Superman Vs. The Elite

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Looks a bit "might makes right" to me.

That's pretty much what I thought when I watched it. As much as I liked it and the promise it offered, it never gave us a clear resolution. I suppose in a way it can't, not without polarising the audience and promoting a specific idealogy beyond "killing is bad, m'kay."
That being said though, it is nice to see the problem of Superman's ever increasing anachronism being adressed. I suppose one could argue that Superman shouldn't change precisely because he is symbolic of the ideals he espouses and that arguably people need to be reminded that we can be "better".

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A bit? When you look up the definition of "might makes right" in the dictionary, you see a pic of The Authority!

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
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Doesn't sound way far off from what we have in the US these days.
I say we all bow down to our hidden "Authority" overlords.

I had forgotten about Batman: Year One!

Know what I'm doing tonight.

I didn't care for Year One, but I was amused by All-Star Superman.

Whereas my view is the opposite.

To each their own.

Who is stronger than Superman? Seems like he'll enforce his view of "good" and his view of which restrictions in the pursuit of good must be followed by all, this is might makes right on both counts and all justice systems/security forces work on that idea "Monopoly of violence" and all that the only difference here is Supes will give his rivals unlimited opportunity to kill and kill again and again (Argument as old as time)

imo this is a lot like that other story whose name I forgot

Edit: Kingdom Come is what I was thinking of

I thought Year One was ok, I liked the Catwoman short better.

This. Remember in JL/JLU when on an alternate Earth President Luthor pushed things to the brink of armageddon and had his thumb on the button?

Superman "There are at least 6 different ways I can stop you"

Luthor: "and they all involve deadly force and you don't do that" Luthor then proceeded to call Superman his accomplice and that he wouldn't be a hero without a villain and that it was Superman's own ego that kept things going due to him loving allthe adulation from the public etc. Luthor then dared him to arrest him and put him on trial because he could beat the trial and start it all over again. Superman then used his heat vision to incinerate Luthor and the JL of that Earth then seize power around the world. They became Elites. They began to decide who would die, who wouldn't and have storm troopers ready to take dissidents into custody and that reforming super villains meant lobotomies for each of them. Luthor did have at least one valid point: he would beat the rap and start it all over again since Superman wouldn't kill.

Much like how Batman will not do what many would want him to do and put the Joker down for good. How many have died at the hands of the Joker and Batman won't kill Joker or allow him to be killed? How many cops would love to claim Joker was resisting arrest and shoot him down? Do you think many cops would complain or that Internal Affairs would push the matter? But they don't due to morality and the law thus Joker gets out and starts it all over again and will continue to do so until he is put down for good.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

As I recall they didn't kill where other permanent options existed hence most super vils from their universe getting lobotimized they were totalitarian rulers of either the world or the country

It always turns around to Batman, doesn't it? There was an interesting thread about exactly the subject of this paragraph a year or two ago, including a discussion of how the Joker's legal defense might work; I recommend searching for it.

I should mention that despite having serious problems with Batman Morality, I came down on the side of, "Holding Batman responsible for murders committed by the Joker? That's nuts." I'm not bothered by Batman not hunting down and slaughtering the Joker.

I am bothered by the implication that anyone risking killing the Joker in trying to apprehend him is being immoral, a position sometimes explicitly taken by Batman and routinely implicitly taken by his writers. In my view, there are two problems with that position.

The first, simpler one is that I just plain disagree with it. It seems irrational to me that the police can't tell the Joker, "Stop, or I'll shoot" simply because it might kill him if he doesn't stop and they do shoot. This objection to Batman Morality is easy to overcome, though, in that many people simply don't agree with the objection, and I can't honestly claim there are any logical problems with it aside from my disagreeing with it. Put more simply, if your position is "It's wrong even to risk killing," then you can't be criticized for the Joker's running away when you threaten him with "Stop, or I'll tell you to stop again."

My second objection to the Bat-position is based on what I consider a fundamental inconsistency in it. That is that while Batman doesn't use firearms or other deadly weapons, he still does things to criminals that could inflict death or crippling bodily injury on them, such as striking them with unarmed blows sufficient to render them unconscious, throwing edged Batarangs at them, or dropping them off buildings to break their legs (see Batman Begins). (This becomes even more of a problem for Superman, who is flinging superhuman crushing forces and beams of heat around in combat situations.) How does Batman know that the corrupt cop will land on his legs and not his neck? How does he know he won't inflict brain damage on the guard of the corporate facility whom he just knocked out? Either he just plain doesn't, or he does "because he's Batman, and Batman doesn't make mistakes." Does no one else see the problem there? Essentially, Batman's moral code relies on his writer protecting him from ever making a mistake. To me, this takes away much of its moral force. It ends up coming off as the writer preaching at me.

Finally, to drag things back toward DC heroes in general, if not Superman in particular, I have a bit of a problem with speeches in which heroes declare themselves to be more-than-human symbols of hope. This afflicts a lot of recent works about Superman and Batman, notably Christopher Nolan's Bat-series and quite a few recent Superman one-offs. Again, it's a situation where the writers seem to get the wires between the story's message and its internal structure crossed. I have no problem with the general concept of the DC superheroes, which has been stated over the past couple decades by writers and editors to be, "They are ideals for ordinary readers." That is fine, healthy, even. While "wish fulfillment" has become an inexplicably dirty phrase in the past few decades, I think it's fine to create a story about a protagonist who represents your ideals, or to read one who embodies the writer's.

Where this breaks down is when writers feel the need to have the superhero justify himself within the story itself by explaining how he's a more-than-human ideal to be admired. (Sometimes, a secondary character will do this for him.) What about all the other characters in the story? The implication is that they can never reach that level. It's fine for Superman to be a superhuman inspiration to me as a reader because to me, he is a fictional character. But if he proclaims himself as some unattainable ideal to, say, Jimmy Olsen, I find it hard to imagine Olsen not being resentful. The situation is a paradigm of paternalism, which I'm pretty sure isn't the message the writers want to send. (If it is, there are bigger problems with comics than are generally being considered out there.)

Back on topic, despite everything I wrote above, I don't much care for the "edgy" cynicism about the superheroic ideal displayed by works like The Authority, and I enjoy Superman, when he isn't boasting about how moral he is, so I like the concept of this movie.

I have to dispute this a bit.

Superman isn't trying to force his morality in this show. He's trying to provide an example, then enforce the law.

Superman is powerful. He probably could do anything he wanted if he had a mind to, and few who could stop him. To him, because of this power, he can use it to be a shining example of what people can be. A friend of mine put it best; "Humans use the force we do because we don't have an alternative. Superman has the option, and chooses a higher path because he can." The failing in this case is the court system for not imposing a harsher sentence. Superman brought him in, that's where his job ends. It's up to the laws of the land to deal out punishment. (and they decided to use him as a backup power source for the city instead of the death penalty- but that's a discussion on the ethics of their world's justice system, not Superman)

I'll put it to you this way. If the government came to Superman and told him that, say, the Atomic Skull has been given the death penalty in a fair court, but they're totally cluless on how to carry that out since no conventional methods would work. I bet Superman would try to help them find a humane way to do it. He wouldn't like it, but he would probably help them devise a process, or at least offer to use his Phantom Zone generator on him as an alternative.

That would be an interesting story for DC to tell there... I wonder how they'd resolve it.

As for 'forcing his view of good' on the Elite, he was bringing them in to answer for their crimes. From the murder of the Atomic Skull to the war crimes they commited upon the two countries. The 'depowering' thing is a little fuzzy, but understandable. If he could do it without hurting them, there's nothing 'illegal' about that, really. If they went into a court of law, and faced down the U.N. and walked away scott free, Superman would have no right to fight with them. He still wouldn't like them, and would probably watch every move they made from then on out until they inevitably stepped over the line again, but he wouldn't pick another fight with them until they did. Remember, he kept trying to reason with them until they admitted to the murder of the leaders of those two countries. Once that was said, it was time to bring them in. Same way in which Luthor is elected president in some of the stories. Supes didn't 'take him out' because he wasn't doing anything illegal, though he did try to publicly discourage voting for him, I'm sure.

That was my take on those events anyway.