Only one person died. Only one singular person. In a superhero movie! The type that love to throw around casualty counts like it’s all a big game, waving off 70 people being killed in a handful of days like it’s no big deal, yet only ONE PERSON died.
And he was mourned. Superman cried for him—this stranger who gave him free falafel and, while facing death, told him that he still believed in him. Metamorpho, this cold-seeming man who is being actively blackmailed to do this, breaking down and taking the risk to believe in Superman, too, because seeing someone murdered right in front of him is devastating enough to take the risk. The newspapers run a front page article talking about how they’re going to memorialize him.
The stakes didn’t have to involve real actual loss of life. The threat of it was enough to convey the severity of the situation. Because human life is that important. All life is that important, at least to Superman who goes out of his way to save dogs and squirrels.
(Hawkgirl does kill SHEIN Netanyahu but genocidal dictators don’t count as human beings lol.)