2. The Death of General Zod: We Have Been Here Before
And so we come to the final climactic scene with General Zod, where Superman is forced to make the transcendent choice: let more innocents die at the hands of Zod; or kill him, thus ending the life of the only other living, breathing Kryptonian AND intentionally taking a life for the very first time. Superman then promptly snaps Zod's neck. And so the purists cry out in hate, how can Superman kill someone with his own bare hands? How could he choose to do this, and how do these filmmakers justify this choice? There are reports that some viewers even got up and left the film when this took place. Superman knowingly took a life, how could he? But oh wait, he did just that already, years ago in the vintage, classic, best-Superman-film-of-all-time-until-now: 1980's Superman II. That's right guys and gals, Christopher Reeve's Superman took Zod's Kryptonian powers from him, made him a mortal, and then promptly dropped him into a crevice inside the Fortress of Solitude that led to nowhere...but his death (and some will argue of a deleted scene that exists showing the Kryptonian criminals led away in handcuffs near the film's end, but this scene is not part of the completed film, so this point would be moot). And so Superman has killed before 2013's Man Of Steel, albeit too with a nice grin on his face, a wink of his eye, and some snide comment relayed with Margot Kidder's Lois. (Oh, and he also killed Doomsday, did we all forget about that one?) The precedent has already been set, so we all must move on! But the emotional price he paid rings true...