OK - It’s a movie. As I told my boys growing up who were too smart for the movies (That car wouldn’t bounce off that building like that) - “You are buying that Superman can fly and throw a car, but not the way it bounced?”
In other words, if you buy the story, you buy the WHOLE story. When George fails to save his brother, Potterville proves to be a horrible place. So - keeping the Building & Loan out of his hands is a GOOD thing.
When “Wonderful Life” came out, people were still alive who had lived in or remembered monopoly towns - those owned by a mine, etc (”I owe my soul to the company store.”) People were alive who had outlived the depression. People were alive who remember the anti-trust days. This movie reflects that, and I think it’s a good one.
“In other words, if you buy the story, you buy the WHOLE story. “
I disagree. That’s not how it should work.
Every movie has it’s own internal reality. None of these realities are just like real life, but they should be consistent within the framework of the movie. The world within a film that presents a hero with superhuman powers is different from one, say like Saving Private Ryan, which presents WWII combat in very realistic terms. Of course that’s setting aside the fact that Tom Hanks was really too old to be playing an army captain at that time. In the movie’s world he was 27 instead of 42.
Superman exists in a representation of the real world. While his superhuman strength is fictional the weight of the vehicle, the strength of the building, the laws of physics, etc. should remain consistent with reality, or at least close enough to allow the suspension of disbelief.
A classic example of this was in Blue Thunder, when the heat seeking missile was diverted by the reflection of the sun off a glass building. They don’t work that way. Of course everyone has to draw the line for themselves. I didn’t object to German soldiers anachronistically wearing Afrika Korps uniforms in the time period in which Raider of the Lost Ark was set, but the stupid scene in the wretched Crystal Skull where Indiana Jones survives an atomic blast inside a refrigerator was just too stupid.