saved more by the plot (which, don't get me wrong, I loved) than anything that Cap and the team did, since they weren't trying to steer the Helicarriers to a safe crash site.

I'm sure after the movie, Superman joined people in mourning and rebuilding Metropolis. It just wasn't really relevant to telling his revised origin story, IMO. It's just assumed that he's not a heartless bastard who doesn't care that thousands of people just died (especially since he chose to save humanity over his own people and just risked his own life for them, despite their distrust and fear of him).

Anyway, the article just seems to want to pit TWS against MoS based on the flimsiest of comparisons because TWS is the new kid on the block, but then it undermines its own point, IMO. They're apples and oranges as far as I'm concerned. That being said, I preferred TWS over MoS, which I enjoyed a great deal too. But TWS is pretty damn close to perfection for a superhero film. At least until the next best one comes along to surpass it eventually.

As far as superhero origin stories that challenge the status quo and show our hero in a different light: I like them sometimes, just as much as I like more conventional takes on the characters. Which is why I didn't mind MoS. I don't think it deviated from his basic morality much, except for some of the things Jonathan Kent taught him, and even then, Clark was shown to disagree with his father's beliefs, even when he honored them when it came to letting him sacrifice his life to protect Clark's secret. But when the time came to step up and do the right thing, he did.
 
Marvel's going to clean up this summer with Spider-Man, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.
Spider-Man and X-Men are licensed films made by other studios. While there was a time Marvel was thrilled to see licensed films made, at this point they're more chagrined at not controlling those properties themselves, especially in the case of X-Men since Marvel is stuck with a lousy deal with Fox that brings them, Marvel, very little revenue. The Spider-Man deal with Sony is at least more lucrative.
 
I think in MoS they were trying to show just how destructive a battle between super-beings would really be in a city.

Probably a good reason why, if you have any choice at all, you GTFO of an urban environment for those battles.
 
We're talking two relatively evenly matched individuals. I don't think Superman could have tossed him out of the city and kept him there.

I'd also point out that Steve Rogers tried to save his best friend and gave up fighting him. But he also assumed every person on the Helicarriers were hostile and had no problem with them dying in order to save 20 million. When considering the stakes, Superman was trying to save far more than 20 million as well.
 
We're talking two relatively evenly matched individuals. I don't think Superman could have tossed him out of the city and kept him there.

They very often in the comics have Superman toss some uber-being out of a populated area and continue the fight in the new location. I don't think Zod specifically felt the need to destroy the city during his fight with Superman.
 
I don't think Zod specifically felt the need to destroy the city during his fight with Superman.

On the contrary, I think that was his --and his compatriot's earlier-- explicit plan while combating Kal: to exploit his compassion for humanity and use it against him. Faora mentioned it as Clark's "weakness" in Smallville. Zod exploited as his weakness when threatening to kill the family at the end. It was likely the reason Zod kept doubling back into the city and throwing Clark back into the city instead of taking things outside so to speak. Heck, they even went into space and then Zod flew directly back to Metropolis when with a slight course correction he could have gone anywhere.

Why were they so interested in Lois, which seemed to go beyond just her discovery of the alien presence on Earth and seemed to hinge on her relationship with Kal? Why'd they choose to set their ship down right smack dab in the middle of downtown Metropolis when they had a whole world of empty land to set down on and turn on the Dubstep Drive? Because they wanted mass destruction and hostages to occupy Superman (and to a lesser extent the humans) while they carried out their plans.

It was Zod using his decades of military strategy to his advantage to defeat what was at the time (before Zod harnessed all his powers too) a marginally superior foe by using his surroundings to his advantage.
 
^ Yeah, and after the ship failed, he made it his explicit plan to make Kal suffer and that included destroying Metropolis.

We're talking two relatively evenly matched individuals. I don't think Superman could have tossed him out of the city and kept him there.

They very often in the comics have Superman toss some uber-being out of a populated area and continue the fight in the new location.

Of course, Superman's exact strength seems to vary depending on the story. I think the movie tried to strike a balance where he was extremely strong without being over the top. Not to the point where he could toss a fellow superbeing well beyond a city (they tossed each other into nearby buildings, not miles).
 
Pretty silly article, given that Winter Soldier didn't pose NEARLY as great a threat to the world as Zod.

As for the movies themselves, I won't deny that TWS was the stronger and better-written film. But MOS was also clearly intended to be more of a mood piece than a heavily plot-driven film, so it's kind of hard to make too much of a comparison between the two.

Frankly I think they both work really well at what they set out to do.
 
Yeah, don't get me wrong. I like TWS better than MoS. But that's because TWS is a better movie, not because of any specific body count or value of property damage in the final battle.
 
I could not give a single fuck about the complaints at the end of MoS. It was freaking awesome.
 
I could not give a single fuck about the complaints at the end of MoS. It was freaking awesome.

Garak on the links at the Metropolis Golf Club:

roflbot_zps916961d9.jpg
 
Superman could easily have forced that fight to take place elsewhere. Throwing/Carrying Zod out of the city for instance. We've seen it done in comics/toons before.

IIRC, didn't Supes actually pick Zod up off his farm, fly him through a few of his neighbours' barns, and then drop him off in the middle of Smallville for a good old barney? :lol:

Maybe i'm remembering wrong, it's so easy to get it confused with every other superhero movie made in the last 13 years.
 
I'm still buzzed by how awesome TWS was...the last thing I want to think about is Man of Steel. :p
 
Superman could easily have forced that fight to take place elsewhere. Throwing/Carrying Zod out of the city for instance. We've seen it done in comics/toons before.

IIRC, didn't Supes actually pick Zod up off his farm, fly him through a few of his neighbours' barns, and then drop him off in the middle of Smallville for a good old barney? :lol:

Maybe i'm remembering wrong, it's so easy to get it confused with every other superhero movie made in the last 13 years.
Does sound kinda right but that was in the second act not the finale. But it does prove Kal could've relocated the fight.

I only saw MoS once though so....
 
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