But, as I said, I never believed that Superman left him there to freeze. Besides, the basic rule of thumb in comics is, "If we don't see a body, then they are not dead."
Right. It must be remembered that we're talking about a movie that was made before the modern age of serious, relatively naturalistic comics. Actually the comics were getting more serious by the late '70s and 1980, but the Reeve movies were much more in the light-hearted, fanciful idiom of the Silver Age, for all their attempts to create a naturalistic setting for those fanciful tales. So the logic that applies here is cartoon logic. Zod, Non, and Ursa were ambiguously defeated, not explicitly killed.
I always found it ridiculous that studios have to race the clock to make film lest they lose the rights to a franchise. It's a perfect reason/ excuse to pump out shabby films.
But what else are they gonna do? If you granted other studios license to your properties in perpetuity, with no strings attached, then those other studios could just sit on those properties indefinitely for no other reason than to prevent you from making movies out of them. These "use it or lose it" provisions are included to prevent that. The franchise owner can only make a profit if
somebody's making movies based on their properties, and if the licensee isn't doing so, they're going to want to reclaim those rights for themselves. It's about keeping the licensees honest, ensuring that when they pay for the movie rights, they actually use them to make movies rather than just burying them to hurt the competition.
And yes, sometimes the licensees will just make shabby films to hold onto the rights, but that's true of anything else in the business -- a lot of filmmakers just do shabby work, period. In other cases, though, the studio puts real effort into making something that works well, that'll really be profitable and worthwhile and will get a popular franchise going rather than just being a minimum necessary effort to retain the rights. Paramount needed to get a Trek film in production before their option expired, but they didn't do it halfway; they threw their best effort into creating a big tentpole property. And Sony didn't just churn out a lazy Spider-Man reboot, but hired people who put a lot of creativity and skill into it and made something different enough from what came before to be worth doing. As for Fox, they've revitalized the X-Men franchise, they seem to be putting a lot more care than before into their upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, and they actually let the Daredevil rights revert to Marvel rather than rush an unsatisfactory film into production.
So just because the "use it or lose it" clauses
can lead to cheap, lazy efforts to hold onto the rights, that doesn't mean they
have to. After all, the franchise owners do have the option to buy back the rights, and if the licensees do a bad job with the property, then it loses value and it'll be easier for the owners to buy it back. So even just from a pure business perspective, it's in the licensees' interest to make movies that are worth something.
I think the "no killing" rules are somewhat shoddy myself. Certainly a hero would be above that if they have a choice, but some situations they might not have a choice. I just hate the way, like in TDK trilogy, they establish it like a rule. To me, it's more common sense.
But there are common-sense arguments for superheroes not killing except as an absolute last resort. If they aren't state actors, if they're vigilantes or freelancers rather than cops or soldiers, then they don't have the authority of the state backing their actions. And that means that if they kill, they're exposed to homicide charges or wrongful-death lawsuits, and that could really hamper their activities, as well as turning the lawful authorities against them. Self-defense only counts if you have no opportunity to retreat or if you're in your own property (at least in New York City, which is kind of the default superhero setting); if you actively pursue the bad guy or voluntarily get into a fight with them and they die, then it's not legally self-defense. Well, unless it's a response to an imminent threat to the life of a bystander, so Superman in MoS could have a defense there. But you'd still need to undergo arrest and trial before the legal system would clear your name, and that would spoil any secret identity, and you'd probably be enjoined against any further vigilante activity.
So really, for a superhero or costumed vigilante to use deadly force, even if it were unavoidable, would likely be a career-ender for them. Thus, it's best avoided as much as possible, even aside from simple respect for the sanctity of life (which should obviously be the primary consideration, otherwise why even be in the heroing business?).
[Yes, but the basic rule of thumb in film and TV is, when the villain plummets down a bottomless pit, he's dead.
No, the rule of thumb is that he's presumed to be effectively dead for the purposes of that particular story, but can easily turn up alive in a later episode or sequel. Many archvillains make a habit of turning up alive after seemingly unambiguous deaths, such as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the Joker, and MacGyver's archnemesis Murdoc.
And the scene that followed was clearly a time-jump to some point in the future, probably days or weeks later.
Given the Hiroshima-scale level of destruction in Metropolis, it would've realistically been more like years later. Neither the city nor its inhabitants could return to anything resembling normality in mere weeks.
For all you know, his actions will still be haunting him in 2015's Superman/Batman film. It may haunt him, and it may worry Batman, and that may influence the way they interact.
They'd better, and Goyer has suggested that the sequel will deal with the aftermath. But that doesn't make MoS's failure to address the aftermath any less of a flaw where that film itself is concerned.
