The issue of Superheroes killing Bad Guys

There has traditionally been a pretty harsh dichotomy to how this issue is approached.  Either they are super strictly determined never to kill even in scenarios where no real Jury would convict a real person of Murder.  Or you have the Punisher and Rorshach who exclusively kill because they have given up any hope that criminals can be reformed.  Some reasonable middle ground is rarely taken.

There was a time when marvel Comics official policy was that Captain America never even killed anyone when he was fighting in WWII.  Yes they were so determined to keep his hands free of Blood they wouldn't even admit he killed f----in Nazis on the battle field.  Meanwhile in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's universe.

In real life actual Law Enforcement is traditionally taught to always shoot to kill and never any less.  Maybe that is part of the problem our society currently faces and I would fully support a movie saying it's wrong that we train Cops that way.  But pretending Superheroes can do their job with the polar opposite policy is not the answer to that problem.

Linkara says he views Superheroes as like modern Knights Errants which is why he brings up the movie Camelot sometimes when talking about Superhero comics.  And that's cool and all, but even the Romanticized Arthurian version of what Knights were had no absurd blanket rule against killing the enemy, they were soldiers fighting in wars.

That's part of why I found the MCU so refreshing.  Because right from the start they were willing to acknowledge that if a Billionaire is gonna fly a f-----in Gundam to Afghanistan to stop a warlord from massacring a village, he's gonna have to kill some people.

What I find so ironic about all this talk of why the DCEU and MCU are so different, is that what really bothers people was Zach Snyder applying the MCU policy on killing bad guys to DC's Big Two.  But also unlike Marvel let this change in approach actually be thematically relevant, while Marvel was just hoping people simply wouldn't notice that Iron Man blew up a clearly maned Tank right in the trailer.

And I get it, people are used to these two characters in particular being usually uncompromising on this issue.  And some even like the irony of DC's Dark Superhero being the one who's strictest on his no kill policy (except when he's not).

But even as I do prefer Batman to stick to his No Killing and No Guns policy much more strictly then either Snyder or Miller's Batman does.  I am pretty baffled by how easily fans accept the "If I kill this unrepentant mass murderer who keeps escaping and killing more people then I'll become just like him" argument he makes in stories like Under The Red Hood.  That logic is pretty stupid.

The killing Batman does in BvS can be put in a few different categories.  First of all the nightmare Future Vision kind of shouldn't count, the whole point was everything about that was his worst nightmare including becoming a literal solider (Snyder films tend to paint the military as a necessary evil at best).  And in terms of him being reckless in scenes like car chases, let's stop pretending Nolan's Batman wasn't also pretty darn reckless.  And likewise with the disposal of KGBeast, I find it funny how a scene ripped directly from most Nerds favorite Batman Comic is treated as a huge betrayal of the character but "I don't have to save you" wasn't.

The branding is what's truly most controversial, with some acting like this makes Batman worse then The Punisher.  And to be honest even I think that plot-line could have been handled better, but not how you might expect.  And I'm even gonna set aside the Lex was actually behind the branded criminals dying in prison aspect which wasn't made clear enough in the theatrical cut.

First of all it is, even in the theatrical cut, presented as something Bruce just started doing, with that news paper we're shown being seemingly even Alfred's first time hearing about it.  Yet some people act like this Batman has been doing it for 20 years.

Secondly, the only person we ever see branded was a Sex Trafficker.  Those kinds of criminals tend to get that treatment in prison anyway.  It's almost as if the only purpose the Branding really serves is to give people, particularly Clark, a reason to blame Batman for it even though that would probably have been that guy's fate in prison regardless.

I think it'd have been interesting if the Brand was intended to have the opposite effect, like the Mark of Cain, saying "I don't want this guy getting off that easy so if you kill him you answer to the Bat".  But then that one is killed how he is because he was transferred to Metropolis and Clark simply wouldn't know the full context at first.  And maybe that was the original plan before the script got revised, who knows.

But my point is in the final product it is far more worth criticizing as a plot contrivance then as the worst violation of the No Kill rule any version of Batman's ever committed.

What really bugs me though is how the same people so offended by Snyder's two films also think Wonder Woman was DC finally getting it right, finally depicting a Heroic Superhero.  When in fact Wonder Woman is far more of a killer then the title characters in either Snyder film, and the killing itself far more condoned by the narrative.

In BvS we're supposed to view Batman as going too far, and he does abandon this dark path for a more optimistic outlook at the end (so Angry Joe saying "it'll be weird if he's not killing in Justice League" was always stupid of him).  And in Man of Steel Clark was trying not to Kill Zod, seriously I'm surprised no one's yet made a "Superman should've killed Zod sooner" argument.  But even if he couldn't have killed Zod sooner then when he had him in that Sleeper hold, he was still at that point pleading with him, he was trying not to have to kill him even though it was always inevitable.

Meanwhile Wonder Woman's mission was an assassination mission from the start and no one cares, she even kills the wrong person the first time, and nobody cares.

Is it because we see Wonder Woman as being in a literal war?  Even though the character Superman killed is called GENERAL Zod and he'd basically declared war on the planet.  But they're not in period piece cosplay so we don't register it as a "real" war.  Frankly I see it as pure hypocrisy to be okay with the Amazons killing Germans invading their island but not Superman killing someone only he could stop on a genocidal rampage.

Of course all the way back in 2005 the OMAC Project/Infinite Crisis story-line brought up a lot of talk on how Wonder Woman's no kill rule had "always" been less strict then Batman or Superman's, and so she was naturally the one to put in the situation of killing Maxwell Lord.  But to me that is the sad irony of how these characters have changed since the 40s.

In their earliest golden age appearances neither Batman or Superman had any hesitation to kill, Superman was modeled after Samson by his Jewish creators remember.  It was Wonder Woman alone who had a more pacifist policy right from her introduction, Marston wanted to reject the more violent and "Masculine" approach of most superhero comics.  So Wonder Woman preferred to reform her enemies EVEN when they were literally Nazis like Paula Von Gunther (though due to Marston's Racism I doubt we saw equivalent stories of Japanese villains being reformed).

You see Marston would not qualify as a Feminist according to Tumblr Feminists calling modern Anti-Feminists idiots who can't read the dictionary.  Because he did not view the genders as equal but unapologetically preached female superiority.  So among other things he held the problematic view that violence is inherently Masculine.  He'd frankly be disgusted to learn that by the 2000s his Amazons were being depicted as basically female Klingons.

Marston's ideology had a lot of issues, but what I do like about it as a Pacifist and a Feminist (and a Non Monogamist) I feel is embodied in a much better more refined way by the Magical Girl genre in Anime and Manga.  As much I did enjoy 2017's Wonder Woman, it'll never be the ideal depiction of Diana to me, to me Diana should be the West's Sailor Moon and Yuki Yuna.  DC has Big Barda to be their muscular sword wielding warrior woman.

What I'm saying is I like Snyder taking a more realistic approach to Violence in Superhero stories.  As opposed to Nolan wanting to kill off half his villains but also wanting to pretend he kept the No Kill rule intact.

Look, I'm writing this as someone who is firmly against the Death Penalty and strongly Anti-War. But those morals of mine relate to why in real life I disapprove of Vigilantes in the first place, even if they had a no kill rule.  So rooting for Batman already requires me to set aside my real world ethics when watching this fictional setting.