LogFAQs > #944080501

I thought the entire point was that Krypton's civilization had declined and stagnated and was completely beyond saving. At one point, the Kryptonians traveled the stars, discovered how to make other planets like their own, and generally had grand ambitions. They went from that to living in one single solar system. When faced with an energy crisis, the government--which should in theory be made up of genetically superior people good at governance--chose to take an unsustainable action that would destroy the entire planet and kill them all instead of doing literally anything else. Zod sees that Earth's environment would give his future armies and people a massive advantage over everyone else in the universe, and the decides Earth still needs to be made into a second Krypton because that's how things were before.

The ship that Superman recovers from under the ice was absolutely ancient, yet the technology looked about the same as what they had on Krypton when he was sent away. I'm not familiar with the comics, but I got the impression that nobody had invented much of anything since the expansionist era. It reminds me a lot of the Tommyknockers. They are capable of building and doing miraculous things, but there is no will for it and they are all collectively too stupid to have original ideas.