The DCEU'S Kryptonian Race Has A Problem (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I have no problem admitting that I have a soft spot for the first installment of the DCEU, Man of Steel

While it catered to the side of me that always wanted to see Superman actually fight supervillains on film, especially if they’re as strong and as powerful as he is...

/That’s part of the reason why I preferred Superman II over Superman The Movie as a child/

/I have no problem admitting that my opinions about the story and the writing regarding Man of Steel have been up and down over the years since it was first released/

And that’s mostly due to its writer, my archnemesis, David Shitbag Goyer.

Yes, I specifically drew out the beginning of this video to make sure I reached an appropriate timestamp to feel comfortable saying Shitbag without the video getting demonetized

Now you’d think that some of the things I had problems with were the likes of the military’s overall involvement once the world found out about Kal-El, or the overall dialogue with some of the characters. And you’d be correct; those are, in fact, some things I do have problems with in regards to the film.

However, one line that always irked me, even when I watched Man of Steel in theaters for the first time, was when Superman recouped from stopping the Kryptonian World Engine and brought down the scout ship while Zod was piloting it.

/Right beforehand, Zod tried to plead with Supes by saying/(You destroy this ship, you destroy Krypton)

/And after thinking about it, Superman said this line/ (Krypton had its chance!)

Every time I heard that line whenever I watched this movie, I always cock my head a bit

And it wasn’t because Man of Steel was basically an alien invasion movie. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.

/What I realized I DO have a problem with in regards to why I react the way that I do whenever I hear that line, is what Man of Steel revealed about the DCEU version of Krypton -- specifically Kryptonians -- over the course of the film, to both Clark and to us, that made Superman feel comfortable with saying that line/

Those things in particular were the overall additions to Kryptonian lore and society.

And while most of everything that the movie covers does have comic roots, more specifically from the lore made about it after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, a lot of it was adjusted to make Krypton and its people more along the line of a people that are no better than humans on a sociological perspective, instead of one that allowed the achievement of reaching a perfected utopia get to their head

So because it's been bugging me recently, I kinda wanna talk about it. More specifically, what additions were made to Kryptonian lore that came straight from the comics before they were altered to reflect what we received in both Man of Steel and its pseudo-prequel SyFy show Krypton...

What the changes that were made to said comic lore possibly imply according to the writer and possibly the director of Man of Steel...

/And how the characterization of DCEU Zod is nothing but an incredibly perverted product of all of these factors when they shouldn’t really be all that perverted in the first place. Let’s begin./

___________________

Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media

If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for DC and Warner Brothers Man of Steel. It’s currently available to stream on HBO Max, so give it a watch before continuing here if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me to spoil pivotal points of it for you in this video.

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That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.

Krypton was a utopia

That’s the one thing that almost every writer and even DC Comics itself agrees with when describing the planet in its zenith

Even when the lore for it was given a clean slate in the 1985 universe-wide comic book event that rebooted many of DC’s titles, Crisis on Infinite Earths...

The aspect of Kryptonians being a scientifically advanced yet arrogant people that were able to make the planet habitable, and their own civilization perfected for everyone on it was one thing that stayed consistent.

As a result, it brought about changes and developments over the course of the 26-year long era of DC comics that properly reflected such in-universe progress, from multiple writers that chose to explore and build upon its history.

So much so, that pretty much any attempt to depict Kryptonians as anything else in the comics during the post Crisis canon -- even if the point was to show either a “dark” time in their history or for the sake of variety -- was either retconned, ignored, or made insignificant in DC’s history that the only way to find out it existed, was to do some real deep-diving

A good example is the closest comic book comparison to Man of Steel’s contribution to Kryptonian lore, the Kryptonian Expansion. AKA, that one period in the DCEU where Kryptonians were colonizers.

Near the end of the post Crisis era, about 3 or 4 years before the DC Universe would once again be rebooted thanks to The New 52...

Writer Kurt Busick with the help of Geoff “I helped Joss Whedon make Ray Fisher’s life a living hell on the set of Justice League” Johns, wrote for the main Superman title starting in 2006 and introduced said blemish of Kryptonian history in the form of them forming their own empire that went around conquering other planets.

/Knowledge about how a yellow sun changes their genetic makeup of Kryptonians to grant them superpowers was known to them. And with their military headed by General Zod’s ancestor, Admiral Dru-Zod the first, it was properly exploited and weaponized whenever they invaded a new planet. Eventually the Kryptonian council voted to end the empire and isolate back on Krypton after his ship crash-landed on earth about 300 years before Superman’s arrival./

Now, I have no ill will against Kurt. From what I gathered about his personal politics and the like, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was exactly as I stated before; an attempt to show that the Kryptonian people -- outside of being too arrogant for their own good -- were just as malleable and prone to wrong decisions as humans.

But one: there are PLENTY of other instances of Kryptonians proving that to be the case post Crisis that don’t require turning them into the Fire Nation.

And two: the fact that I had just as hard of a time finding this comic story as Obi-Wan had finding the planet Kamino in the Jedi Archives because Dooku erased it from the archive memory in Episode 2 Attack of the Clones, should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about how much this story is prioritized in regards to how superhero fans and writers prefer to depict Kryptonians.

No, seriously. If you search Kryptonian Empire, the first and most prominent thing that pops up is the Kryptonian Expansion info from Man of Steel; you have to do some deep Wiki diving across a lot of both credible and non-official sources in order to find the ONE STORY that this is referenced in.

And all of this is even further backed up by how easy it is to find other comics that explain other aspects about Krypton’s history and lore during the Crisis era. In regards to what happened chronologically before the Kryptonian Empire bit, there was the Kryptonian version of The Clone Wars.

That’s right; I was able to segue my Attack of the Clones joke into an ACTUAL talking point!

In this portion of Kryptonian history, science evolved so much that Kryptonians had clones of themselves at different stages of an individuals’ life that were kept on ice so that they could be used for the likes of organ replacement after already pretty much eradicating disease, increasing the life expectancy of an average Kryptonian to the point of immortality.

What led to THIS Clone War was pretty much activists waking them up and allowing them to gain consciousness and sentience.

This was followed with anthropological debates and scenarios regarding Kryptonians and their clones happening first, because it just makes sense that Kryptonians debating philosophy counts as the first act of war.

Then this lead to the next scientific advancement that became well known in the 26 year Crisis era of Krypton -- so much that it was featured in the Kryptonian lore of Man of Steel to a certain extent, and I’ll promise I’ll expand on that in a bit -- the birthing matrix.

This portion of Kryptonian lore was created by John Byrne in The Man of Steel issue 1 released in October 1986.

/Jor-El helped develop it after the end of the Kryptonian Clone War that resulted in the end of the cloning banks after it reached ACTUAL warfare, and a terrorist group released an Eradicator -- yes, the Superman with the Yellow visors from the Reign of the Supermen arc -- that altered the DNA of every Kryptonian lifeform so that they’d die if they left the planet./

The birthing matrix is pretty much what you’d expect, in that two Kryptonians that wanted a child would inject their DNA into a machine in order to do so. The machine would create a fetus based on their combined DNA, and it would be brought to term in an orb.

What caused Kal-El to survive the Eradicator’s changes to Kryptonian genetics was that Jor-El was able to remove the change from Kal’s own birthing matrix.

After he and Lara injected their DNA into Kal’s birthing matrix, Jor-El retrofitted Kal’s orb for interstellar space travel when he was unsuccessful in convincing the council that Krypton was doomed, took it to their home to launch before Krypton went kaboom and Kal’s birthing matrix took the trip to come to term.

Now before I go further, let’s take a minute to think about the accomplishments Krypton made as a society before their complacency and arrogance caused their own extinction, at least in this post Crisis time frame.

Kryptonians eliminated disease and aging and were able to provide these services for every single Kryptonian for over 100,000 years. The human equivalent of this here on Earth would pretty much be a system that made healthcare free and available to EVERYONE, including but not limited to life-saving surgeries.

Considering that part of the thousand-year clone war they experienced was pretty much an anthropological debate regarding if clones should be treated as Kryptonians, then that would also tell us the basic rights of Kryptonians were regularly provided without question. That means food, water, air, shelter, education, health and liberty.

And let’s not forget how the birthing matrix would allow the likes of couples that want to reproduce to successfully do so, but are incapable of it -- due to unknown complications, being infertile or simply being in a same sex relationship -- here on Earth.

Krypton in this specific era of DC Comics isn’t just a utopia. It’s a utopia that’s founded on the advancement of science, socialism and commune. And pretty much the majority of every Superman writer shares this realization.

/Especially Grant Morrison, who said in regards to Krypton during their New 52 run on Action Comics, that it’s, and I quote, “The planet of your dreams. A scientific utopia. I wanted to explore Krypton as the world of super people. What would happen if they worked it all out, if they lived for 500 years with amazing technology?”/

If you take away the arrogance resulting in their doom that came from their years of scientific and social accomplishments, everything involving Krypton -- its scientific advancements, its socio-political stances and even how it handles the welfare of their fellow man -- is literally the meme “This is the future that liberals want” but taken seriously

One can even suggest that when his allegory was more associated with Moses, before it was given more of a Christ-like messiah one, the initial idea of Superman leading humanity to achieve such accomplishments was a way of him “delivering us to the promised land.” Y’know, him being the “Man of Tomorrow” and all.

So knowing all of these aspects about Kryptonians and how they operated in DC Comics after Crisis on Infinite Earths and before The New 52, one would rightfully look at how Kryptonians are portrayed in the DC Extended Universe film franchise and go...

Where did Man of Steel go wrong?

Well, it’s just like I said earlier, Readers; there have been multiple attempts in pretty much every incarnation of Krypton in DC Comics to show that the Kryptonian people are just as capable of being as flawed as humans. And almost every single attempt has been incredibly unsuccessful.

The writer of Man of Steel, David Shitbag Goyer, is no exception to this rule. And the only reason why his is the most prominent example of this attempt existing is because Chris Nolan went to him for a treatment for Superman after The Dark Knight trilogy was successful.

He then presented it to Warner Brothers execs who needed to start work on a Superman film before a deadline was reached, that would’ve otherwise allowed the families of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to properly sue them. So that’s why we’re here.

Now personally, I think that David Goyer, while a great idea generator, isn’t that good of a screenwriter. I personally think that his ideas are better executed when someone who’s more capable in the writing department takes the reins.

Sometimes he has hits like the first Blade where he was the only writer attached. Other times Chris Nolan looks at his ideas for The Dark Knight Trilogy and asks his brother Johnathan to make them worth something.

And I think we all know what happens if Goyer’s not only the only writer present, but is also given the greenlight to DIRECT a film

So with David Goyer being the only writer attached to Man of Steel, that left a lot of his ideas and interpretations of the post-Crisis Kryptonian lore that made it to the final draft of the screenplay unedited and uncriticized.

/This included the cause of Krypton’s destruction being mining the planet’s core thanks to them depleting the planet of all their natural resources./

Y’know, like humans are doing.

/Adapting Kurt Busick’s idea of Kryptonian imperialism by making it the Kryptonian Expansion, where settlers would create colonies on other planets and use terraforming machines called world engines in order to make it habitable for Kryptonians and uninhabitable for any lifeform native to said planet./

Y’know, like the humans who colonized the lands of multiple indigenous ethnicities and used various methods of controlling them or wiping them out.

So already we have the adaptation of one element from the comics that was universally ignored and expanded upon in order give Kryptonians a form of flawed relatability to humans and to justify Zod’s invasion of earth -- more on that later -- but this new element regarding Krypton’s destruction being a result of their own frivolousness on top of the arrogance that they’re known for does nothing but drive the former point home.

To David Goyer, the only way to make Kryptonians and aspects of their society interesting is to make them as flawed as we are. Because by making them as the majority of them have been depicted in the comics or even the first two films made in the late 70’s/early 80’s, they’re not relatable; too boring.

And to say that they’ve achieved such feats as we’ve seen them accomplish in Man of Steel without any type of monkey’s paw-like catch regarding how its initially used in order to make it more believable and digestible to us, would be looked at the same way as a lot of people who look at Superman the character and don’t like him; it's impossible for them to fathom that someone out there exists that’s actually that good.

Not only are the aforementioned elements to Kryptonian lore restructured with that purpose, but a lot of elements David Goyer brought over from the comics into the movie -- both technology and societal standards -- have that relatability clause as well.

It’s even worse, because he found ways to replace the utopian hopefulness from said concepts and ideas, with ways that actually reverse the socialist and communal progression the race made in the comics, in order for his catch 22 take on said progression to be the base of conflict so that there’s human relatability.

And he does this by exposing Kryptonian lore, society and technology to classism and objectivism.

That means, to my dismay, we’re gonna have to talk a little bit about the show that he used to write and showrun for, Krypton.

Krypton was a show that ran on SyFy and that David Goyer was the initial showrunner for with the intention of it being a prequel to Man of Steel.

/This was true over the course of scriptwriting and initial filming, and he even said so himself during a press junket of another show he headed back in 2015./

This is even further proved when news released about Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves actor Rege-Jean Page losing the role of the series main character Seg-El, the father of Jor-El and grandfather of Superman, by saying that an executive at Warner Brothers thought the character should look more like Henry Cavill.

Now while we can ALL acknowledge that was an extremely racist statement regarding Page’s blackness -- and also acknowledge the hypocrisy in the statement considering that every member of the House of Zod in the show is as black as I am and doesn’t resemble Michael Shannon at ALL...

The point was made that connection to Man of Steel was initially the goal, and a lot of the scripts were written that expanded on the lore Goyer placed in the movie.

It wasn’t until Batman v Superman underperformed a year after Goyer’s announcement about Krypton and Warner Brothers were beginning to get cold feet about the state of the DCEU, that a lot of the production began to shift to make Krypton be its own thing.

But by that time, a lot of things like the writing, and the use of certain props were already solidified back when DCEU integration was the main goal.

What Krypton expanded upon -- from the pilot episode that I watched because I couldn’t bring myself to watch a full season of that shit -- was that in David Goyer’s depiction of Kryptonian society, Kryptonian houses work ENTIRELY different from how they’re interpreted in the comics.

Kryptonian houses in post Crisis lore, like El and Zod for example, are just surnames.

/Their crests may have different meanings according to religion and the like -- like the S-like symbol that represents the House of El meaning hope, for example -- but that’s about it./

/Krypton the show, on the other hand, associates Houses with rank, class and status, and an entire family can be stripped of their house and become classless./

Yes, that means in SyFy’s Krypton, there are homeless Kryptonians. HOMELESS KRYPTONIANS

David Goyer applied an ancient system of ranking European nobility in order to add elements of classism and privilege -- basically the shit that WE deal with -- to a people who, as a society, have grown BEYOND those concepts. I hate this man so much

So that’s how he decided to add classism into this new Kryptonian lore that was initially meant to be incorporated into the DCEU. The objectivism however, was present since Man of Steel and was only enhanced with SyFy’s Krypton. And how they did it was with the birthing matrix.

The DCEU version of the birthing matrix, if you’ve seen Man of Steel, is called the Genesis Chamber. And on this version of Krypton, it’s the main way Kryptonians procreate.

/However, while Kryptonian parents have the right to have the birthing matrixes of their unborn children in the home with them in the comics, all of the unborn Kryptonians in Man of Steel and the show Krypton are nestled in what seems to be birthing groups similar to the bio-pods from The Matrix until they’re ready to be born./

/This is part one of what makes Kal-El so special according to Man of Steel; he’s the first natural birth in centuries, moments before General Zod’s January 6th and days before the destruction of the planet. Part TWO of what makes Kal-El so special is an element that they gave the Genesis Chamber that before in the comics didn’t really have that big of a role in Kryptonian society./

In the DCEU, Kryptonians are born with a role embedded in their genetic code, thanks to the remnants of an ancient Kryptonian skull called the codex.

These roles are based on the Kryptonian guilds that were established in a post Crisis one-shot comic book issue created by Paul Rucka in 2009, called “Superman: Secret Files.”

These five primary guilds in the comics are military, science, artists, religious and labor. But unlike how it's presented in Man of Steel, /and even SyFy’s Krypton where the creation of the child via combining the parents DNA has sorting hat technology that immediately imprints which guild and function related to said guild their child will serve Kryptonian society.../

The guild a Kryptonian ends up in is initially up to the Kryptonian. The only way they’re FORCED into a guild is because everyone needs to join one, and one will be chosen for you if you’re indecisive or don’t pick one in time.

So once again, aspects of post Crisis lore about Krypton that were never really that deep, were used in Man of Steel to present a take more resembling aspects of modern-day humanity as opposed to what was initially seen as utopic; less “a world of super people if they worked it all out and lived 500 years with amazing technology,” and more “lets all move to space as we currently are under the leadership of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.”

Only with this aspect, Kryptonians are now part of a collective. And, as I’ll get into later on, these Kryptonians are being forced to think, act, and operate under the imprint of the guild that the Kryptonian codex mentally binds them to.

/And while Jor-El is also exposed to this as a member placed in the Science Guild by the Kryptonian codex as a fetus, he’s capable enough to know that Kal-El, his son, the first Kryptonian to be birthed naturally in centuries now is free to forge his own path as an individual as opposed to the implied collective of the DCEU’s version of Krypton/ (What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?)

This, for simplicity's sake, is part of the narrative of Objectivism.

It was popularized by Ayn Rand, problematic author of The Fountainhead, which -- ironically enough -- is one of Zack Snyder’s favorite books and was almost the next film he was gonna direct after being booted off Justice League, and before dropping it to strike a multi-picture deal with Netflix for pretty much all the money.

/To quote my buddy Scott Niswander over on NerdSync who made a video about how objectivism affected Steve Ditko’s run on Spider-Man that you should TOTALLY check out after this is done/ (objectivism states that there is no greater moral goal than achieving one's own happiness; putting yourself first above all others is the greatest moral way to live your life)

Because THAT sounds like the philosophy of a character originally created to be a hero of the people!

Now I’m not saying what I’m about to say in defense of him; I could be completely wrong for all I know. But from what I’ve gathered, Zack Snyder didn’t really implement any personal ideas into the script for Man of Steel.

Everything we got on screen, thanks to articles and the writing of the show Krypton proving as such, came from David Goyer and Zack simply justified the writing in his own way.

Even Superman snapping Zod’s neck at the end came from Goyer and was something that Chris Nolan initially protested -- he wanted Zod sucked back into the Phantom Zone with the rest of his militia -- and Zack justified it pretty much as an in-universe reasoning for why Superman would make the decision to never kill.

/Y’know, until the beginning of Dawn of Justice./

Superman becoming this paragon of objectivism being the only Kryptonian to be born without the influence of the codex effecting his thoughts and choices, while other Kryptonians end up being slaves to it along with this bastardization of utopian concepts and constructs just so David Goyer can make Krypton an advanced yet flawed society...

Is pretty much the problem I had about how Kryptonians were depicted in the DCEU, but could never put a name to until recently.

It’s the reason why every time I hear Superman reply to Zod’s plea with “Krypton had its chance,” I cock my head wondering what he meant by that.

Except now, I DO know what he meant by that. And knowing what I know now, the evidence is as clear as day

Especially when it comes to Zod.

I personally can’t think of any smooth or smart way to transitioning into this talking point without my brain deciding it's time to take a long-ass break from working on this video, so I’ll just say it:

Zod’s rebellion only works in DC’s Kryptonian lore when he freely chooses fascism in opposition to Krypton’s advances and perfections in the structures that oppose it. In Comic Krypton’s case, that’s socialism and aspects of communism.

I can totally get behind a version of Zod where, thanks to his ranking in the military and personal beliefs regarding where Krypton should be as a race, he would think that those in power are too soft to rule and that their advancements should be better off used in ways that reflect how imperialist capitalism can quickly transition to fascism, as I’ve explained in my video about My Dad the Bounty Hunter.

/And Zod can easily think all of this can be accomplished under his rule./

/That’s honestly what makes Terrence Stamp’s portrayal of Zod so much better in both Superman 78 and Superman II. While we never know what it was that he, Ursa and Non did to be sentenced to the Phantom Zone -- not even in the Donner Cut of Superman II -- his desire to rule and enact his revenge on Superman for his father imprisoning him is a driving force of his own design. Zod in Superman 78 is a petty little fascist, who was only kept alive because rehabilitation was pretty much impossible and Donner’s Krypton had no death penalty; which, according to Marx, is another aspect of communism done right./

Then you look at Michael Shannon’s Zod in Man of Steel, and see that his villainy is only present due to him being a product of genetic conditioning and societal indoctrination according to this humanistically flawed objectivist-based Krypton that David Goyer has created.

While he does rebel against the Kryptonian Council because of their inaction to save Krypton from implosion and tries to stage a takeover with the intention of ruling, it’s done in a way that would eventually only continue the status quo because of how flawed Kryptonian society is in the DCEU.

/Not only was he birthed from the Genesis Chamber with the choice made for him to be in the military guild by the Codex, but he repeatedly stated over the course of the movie how proud he is to be part of said societal indoctrination and sought to continue it -- both during his attempted coup of Krypton and in using the Codex to indoctrinate the fetuses in the Genesis Chamber in the scout ship during his invasion of Earth. It also doesn’t help that he looks at any act that detracts from this as blasphemous./

Zod being a slave to Kryptonian’s societal indoctrination -- it being his main motivator for his actions -- just for the sake of highlighting Superman’s individualism in order for the objectivist portion of his narrative in Man of Steel to work...

Takes away so much from not only Zod, but every other Kryptonian and enemy to Krypton that DCEU Superman would eventually encounter if it were allowed to continue.

Just think about how Kara Zor-El -- aka Supergirl -- would’ve been like if she carried the same indoctrination and was just as proud of it as Zod. She would’ve been as insufferable as her New 52 counterpart.

No, I’m not joking; Kara in the New 52 reboot has the personality of like...Frieza Saga era Vegeta and I HATE IT.

Conclusion

Readers, the reason why I wince whenever Superman replies to Zod with “Krypton had its chance,” is because I know what Krypton could’ve been like versus what we initially got.

I know thanks to how it’s depicted in the comics, a Krypton existed where classism didn’t exist, body autonomy was both respected and provided, and everyone’s basic rights were unquestionably acknowledged and cared for, even those who for whatever reasons opposed said decisions.

Instead, we received a Krypton that was uncharacteristically flawed and struck with human-related problems because it was impossible for the main engineer of this society to properly imagine a utopia where the only problem with its people being that they were too arrogant for their own good.

Not to mention use said previously utopian concepts as a way to introduce a “for dummies” take of a philosophy based on selfishness, made popular by a white author in the 1940s with inherited wealth and didn’t wanna pay her taxes.

And because this introductory take on said philosophy was applied to characters associated with the most SELFLESS SUPERHERO TO EVER EXIST, they lost their individuality for the sake of highlighting an aspect about Superman that not only never existed, but never really needed to be placed on him in the first place.

Y’know, because...he’s Superman.

Considering that All-Star Superman is part of the inspiration behind the upcoming film Superman: Legacy, the first installment of the DCU on screen after The Flash wraps up storytelling on the DCEU, I’m hoping there’s a chance Krypton and how Kryptonians are depicted in it kinda return to the ideal that a lot of writers and readers initially see it as;

/An ideal utopia of a people who figured it out despite their haughtiness, and that we can one day reach with a little help from a friend./

Also that David Goyer never writes for DC again. I’m also hoping for that.

But I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section below something about the DC Extended Universe that kinda rubs you the wrong way.

Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, something that you hoping the rebooted DCU will get right now that the likes of comic book writers are helping get this rebooted cinematic universe set in motion.

Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts!

/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.

Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.

But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./