DCEU: The Hare's Regret

[Ran]

Alan Moore's Miracleman run is more illustrative of a universe with a more realistic depiction of a superman let loose on the world.

[mormont]

9 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

Is it better that he leaves Luther to directly and indirectly kill any number of people? As I say, the whole thing is utterly stupid. That's the problem with Superman - he's way to powerful for most storylines to make any sense.

Not at all: in fact, the entire point of most Superman storylines is that he's massively powerful, but that he doesn't yield to the temptation to use that power unilaterally to enforce his will on the world. He has the power of a god but refuses to set himself up as one.

Is that 'realistic'? Well, in any 'realistic' story, Superman's super-hearing (rather than allowing him to wipe out crime) would drive him insane from sensory overload. There are no truly realistic superhero stories. But does it make sense? Yes. It makes narrative sense that Superman can't and won't wipe out crime, or set himself up as judge, jury and executioner, because Superman stories are about how doing good means using whatever power you have responsibly and not allowing it to corrupt you under the guise of noble motives.

[Derfel Cadarn]

15 hours ago, Toth said:

I always got that this is the idea, but it should be noted that at the end of the day Zack Snyder is and has always been a childish edgelord. Giving Murder Batman a reason to be Murder Batman actually makes it worse as long as it ignores the rather massive repercussions this would have for Batman's psyche and his role in Gotham and the wider DCEU. Murder Batman would definitely never go out of his way to found the Justice League just for starters. I like Affleck as Batman, he sure has the presence down, but he seems far too mentally healthy in between action scenes for a Batman who got broken by Jason's death.

I'd rather point at stuff like Mask of the Phantasm, the pilot of Batman Beyond and Under the Red Hood (which the Snyderverse is clearly referencing) in why Batman's no kill rule is so important. Heck, even The Dark Knight alluded to it with its whole "One bad day" thing. Batman doesn't refrain from killing because he's such a law abiding citizen, he's refraining from killing because thanks to his obsession with revenge he's just one step away from becoming a murderous lunatic himself. That's why this is a line he cannot cross under any circumstances.

Ironically, when I rewatched a few Batman Beyond episodes a few years ago I noticed that Terry, his mentally significantly better adjusted successor under the cowl, has no No Kill rule himself and frequently kills in self-defense, something about which Bruce seems not very happy about, but lets it slide as long as Terry isn't killing for personal satisfaction (as he tries with his arch enemy Blight). So the No Kill rule is really more there to protect himself than anything else.

It’s actually the Dick Grayson Robin who was killed by the Joker and Harley in the DCEU

[Kalbear]

9 hours ago, mormont said:

Not at all: in fact, the entire point of most Superman storylines is that he's massively powerful, but that he doesn't yield to the temptation to use that power unilaterally to enforce his will on the world. He has the power of a god but refuses to set himself up as one.

Is that 'realistic'? Well, in any 'realistic' story, Superman's super-hearing (rather than allowing him to wipe out crime) would drive him insane from sensory overload. There are no truly realistic superhero stories. But does it make sense? Yes. It makes narrative sense that Superman can't and won't wipe out crime, or set himself up as judge, jury and executioner, because Superman stories are about how doing good means using whatever power you have responsibly and not allowing it to corrupt you under the guise of noble motives.

Why would his hearing drive him insane? He's an alien, with apparently super intelligence as well as his other powers canonically. There's no reason to think that he can't handle that level of input.

It doesn't make a lot of narrative sense because occasionally Superman does go and fight regular, basic crime. So does Batman, who despite being human has the technology and power and intelligence to do pretty much whatever he wants. Neither make sense narratively. Both are proto-fascistic fantasies of a benevolent authoritarian power which only uses its objective knowledge of what is right for good.

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Karlbear said:

Why would his hearing drive him insane? He's an alien, with apparently super intelligence as well as his other powers canonically. There's no reason to think that he can't handle that level of input.

It doesn't make a lot of narrative sense because occasionally Superman does go and fight regular, basic crime. So does Batman, who despite being human has the technology and power and intelligence to do pretty much whatever he wants. Neither make sense narratively. Both are proto-fascistic fantasies of a benevolent authoritarian power which only uses its objective knowledge of what is right for good.

In the Snyderverse, Clark was basically autistic due to the sensory overload as a youth.

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, Karlbear said:

Why would his hearing drive him insane? He's an alien, with apparently super intelligence as well as his other powers canonically. There's no reason to think that he can't handle that level of input.

I can’t see what intelligence has to do with the ability to hear millions of people all at once. That’d be a bizarre power, to be  able to filter that down to just the people who need his help. And it’s kinda what bugs me about a lot of takes on Superman: people assume he’s super everything, you can just name a verb and he must, by definition, be super at it. I’ve said before that Superman is very easy to dial down for storytelling purposes, it’s not like Spider-Man where he either can or can’t climb walls. Superman’s strengths are all linear power levels, why not just say he can lift this much, no more? He doesn’t have to be the strongest conceivable person ever ever ever.

[Toth]

I for one never considered him "super intelligent". Clever enough to use and even reverse engineer some kryptonian technology, sure, but he's not a super computer.

And sensory overload should be a thing. In fact I think that's exactly why sonic weapons are rather effective against him (looking at one of the recent Superman & Lois episodes here). Therefore one of the powers necessary to be able to cope with super-hearing should clearly be the ability to consciously filter most of the noise out. Which in turn prevents him from being omniscient as some of you guys here seemingly want him to be...

[Slurktan]

2 minutes ago, Toth said:

I for one never considered him "super intelligent". Clever enough to use and even reverse engineer some kryptonian technology, sure, but he's not a super computer.

And sensory overload should be a thing. In fact I think that's exactly why sonic weapons are rather effective against him (looking at one of the recent Superman & Lois episodes here). Therefore one of the powers necessary to be able to cope with super-hearing should clearly be the ability to consciously filter most of the noise out. Which in turn prevents him from being omniscient as some of you guys here seemingly want him to be...

Except that it doesn't prevent anything.  There is a thing that happens in the comics all the time, the cartoons alot and in one Superman movie where he just flies up into space, listens and then goes and saves people who need help.  Everywhere, not just Metropolis.  It's what Superman does.  Except he is literally not allowed to in Gotham because Batman says no.  

[Toth]

1 minute ago, Slurktan said:

Except that it doesn't prevent anything.  There is a thing that happens in the comics all the time, the cartoons alot and in one Superman movie where he just flies up into space, listens and then goes and saves people who need help.  Everywhere, not just Metropolis.  It's what Superman does.  Except he is literally not allowed to in Gotham because Batman says no.  

With that I meant that he can't just go about his day constantly hear EVERYTHING and on top of that KNOW everything from all that noise. Even your example has him consciously focus his attention to listening to something to figure out where his help is needed.

Also at the end of the day he's just one guy, if a fast one, meanwhile the world is huge and Clark does like to have some down time in between stints. So no, demanding that he should be able to fix all crime at once forever is somewhere in between ridiculous and dangerous.

[Slurktan]

1 minute ago, Toth said:

With that I meant that he can't just go about his day constantly hear EVERYTHING and on top of that KNOW everything from all that noise. Even your example has him consciously focus his attention to listening to something to figure out where his help is needed.

Also at the end of the day he's just one guy, if a fast one, meanwhile the world is huge and Clark does like to have some down time in between stints. So no, demanding that he should be able to fix all crime at once forever is somewhere in between ridiculous and dangerous.

Who was demanding that?  Logically if you know that there is a not small chance that at any point when you are committing a crime like robbery (which Superman handles at odd occasions in comics) or murders that he is going to show up and you are going to at least go to jail would cut a significant amount of criminal behaviour.  Yes there will be some but there honestly should not be like a significant homicide department of the Metropolis police. 

And  of course he does nothing for the white collar crimes, which is where Bruce Wayne should be focusing on.  Instead Bruce wants to beat and cripple poor people to get his rocks off. (but never kill them oh no.  Paralyzing for life?  That's fine just dont kill them)

[RumHam]

55 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I can’t see what intelligence has to do with the ability to hear millions of people all at once. That’d be a bizarre power, to be  able to filter that down to just the people who need his help. And it’s kinda what bugs me about a lot of takes on Superman: people assume he’s super everything, you can just name a verb and he must, by definition, be super at it. I’ve said before that Superman is very easy to dial down for storytelling purposes, it’s not like Spider-Man where he either can or can’t climb walls. Superman’s strengths are all linear power levels, why not just say he can lift this much, no more? He doesn’t have to be the strongest conceivable person ever ever ever.

So you're saying Seinfeld was wrong and he's not super funny? 

32 minutes ago, Toth said:

With that I meant that he can't just go about his day constantly hear EVERYTHING and on top of that KNOW everything from all that noise. Even your example has him consciously focus his attention to listening to something to figure out where his help is needed.

Also at the end of the day he's just one guy, if a fast one, meanwhile the world is huge and Clark does like to have some down time in between stints. So no, demanding that he should be able to fix all crime at once forever is somewhere in between ridiculous and dangerous.

I mean is it generally established that he can turn back time by being fast like in the 70's movie? Because at that point why does anything majorly bad ever happen. 

[Toth]

26 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Who was demanding that?

I wasn't specifically referring to you and yet you ask that and then in the next sentence imply Superman should do a 24/7 vigil over 7.8 billion people in order to scare everybody out of doing bad things...

26 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

And of course he does nothing for the white collar crimes, which is where Bruce Wayne should be focusing on.  Instead Bruce wants to beat and cripple poor people to get his rocks off. (but never kill them oh no.  Paralyzing for life?  That's fine just dont kill them)

Sooo... are here because you hate the DC universe? I sense a great deal of animosity there and not just about how Bruce is handled in a lot of modern media, but about the concept of superheroes in general.

And I agree, Bruce should be quite focused on white collar crimes outside of roughing up mobsters and while I do think there are stories where he roughs those up, they are admittedly a bit harder to find. On top of my head I can think of Mr. Freeze's former boss who got his wrath when he found out the circumstances of Freeze's fall and he also tends to be quite horrific towards law enforcement and mayors who crossed him until Gordon was able to clean house. Which is basically his grand plan for Gotham: Scare the criminal and the corrupt long enough to submission for good people like Gordon and Dent (before his fall) to take over and bring about lasting improvement. Also we should never forget that this is the guy casually breaking into Amanda Wallers house to threaten her into submission, so he has absolutely no problem taking on high government officials.

It's also notable that Terry's rogues gallery comprises of a lot of company execs, most notably aforementioned Blight who took over Wayne's company before the beginning of the show. But I guess that comes with the cyberpunk setting.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

In the Snyderverse, Clark was basically autistic due to the sensory overload as a youth.

Yeah, well, I'm not sure we should use that as canon for most of Superman's story.

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I can’t see what intelligence has to do with the ability to hear millions of people all at once. That’d be a bizarre power, to be  able to filter that down to just the people who need his help. And it’s kinda what bugs me about a lot of takes on Superman: people assume he’s super everything, you can just name a verb and he must, by definition, be super at it. I’ve said before that Superman is very easy to dial down for storytelling purposes, it’s not like Spider-Man where he either can or can’t climb walls. Superman’s strengths are all linear power levels, why not just say he can lift this much, no more? He doesn’t have to be the strongest conceivable person ever ever ever.

Again, for most people's arcs that is what Superman is. That was certainly Morrison's take on him. You can choose not to want that to be the case, but it certainly is actually the case. 

 

2 hours ago, Toth said:

I for one never considered him "super intelligent". Clever enough to use and even reverse engineer some kryptonian technology, sure, but he's not a super computer.

He can do things like read a roomful of surgery manuals in milliseconds and understand them enough to perform surgery at an expert level, as an example. He has been able to create working fascimile robots and simulants. 

2 hours ago, Toth said:

And sensory overload should be a thing. In fact I think that's exactly why sonic weapons are rather effective against him (looking at one of the recent Superman & Lois episodes here). Therefore one of the powers necessary to be able to cope with super-hearing should clearly be the ability to consciously filter most of the noise out. Which in turn prevents him from being omniscient as some of you guys here seemingly want him to be...

It's not a matter of whether I want him to be omniscient or not; the comics routinely show him as close to omniscient. 

[Corvinus85]

Speaking of Clark's abilities, is he just slightly stronger than other Kryptonians while on Earth? I assume that growing up on Earth has given him a slight advantage over Zod and the others who only gain their abilities at adulthood. Maybe that's why he is strong enough to snap Zod's neck in MoS.

And sort of in line with this question - why does Steppenwolf feel the need to mention in his status report that there are no Kryptonians on Earth to protect it? How powerful were the Kryptonians on the galactic scale? Surely they could not have the same superpowers on all planets. Plus in Snyder's verse, weren't the Kryptonians very isolationists near the end of their civilization?

[Ran]

There's so many versions of these characters. Are we just talking the Snyder versions of Superman and Batman? Because there's Batmans who don't go around crippling people, who aren't sociopathic sadists, etc.

I don't think Superman is, in conception and in general depiction, fascist or even proto-fascist. Is he an authoritarian? If so, he's not the authority, and regularly submits himself to the authority of people who have no power to enforce their will on him. Is he a nationalist? Once, yes, when he was about "Truth, Justice, and the American Way", but not so much any longer. Is he a totalitarian? No, he does not attempt to unify all authority under himself, and does very little to try and control the lives of the public.

5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

is he just slightly stronger than other Kryptonians while on Earth? I assume that growing up on Earth has given him a slight advantage over Zod and the others who only gain their abilities at adulthood. Maybe that's why he is strong enough to snap Zod's neck in MoS.

Historically, in the comics Superman has given various reasons for why he may be stronger than other Kryptonians, including what you surmise -- his having been on Earth longer and stored its energy longer, plus having more experience with his abilities. I believe Man of Steel implies this read of things. Other versions of the mythos include the suggestion that his greater strength comes from his having been naturally conceived rather than genetically engineered as all other Kryptonians, that he's the reincarnation of an ancient Kryptonian deity named Rao, and probably some other things of that sort.

 

13 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

How powerful were the Kryptonians on the galactic scale? Surely they could not have the same superpowers on all planets. Plus in Snyder's verse, weren't the Kryptonians very isolationists near the end of their civilization?

This whole aspect of it makes very little sense, the idea that they're showing up only because Superman is gone, despite the fact that in thousands of years Superman has been a mere blip on the screen. But presumably the implication is that Kryptonians around yellow suns are just too damned powerful, capable of thwarting Darkseid and his hosts.

[Toth]

15 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

It's not a matter of whether I want him to be omniscient or not; the comics routinely show him as close to omniscient. 

Okay, that's bullshit then and I much prefer his nerfed portayal literally everywhere else.

10 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Speaking of Clark's abilities, is he just slightly stronger than other Kryptonians while on Earth? I assume that growing up on Earth has given him a slight advantage over Zod and the others who only gain their abilities at adulthood. Maybe that's why he is strong enough to snap Zod's neck in MoS.

Incidentally I have read a bit around about Superman a few weeks ago and stumbled across some mentions that among all the constant retconning of how Kryptonian powers work, it used to be canon that Kryptonians didn't initially have these powers, but actually massively genetically engineered their entire species in order carve out a massive genocidal empire. But some rival faction managed to turn their sun and the one of many of their subdued planets red in order to nullify their powers and then bombed them back to the stone age. I don't think that is canon in 95% of stories, but I absolutely loved that idea as it makes perfect sense for both how Superman's powers work and how Kryptonians of the mindset of Zod come from.

So yes, Clark is stronger than most because he actually got to train his powers and spent most of his life pumped up by the sun to the max.

[RumHam]

25 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Speaking of Clark's abilities, is he just slightly stronger than other Kryptonians while on Earth? I assume that growing up on Earth has given him a slight advantage over Zod and the others who only gain their abilities at adulthood. Maybe that's why he is strong enough to snap Zod's neck in MoS.

And sort of in line with this question - why does Steppenwolf feel the need to mention in his status report that there are no Kryptonians on Earth to protect it? How powerful were the Kryptonians on the galactic scale? Surely they could not have the same superpowers on all planets. Plus in Snyder's verse, weren't the Kryptonians very isolationists near the end of their civilization?

You may as well ask why the mother box called Steppenwolf after Superman died when he'd only been there for a year or so. 

And yeah in the DCEU the Kryptonians abandoned all their off-world outposts long before their planet was destroyed. Zod had been visiting them all but found no survivors. 

I recall at one point in Man of Steel there's an open Kryptonian pod that Supergirl came to earth in. But they never followed up on that. 

Edit: Hey what was the deal with the greek gods in these movies? Were they aliens? It's odd he didn't mention that they were gone. 

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't think Superman is, in conception and in general depiction, fascist or even proto-fascist. Is he an authoritarian? If so, he's not the authority, and regularly submits himself to the authority of people who have no power to enforce their will on him. Is he a nationalist? Once, yes, when he was about "Truth, Justice, and the American Way", but not so much any longer. Is he a totalitarian? No, he does not attempt to unify all authority under himself, and does very little to try and control the lives of the public.

The very concept of a near omniscient being who decides who gets help and who doesn't is an authoritarian viewpoint whether you want it to be or not. That he routinely doesn't abuse his power is the fantasy part (which is routinely explored in various what if stories), but the idea that he isn't some fantasy of what authoritarians want is obviously incorrect. 

Really, most superhero stories have this authoritarian vibe - a combination of problems requiring super special people to solve them with solutions always requiring violence. That is by its nature a authoritarian viewpoint -  the 'I alone can fix this, and it can be fixed by punching'. And that's fine! That's what a whole lot of people want. They want their gods to walk among us and do godlike and human things, they want authoritarians to rely on and solve problems. But Superman's inherent goodness doesn't change that. 

 

[Ran]

17 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

The very concept of a near omniscient being who decides who gets help and who doesn't is an authoritarian viewpoint whether you want it to be or not.

What Superman tends to do is not interfere in the freedoms of people. He is selective in where he helps because he chooses to be. He's a lot more like a leftist libertarian than he is an authoritarian, in fact. An actually authoritarian Superman would not be selective in who he helps and who he doesn't -- he would strive to help everyone, for their own good, whether they want it or not. This is what gets explored in some Elseworlds and alternate timelines, the Superman as totalitarian dictator, but the normal Superman is not that because he is not, in fact, a totalitarian or authoritarian, he merely has the dreadful potential of becoming one (and a  very effective one).