Before I get too far into this, I want to assure everybody: I'm not a DC-hater, or a Marvelite. I am a comic book nerd, who enjoys spending time watching comic book movies. There are good ones and bad ones on both DC and Marvel sides. What I am a hater of, is the "ites". Those who blindly praise a property or company, even through their faults, and blindly trash on the other, even through their successes, cause they like their's more. But I can assure you, if you are a DC/Snyder/Nolan/WB-ite, you will be pissed off at this editorial, because I'm going to blow a defense/excuse you guys use too often WIDE OPEN.
Above GIF is DC-ites expression after reading the last paragraph
Shortly before taking to my keyboard this evening, I was rewatching a movie I quite enjoy, despite not being totally keen on the Superman character. 2013's blockbuster Superman reboot:
Man Of Steel. Now, as everyone can agree on, there is quite a bit of mass destruction taking place in the cities in the film. Not to worry gents, the destruction that occurs in the fictional towns of Smallville and Metropolis. No actual cities were leveled in the making of this film.
One thing the Marvelites attack the movie for is the destruction. "There was too much desctruction! Why didn't Superman try to save anybody! Blergy-blah-blerg!" To which, the DC-ites try to defend with "Superman had no chance to prevent it! Zod was bent on destorying the Earth! Zod would have kept the fight in populated area's to distract Superman! Rabblerabblerabble!" Valid points, DC-ites. I almost agreed with you entirely. That was, until I just rewatched this movie and noticed something... Superman
struck first. In a
populated area.
Some jimmies have been rustled
Yessirreebob, you read that right! Lemme set up the scene for ya if you don't fancy going back and watching the movie: Zod is at Kent Farm looking for the Kodex. Faora gr
abs Ma Kent by the neck as they interrogate her. Faora looks for the Kodex once Ma Kent eyes at the barn. It's not there. "WHERE IS THE KODEX!?", screams Zod, standing menacingly over Ma Kent. Just before SUPERMAN flies in, super-tackles Zod through 2 silos, then across the cornfields, and continues to punch him repeatedly in the face whilst saying "You think *punch* you can threaten *punch* my mother?! *punch*" until finally continuing to super-tackle him through a 7-Eleven convenience store (which no doubt people are inside of) and then subsequentially going through the building, crashing into and blowing up the gas pumps in front, where civilians can be seen standing near. Zod scrambles, just having the shit punched out of him (and being weakened by the rush of super-powers from Earth's atmosphere (being weakened by getting super-powers, lol)), and retreats to his ship. Then, behind Superman, comes walking up the street (like a boss) Faora and Blaster from
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Superman then approaches his rivals, seeing innocent civilians fleeing to (what they think is) safety. And the only thing Superman does to try and prevent civilian harm, was say to one man: "Get inside, it's not safe." Later on a bit, to prevent Faora into completely owning a military jet, Superman yet again super-tackles her away from it. And then chooses to slam her not in any of the free space between them and an IHOP full of unsuspecting pancake eaters, but
RIGHT INTO the IHOP full of unsuspecting pancake eaters. Faora then mentions Kal-El's "sense of morality", which he has
barely shown since
he started this fight.
That was blown open as much as this building
So, the whole community of DC-ites arguments fall right apart. Superman was in a reasonably non-populated area to start off with (Kent Farm), and then
TOOK Zod to Smallville to battle him, right in the middle of civilian population. It's not just that Zod had no regard for the human life in the area (which he didn't, that is correct), but Superman
didn't either, or he wouldn't have taken Zod to the middle of the city to do battle. And, even if he didn't have the chance to MOVE the fight away from the population, he never even tried to KEEP the fight away from them, when he STARTED IT.
To finish this off, I just wanna say that none of this even really matters, guys. Every single one of you's are worried about fake people fake dying in fake cities that are being fake blown apart by fake superheroes and fake supervillains.
TL;DR - You can't say Superman had no chance to take the fight against Zod to a remote area BECAUSE the fight DID start in a fairly remote area, BY Superman, and then was TAKEN INTO the densly populated areas, CAUSING the absolute leveling of Smallville, and roughly a quarter to half of Metropolis. So to answer the question in the article title: YES, Superman could have prevented
at least some of the destruction in the movie by not taking Zod into the middle Smallville in the first place.
Have fun in the comments, guys!