As the years have progressed, movie directors have pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable to be shown/visualized on-screen. But sometimes, just because you can film something does not mean it is "entertaining".
A common theme that has emerged in recent superhero movies (be it the Hollywood variety - The Avengers, Iron Man, etc. or even the Bollywood kind - Krrish 3, Dhoom 3, etc.) is the "battle" between the main characters. Earlier, the destruction of cities and buildings and, by proxy, humans was reserved for natural disasters such as comets or meteorites crashing into the earth.
But not any more. The zenith (or nadir, if you will) of these scenes was the final battle between Superman and General Zod in Man of Steel. One of the most enduring legacies of Superman was his wish to protect human life at any cost. Look at the following video and try to figure out how many lives were lost before the General was eliminated. Oddly, it seems that the General's fatal mistake was to target a family. As long as he was only destroying buildings (and the people within them) Superman appeared content to simply trade body blows with him.
What bothers me is that human lives appear to not have any value, especially if they are eliminated en masse.
(Note how much destruction has already been wrought on Metropolis by this point. And it is not a vacant city as you can see from the cars that are moving on the roads and the people clearly still milling about).
P.S. And yes, I will admit that the entire premise of my favorite movie of the year was the destruction of everything human-made in outer space but I will submit that the loss of human life was restricted to the astronauts at the start of the episode and was treated with great seriousness.
A common theme that has emerged in recent superhero movies (be it the Hollywood variety - The Avengers, Iron Man, etc. or even the Bollywood kind - Krrish 3, Dhoom 3, etc.) is the "battle" between the main characters. Earlier, the destruction of cities and buildings and, by proxy, humans was reserved for natural disasters such as comets or meteorites crashing into the earth.
But not any more. The zenith (or nadir, if you will) of these scenes was the final battle between Superman and General Zod in Man of Steel. One of the most enduring legacies of Superman was his wish to protect human life at any cost. Look at the following video and try to figure out how many lives were lost before the General was eliminated. Oddly, it seems that the General's fatal mistake was to target a family. As long as he was only destroying buildings (and the people within them) Superman appeared content to simply trade body blows with him.
What bothers me is that human lives appear to not have any value, especially if they are eliminated en masse.
(Note how much destruction has already been wrought on Metropolis by this point. And it is not a vacant city as you can see from the cars that are moving on the roads and the people clearly still milling about).
P.S. And yes, I will admit that the entire premise of my favorite movie of the year was the destruction of everything human-made in outer space but I will submit that the loss of human life was restricted to the astronauts at the start of the episode and was treated with great seriousness.
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