5. Batman Teaches Clark That It Is Not Okay To Kill
This is particularly important for the future of the DC movies. We have already established the firm "no kill" line in the
Dark Knight trilogy. If Superman gets a free pass on killing someone, even an enemy, then that makes him no better than the villain. This is shown in the animated series,
Justice League Unlimited, when an alternate dimension version of the Justice League called the Justice Lords shows up to take over Earth and create a crime-free utopia. In the alternate world, Superman flew around the world and lobotomized every super villain with his heat vision, and controls the world in a brutal police state a la 1984 style. In truth, the current Man of Steel is only a few steps away from that. If killing Zod solved the problem, why not just kill every other villain? True, he did kill Zod in order to save that family, but we need to hold our superheroes to a higher standard. Saving the family was heroic, but not
superheroic. The truly superheroic thing was to save the family
and Zod. Killing is the easy way out, which our heroes are not allowed to take. No matter what. Superheroes need to be better than us, and killing is not the way to do that. Superman needs this smacked into him.