Man of Steel turned out to be a rather controversial movie because of its grittiness and its darker ending. Surely, this film didn’t come close to the controversies of Batman V Superman & Justice League, but still, it was a film that was fairly talked about in its time. In fact, it still manages to fuel a debate every now and then. The element that is spoken of quite often is the death of General Zod at the hands of Superman.
Zack Snyder posed it in a way that Superman had no choice but to kill Zod. He had to make the hard choice & fight with his morals and kill Zod. If he wouldn’t have killed the Kryptonian villain, then the entire planet would’ve been doomed. Zod had made that clear. So many ardent fans understood & support Superman killing Zod till date. But there are fans who might have preferred a different ending where Superman doesn’t snap Zod’s neck.
Apparently, this was a matter of debate even for the creatives. We all know the bold ending that Zack Snyder chose. But Man of Steel writer David S. Goyer has revealed the alternate ending that he wrote for Man of Steel. While speaking to Jeff Goldsmith at his Comic-Con@Home panel, Goyer said:
“The idea was that Superman would – there was one of those sort of cryopods on the ship that ends up becoming the Fortress of Solitude that he’s able to put Zod back into and then throw out into space. We did talk about it and maybe some people would’ve been happier with that, but it felt like a cop out for the story that we were telling.”
But Zack Snyder chose the bold ending. He had Superman take the “necessary” decision of killing Zod, and then used his corpse to create Doomsday in Batman V Superman. That in itself became a controversial decision, but fans came to accept that decision due to how the connection of Batman V Superman’s Doomsday to Man of Steel’s Zod made sense.
Man of Steel writer went on to explain why the ending where Zod dies was ultimately chosen. He said:
“I absolutely understand a lot of people had problems with it. When I have had a hand in adapting these things, you wanna be as respectful to the core material as possible but you also can’t protect against failure. You have to take big swings. With big swings there are big rewards. We took enormous swings with Batman Begins and with The Dark Knight that turned out to be well-received, but we were trying to tell a different kind of Superman story, a Superman story that hadn’t been told before and it required us taking some big swings. We talked about it. We talked about whether or not people would accept it, and the editorial staff at DC had accepted it. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake, but if you sit there and you say, ‘I don’t wanna take any risk. I’m worried I might offend a portion of the audience,’ I don’t think that’s a particularly healthy way to try to make a film or a television show.”
So, as I’ve stated above, it was a pretty bold decision on the part of Zack Snyder. Even Nolan wasn’t fully on board with it. But you have to understand that Zack Snyder gave Superman a very realistic approach in terms of how he would react, and how our world would react if he existed in it. I for one, am a supporter of Superman killing Zod because it makes sense with the direction that Snyder took. Locking Zod in pods & shooting him in space would’ve been redundant because that’s what the Kryptonians did. It wasn’t as effective. But would you have preferred it over the neck snap? Tell us in the comments down below.
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