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[frelling_tralk]

Smallville's John Schneider Dislikes Man Of Steel's Jonathan Kent

“I love Kevin, and I love what Kevin does. But I didn’t care for one scene in there, where Jonathan was advising Clark to do something that was self-serving, it was tell a lie, I can’t remember exactly what it was. I think Jonathan Kent is the best dad perhaps ever depicted on

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From someone who loves Man of Steel (while still acknowledging it's a far from perfect film)

[firebunny]

The scene he's referring to was in the trailer so you may have seen part of it.

Basically, Clark's school bus goes off a bridge and Clark saves everyone. His classmate's mother goes to the Kents and pretty much says, 'Clark has super powers.' The Kents talk their way out of it, but later Jonathan tells Clark that he needs to be more careful and Clark says, "What was I supposed to do? Let them all die?" and Jonathan responds, "Maybe."

Smallville had a similar scene in the season one episode Rogue. The difference being that SV Jonathan backtracks when Clark asks if he should have let someone die.

I have problems with MoS Jonathan, which I won't get into here because I don't want to spoil anything, but I'm okay with him in that particular scene. I feel that we, the audience, are supposed to disagree with him. We know that Jonathan Kent is wrong.

At that moment Mos Jonathan presents Clark with two choices 1) Protect Others. 2) Protect Yourself. Jonathan wants Clark to pick option #2, but ultimately Clark chooses #1. And I love that about Clark, because becoming Superman wasn't his destiny and he wasn't pushed into it. He chose it.

It's the same reason I loved "Rule them with strength Jor-El" when he was first introduced on Smallville, and deeply dissatisfied when they retconned him. I loved the idea of the person sent to conquer Earth choosing instead to protect it.

Re: From someone who loves Man of Steel (while still acknowledging it's a far from perfect film)

[frelling_tralk]

Interesting! Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the Smallville Kent's didn't have a similar viewpoint, they just didn't want to look/feel like awful people by actually saying it. But for all that we were told that Clark learned to become Superman from the example that Jonathan set, his parents were hardly gung-ho at first when Clark did start rescuing people. They are really freaked out when he saves Whitney from the burning car explosion in the second episode, and Clark was always their first priority over others. Not that that's necessarily a bad PoV to have for a parent, but I definitely feel that becoming Superman and saving lives was more or less all down to Clark, his parents were generally more concerned with freaking out over what if someone saw their son doing something heroic

Yet in interviews you get the impression that the show (and the actors) did believe that they were presenting it as Clark learning to become Superman from the example that Jonathan set for him, and eh I just don't see that. IMO they would have kept Clark safely hidden away on the farm with them forever if it were up to them