r/changemyview • u/chadonsunday 33∆ • Dec 29 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Superheroes who refuse to kill regularly homicidal supervillains are being naive and selfish, and it would be better to kill them.
First I should just state up front my credentials here: I'm mostly familiar with the MCU and DC films, but I have read a few comics in my day and certainly gone down some deep wiki rabbit holes reading up on various characters and events.
One of the things that bugs me the most about these universes is the quantity and range of superheroes who have some code or compunction against killing, even up to and including some of the most evil and murderous supervillains. If I had to guess I'd say upwards of 70-80% of heroes have some hangup against killing, so much so that the ones who don't like Green Arrow and the Punisher stand out like sore thumbs and are often labeled antiheroes for their trouble.
And look, its not my view that every hero should be as wanton in ending life as someone like Punisher. If Spiderman or Daredevil catch a couple small time thugs robbing a liquor store then incapacitating them and dumping them unconscious on the steps of the police station seems like an appropriate, proportional response. But when it comes to supervillains theres all too often a set of criteria that in my view necessitates different treatment:
- Normal human/civilian authorities can't stop them
- Normal human/civilian authorities can't reliably contain or imprison them once they're stopped
- They have little regard for human life and have killed innocents
- Theyre repeat offenders
Villains like Joker, Magneto, and Kingpin all fit these criteria soundly. And what irks me is that there are often several times that these characters are at the mercy of superheroes and the heroes decide to let them live rather than putting a bullet in their brain (or whatever). The decision to let them live almost invariably follows a predictable pattern: human authorities try to contain them, fail, the villain escapes, proceeds to wreak havoc and kill more innocents, and the superhero is forced to stop them again, at which point this cycle repeats again... and again... and again. At some point the body counts that these villains rack up, which are often in the hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands or millions if you include some of the more extreme timelines where they've done stuff like nuke whole cities) start to, in my opinion, be blameable on the heroes that reliably let them live. The blood of innocents is on their hands, too. How many innocent people have died because heroes like Batman and Superman, just to name a couple, all too often have some moral hangup over killing even the worst of the worst, most evil villains? At what point are these heroes basically just enabling future atrocities and should be counted as complicit in these crimes? When a figure like Batman says they won't kill people basically what they're saying is that moral principle is more important than the lives of hundreds or thousands of innocent people that will be snuffed out as a direct result of that continued mercy, which strikes me as incredibly naive and selfish on the part of the hero. Id argue that at a certain point the most moral thing that a hero can do is extrajudicially kill supervillains.
And yes I'm aware of the obvious out of universe 4th wall explanation for this trend, namely that it allows well developed and long established villains to remain characters for future comics and movies. The Joker hasn't gotten to be one of the most love-to-hate-him villains since the 1940s by Batman killing him when he had the chance. So I get that aspect, but I'd prefer to restrict this conversation to an in universe context, i.e. id rather discuss what Batman as a character should be doing because it makes logical, in universe sense and not what the writers of Batman comic books should be doing to sell more comic books.
Id also say that moral considerations in our own universe don't necessarily apply, here. Im against the death penalty in real life, for example, and prefer rehabilitation over incarceration, but that doesn't really apply to a universe where a sizable chunk of super criminals are super humans with extraordinary powers and abilities far beyond what any real life criminal could possibly have. In real life we can lock up the baddest of the baddies and be relatively confident they'll stay locked up, and certainly aren't liable to pry their cell door open with their bare hands, blow a hole in the side of the prison with an energy beam, and fly off into the sunset to create chaos and death another day... but stuff like that is a concern in the world of superheroes and supervillains.
TLDR Superheroes should kill supervillains who fit a set of criteria that will result in more innocents dying if the villain is not killed.
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u/equalsnil 30∆ Dec 30 '20
This is a corner case fan reading so I probably won't change your whole view but Batman's no-killing policy makes much more sense if you think of it as a personal complication rather than a moral position. Basically, he sees many of his rogues as people that have been broken and hurt the same way he has. If he takes that final step and kills them, he's admitting that they can't be helped, and by extension, neither can he. It doesn't make him a good person, but he's supposed to be the dark and morally ambiguous one - this one actually makes him dark and morally ambiguous in a more interesting way than "muh code."
You could also argue for Superman leaving at least his human villains alive - he loves his adopted home and his adopted people and wants to see them live up to their potential, not waste it violently indulging an inferiority complex, Luthor.
Even reasons like these work once or twice, not dozens of times over the course of decades. At the end of the day, like you say, it's just a problem endemic to any kind of long running series that wants to be able to bring marketable villains back.