Warning, here be Man of Steel spoilers…
David S. Goyer may be a little tied up with the script for Batman vs. Superman at the moment, but he found time in his schedule to head over to London yesterday for the latest BFI Screenwriter’s Lecture, where he took a moment to discuss Superman’s “no killing” policy. Now, if you’ve seen Man of Steel, you’ll already know that Goyer and director Zack Snyder don’t exactly hold with the rule, and Goyer addressed the controversial climax to Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod’s (Michael Shannon) showdown, as well as explaining why they felt it was necessary for the Big Blue Boy Scout to take out his fellow Kryptionian.
“We were pretty sure that was going to be controversial,” states Goyer via Digital Spy. “It’s not like we were deluding ourselves, and we weren’t just doing it to be cool. We felt, in the case of Zod, we wanted to put the character in an impossible situation and make an impossible choice. This is one area, and I’ve written comic books as well and this is where I disagree with some of my fellow comic book writers – ‘Superman doesn’t kill’. It’s a rule that exists outside of the narrative and I just don’t believe in rules like that. I believe when you’re writing film or television, you can’t rely on a crutch or rule that exists outside of the narrative of the film. So the situation was, Zod says ‘I’m not going to stop until you kill me or I kill you.’ The reality is no prison on the planet could hold him and in our film Superman can’t fly to the moon, and we didn’t want to come up with that crutch. Also our movie was in a way Superman Begins, he’s not really Superman until the end of the film. We wanted him to have had that experience of having taken a life and carry that through onto the next films. Because he’s Superman and because people idolise him he will have to hold himself to a higher standard.”
Now that you’ve had some time to reflect, how do you feel about Superman killing Zod? Is Goyer’s reasoning justified? Let us know in the comments below….
Originally published September 24, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
