Man of Steel ruined Captain America for me

Man of Steel and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Two movies that seem to get compared somewhat frequently, for reasons both obvious and not so obvious. On the obvious side, there's the fact that Superman and Captain America are seen as DC-Marvel analogues of each other: both are nice-guy characters whose adherence to “doing the right thing” is so steadfast and consistent that sometimes they seem like “boring” characters to certain people. On the not so obvious side, MoS is its protagonist's origin story, and indeed the first entry in the shared DC cinematic universe, while CATWS is Captain America's second solo film (Cap's third film if you count The Avengers) and the ninth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So in some senses, it's not completely fair to compare the two.

There's also the fact that the two films are usually compared to talk about the superiority of CATWS and the inferiority of MoS, usually to bridge out into a broader conversation about how DC's focus on "gritty" and "dark" is going to doom the company, while Marvel are brilliant geniuses who create cinematic masterpieces, etc. etc.

Now, I’m a big fan of Captain America and did not like Man of Steel at all the first time I watched it. But after several more viewings and doing some hard thinking, my stance on both films has changed. CATWS did not ruin Superman for me, as a number of people have claimed it did for them. Rather, for me, Man of Steel ruined CATWS.

I. Does destruction only count when it’s shown?

One of the most frequent criticisms of Man of Steel is that it's "destruction porn." That way too many people die and way too much real estate is destroyed in the name of using flashy CGI to impress the viewer.

I've said before that the amount of destruction in Man of Steel doesn't feel that gratuitous when you view the movie as being about humanity facing an alien threat they can't hope to win against, and there's something to be said for the fact that Man of Steel doesn't sugarcoat the violence and destruction. It's downright disturbing to see Metropolis wrecked and to watch characters die. But then again, shouldn't it be disturbing? The fact that the climactic battle was able to elicit a reaction in many viewers—especially discomfort and horror—meant that it did its job. We are not meant to feel comfortable with the aftermath of the Kryptonians' attempted invasion. We are shown that many people lost their lives, whether they sacrificed them willingly, or whether they were casualties, and humanity was saved, but not without collateral damage.

Man of Steel’s approach contrasts sharply with that of CATWS. CATWS also features immense destruction, caused not by an alien invasion but by guns and the technology of war. And yet, CATWS barely even shows its destruction at all. The first time I watched the scene where the Winter Soldier and his Hydra posse shoot up a freeway while trying to kill Natasha and Steve, I remember thinking: "Didn't a lot of civilians die?" The characters shot at a crowded freeway in downtown DC in the middle of the day. They shot at vehicles. Innocent civilians were fleeing in all directions in a panic. There was simply no way that scene happened without innocent people getting injured and killed in the crossfire. And yet, we don't see a single dead body.

In this sense, CATWS is dishonest. It wants high-stakes action scenes (how else do you explain why the movie chose to have a lethal assassin, so skilled that he's considered a "ghost" by the intelligence community, shoot up a downtown freeway in broad daylight?), yet it doesn't want to show that there are consequences for those action scenes, consequences to Steve's struggle with Hydra. It can keep its hands clean in a way Man of Steel purposely avoids doing.

That scene is the most egregious one to me, but it's not the only one. The car chase between Fury and Hydra, which also involved shooting into crowded streets, also should've had innocent bystanders getting injured, if not killed. And then the climax, with the helicarriers shooting each other out of the sky? It was pure luck that none of the helicarrier debris fell on a busy street or a building. If the helicarrier that ended up crashing into the (conveniently empty?) SHIELD building had drifted at a slightly different angle, it would've caused massive destruction in the city.

None of the risks are so much as thought about in the movie. Again, CATWS presents a world in which people doing the "right" thing conveniently escape causing collateral damage so their image can stay squeaky-clean.

As escapist fantasy, CATWS is fine. As a "feel good" movie, CATWS is fine. But the way the movie sweeps its destruction under the carpet, to me, is a pretty huge suspension of disbelief, and I find its minimization of costs and consequences more than a little disturbing.

II. Does killing someone “for the greater good” make you morally bankrupt?

Another difference I've seen in comparisons of the two movies is in the handling of the climactic one-on-one battle. People praise Steve's surrender to Bucky, while criticizing Clark's killing of Zod.

The thing is, if you think about this comparison in anything beyond a superficial way, you'll realize the two situations are not remotely similar. In CATWS, Bucky was merely the gun while Hydra was pulling the trigger. He was not legally responsible for his actions. And, he was Steve's best friend. Zod, on the other hand, was completely acting of his own free will when he decided to build Krypton on top of humanity's bones. Moreover, Bucky had already failed his mission. He was no longer a threat to anyone except Steve. In Man of Steel, Zod had explicitly said to Clark that he would destroy every human being on Earth if Clark didn't stop him. And he was clearly capable of carrying out that threat. Yet somehow, Steve's decision not to fight Bucky is hailed as "brave" while Clark's desperate decision to kill Zod in order to stop him, made when he had no other option and was begging Zod not to make him do it...is viewed as morally "over the line."

A better comparison to make is between Clark’s killing of Zod and Fury’s killing of Alexander Pierce. Both Zod and Pierce are the Big Bads of their respective movies. Both are killed in order to save another person(s). Yet whereas no one spares a thought for Pierce once he’s dead, Clark is haunted by his choice to kill Zod, even though Zod had planned to commit genocide.

It’s strange to me that, if you normally ask people whether someone who has the ability to kill a genocidal dictator should do so, basically everyone would say “Yes, of course!” But Clark’s decision to kill Zod is somehow viewed as “morally cynical” and “condoning murder.” Fury’s decision to kill Pierce is no less morally problematic than Clark’s killing Zod, but somehow Pierce is an acceptable, even justified casualty of war, but Zod, a genocidal and unstoppable alien invader, isn’t.

So really, where’s the moral superiority in CATWS? Especially when you consider that Steve has probably killed at least a few (if not a bunch of) Hydra mooks over the course of the movie (though once again, we never see any dead bodies), while Clark has never killed anyone until Zod came along? Do people really think that “it’s okay” to kill faceless guards who get in the hero’s way? Is that an attitude we should leave uncriticized?

And if you want to argue that Superman has a "no kill" rule whereas Captain America doesn't, that's a pretty weak argument to make. Because the central premise of that argument is that it's okay for heroes to kill unless they have an explicit rule against doing so. Think about that. It's a pretty disturbing thing to say. (Not to mention it's also factually inaccurate, so, it’s not a supported argument in any case.)

III. Captain America doesn’t have to make the hard decisions; Superman does

Building on my previous point, it’s disingenuous to act like Captain America took a moral high ground that Superman refused to adhere to, because the narratives of the two movies are structured so that Captain America can take the high ground, but Superman can’t.

Steve has the option of not killing Bucky because he doesn’t have to. Clark doesn’t have the option of not killing Zod—unless he wants an innocent family to die. Steve has the option of razing SHIELD to the ground because the narrative doesn’t show the potentially very negative consequences of dumping all of SHIELD’s classified information on the net. Clark doesn’t have the option of not causing damage if he fights Zod—because the narrative did not want to portray a fight between two god-like beings as having no collateral consequences.

To put it another way: the only way the movies would be comparable would be if the narrative structures were the same. If, for example, Steve had to choose between killing Bucky or saving the world; he couldn’t do both. Or if Steve had to decide whether or not to dump all of SHIELD’s information on the internet, knowing that a close friend is a deep cover SHIELD agent and whose life would be threatened if this information was made public. Or if Steve decided to blow the helicarriers out of the sky, and the falling debris ended up costing a number of innocent civilians their lives. None of these scenarios happened—because the narrative is constructed so that Steve doesn’t have to make difficult moral choices.

Steve has the option not to compromise. Clark doesn’t. Man of Steel is a world with shades of gray and no right answers. Not so with CATWS, which portrays a world in which the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good—the only complication is figuring out who is who when the bad guys pretend to be good.

You can say that forcing Clark to choose between the lesser of two evils is a fundamentally cynical narrative choice—and that’s an idea worth debating—but it’s false to say Steve was able to exercise some kind of moral agency that Clark turned away from. Because it’s the narrative structure of CATWS that allows Steve to keep his hands clean; Man of Steel deliberately chooses not to do so for Clark.

IV. "You need us" vs. "I'm here to help"

In my previous post, I mentioned that Man of Steel bucks the trend of the "authority-defying rebel who single-handedly saves the day because they knew better than the rigid, out-of-touch Powers That Be" narrative that is often very appealing to American audiences. CATWS, on the other hand, does follow that narrative pretty closely. CATWS is all about how The Powers That Be are corrupt, and therefore only a handful of rebellious mavericks can save the world. Be careful whom you trust, the movie makes it clear—except for the heroes, whom you have no choice but to trust.

In CATWS, Natasha Romanoff (who is in essence speaking for herself and Steve, since Steve, in a strange display of cavalier disrespect, decides not to even show up to the congressional hearing) says to the government,

"You're not going to put me in a prison. You're not going to put any of us in a prison. You know why? Because you need us. Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we help make it that way. But we're also the ones best qualified to defend it."

Natasha, supported by the narrative, makes the claim that the government can't prosecute the Avengers because without the Avengers, there will be no one around to save humanity. In CATWS, heroes are necessary. But what if the government wants to hold the Avengers accountable for the destruction they caused, or if the assumption that the Avengers aren't corrupt is challenged? Well, too bad. The Avengers are too valuable to be controlled or eliminated.

Man of Steel provides a very different view of heroism. Clark, a Kryptonian with powers beyond the wildest dreams of humanity, would seem to be indispensable. But that’s not how Clark views himself. He tells General Swanwick,

"Look, I'm here to help. But it has to be on my own terms."

Earlier, he also says to the general,

"You're scared of me because you can't control me. You don't, and you never will. But that doesn't mean I'm your enemy."

Unlike Natasha, Clark makes it clear that he's willing to cooperate with the government—he doesn't want to be controlled by them, but he expresses respect for humanity. Over and over again in Man of Steel, he entrusts his fate to human hands, even when he has doubts about doing so. He even goes out of his way to try to make humanity feel safer around him.

The differences in the climaxes of Man of Steel and CATWS are illuminating: in CATWS, Steve, Natasha, Fury, Sam, and Hill decide, by themselves, to take down all of SHIELD and dump all of its information on the internet, without consulting the SHIELD employees who may be harmed by such a decision. In Man of Steel, on the other hand, Clark teams up with the American military and Lois Lane to defeat the Kryptonians together. Humanity needs Superman in order to win against the Kryptonians, but they do not need Superman in order to fight for what’s right and stand up for what they believe in.

Clark does not view himself as humanity’s savior, but as a collaborator (“I’m here to help,”), whereas Natasha's statement ("You need us") carries an implied superiority ("we're...the ones best qualified to defend [you]"), combined with a disturbing lack of regard for accountability ("You're not going to put any of us in prison...Because you need us"), and a certain disinterest towards the wishes of the people whom the Avengers are saving. Which, in my opinion, is more than a little troubling from an ethical standpoint.

CATWS asks the question: who should you trust? The answer is Captain America and the Avengers—but you don’t have the option of not trusting them. Man of Steel asks the question: who should you have faith in? The answer is yourself—and where you falter, Superman will be there to help you. Therein lies the major difference between the two movies.