On the distant planet of Krypton, the home world of a highly-evolved race resembling humans and bearing a unique molecular density and structure, a result of the planet's gravitational strength and the radiation of its crimson central star. The planet is ruled by a Council of Elders, each representing a particular "tribe" and bearing a crest of that particular House. The planet's greatest scientist bears an S-shaped crest, the House of El. Jor-El is supervising the conviction of three criminals caught attempting to overthrow the planet's government - General Zod, the planet's former defense chief; his henchman Non, a hulking killer unable to speak; and Ursa, a woman determined to exterminate men other than the man she loves, Zod. The vast dome of the planet's capital city, Kryptonopolis, opens to the night, and an extra-dimensional pyramid - the Phantom Zone - tumbles out of the sky and absorbs the three criminals into an eternity in dimensional limbo through space. However, Jor-El's more pressing concern lies in the orbital shift of Krypton; this shift is putting the planet into the fatal gravitational pull of its central star, a fact blithely ignored by the Council of Elders. The leader of the Council forbids Jor-El from warning the larger populace or he will be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone himself. Jor-El promises to be silent and that he and his wife will not attempt to leave the planet. Jor-El chooses instead to construct a crystalline starship for his infant son Kal-El. Jor-El's wife Lara, however, is concerned, for the starship is programmed to take the child through a trans-galactic warp to a planet populated by primitive humans whose technological development is millennia behind Krypton, a planet that orbits a yellow sun, a planet called Earth. Jor-El, however, understands that the planet's yellow sun will give Kal-El superhuman powers that will give him the advantage he needs to survive. Jor-El and Lara bid their child goodbye before Joe-El installs a Green Crystal into the ship, a crystal containing the very essence of himself and Lara as well as the knowledge of the entire universe. He then completes the assembly of the starship - just as the planet is pulled into a fatal plunge toward its red sun. The starship is launched and escapes the system scant minutes before the planet is torn open, collides with its star, and both bodies are obliterated in a holocaust of fire and debris.
