This is a fundamental aspect of the story that's completely dropped even though realistically he should be mentioned at least once.
No, it is not. The fundamental aspect of the story is the overall event, the mess it causes, and its impact on people's perceptions of Superman. That's what affects the story going forward. Superman traveling there to rescue Lois and confronting that gunman is merely the plot device that gets this larger fundamental storyline point into the movie.
It matters precisely because he's important to the plot, again he's the only other human survivor of the incident besides Lois. His testimony on the matter sounds pretty ****ing important to me.
He's really not important to the plot.
I think you're missing my point regarding his testimony...maybe I wasn't clear enough. When you put someone on the stand, at least in the American legal system, you want to make sure they are considered a credible witness so that their testimony on the record is not called into question later on. You do background checks, etc, to see if they have a history of criminal behavior, violent behavior, issues with responsibility, etc. If they have these types of issues, they are often not deemed a credible witness and most attorneys, Senators, etc, will not feel comfortable putting them on the stand. Someone with a criminal background, someone with a terrorist background...does not exactly fit into the category of a likely credible witness. It's not about whether they're actually going to tell the truth, it's about the perception surrounding that testimony.
Senator Finch is using the hearings as political leverage. She is attempting to draw attention to the issue by putting a very human, innocent face on people whose lives Superman has seemingly disrupted.
Putting a terrorist on the stand whose testimony based on his own direct involvement in an international incident would almost automatically be called into question would not accomplish that very well.
Nevermind that unless we actually saw him testify, it would be somewhat pointless to include him again in the story. If we DID see him testify, it would essentially be redundant, because in theory, from a story info standpoint, he'd be delivering the same info that has more emotional impact coming from Kahina, a seemingly innocent person, and who ties into the story better later on.
The movie is better served having an apparently innocent citizen give an emotional testimony about how her life and the lives of her village were affected.
Except there's nothing in the film to suggest that junior's goons did so.
We see "junior's goons" taking out the other terrorists, do we not? If he is in fact dead, it is entirely possible they might have killed him.
Junior was able to get his hands in a lot of different systems but not all of them so there's no guarantee that he could have even gotten to him even if he wanted to. He only got to the prisoners in Gotham because that city was so corrupt anyway.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. They were in a foreign country, right where the gunman was when Superman left off with him. They were right where they would need to be to kill him.
There's literally nothing in the film to support the idea that Finch wanted an innocent face on this incident. Kahina's there because they think she's a witness and there's never any explicit statement about putting her there to gain sympathy.
Except that she seemingly is an innocent face.
As I've pointed out, credibility is important in many such scenarios. Kahina, as a victim of the attacks, and as a seemingly innocent party, would appear to have credibility that a terrorist would not.
The fact that she gives an emotional testimony makes it fairly apparent that the goal of putting her up there is to gain the world's sympathy. Finch makes an emotional statement following it and capitalizes on this to move things to the next level of hearings.
In fact Finch seemed like she was mostly interested in finding the objective truth about the situation and exploring some kind of realistic answer so Kal doesn't act like a reckless buffoon anymore.
She is, but she still needed to be able to put an innocent, human face out there. It is a political move. Luthor tries to take advantage of this, since he knows it is Senator Finchs pet political project, and Finch reveals that she's not ALL about politics, but actually concerned with getting to the truth about Superman.
Also for the warlord not necessarily being trustworthy? His character isn't well defined in the movie (like pretty much every other character) so while it's just as likely he could be a stereotypical terrorist type he could also be the more honorable freedom fighter type.
It doesn't work that way. Unless you yourself are directly under investigation, you will likely not be called as any kind of character witness in this kind of scenario if you have a criminal or terrorist record.
Of course, according to some of you, Superman killed that guy, so how would he then be available to testify anyway?
And if you can't take someone's testimony as truth because they are a criminal and/or terrorist then I guess we'll just say that the whole Lau plotline in Dark Knight is null and void too, apparently.
That's different. Like I just said, sometimes when you yourself are under direct investigation and prosecution, you may have the option to testify. Lau himself is directly under investigation, has admitted to the crime he is being investigated for, has probably issued a sworn statement, and has made a deal to give up his associates. He is not serving as a character witness in an international incident.
The biggest thing that bugs me is the guy is never even mentioned again even though he is actually important, his testimony would be extremely valuable. My problems with the warlord on this specific path of reasoning could have actually been easily solved if they just included an extra line in the film where somebody says something along the lines of "We were going to have [x-name] testify but he died mysteriously in transport". Something as subtle as that would have been enough to suggest some link to junior's schemes or whatever but they drop this guy's story completely.
Why would they continue the story of a random thug?
I think the fact that you think that a line incluing "he died mysteriously in transport" is subtle may be part of the problem here.
So it's either that the three screenwriters for this film didn't notice this problem at all (which is pretty likely considering the general incompetence on display) or that the warlord's heart actually stopped beating...
This is not a problem. It is completely normal to dismiss plot devices after they are used.
