What, you don't think "I'll kill you if that's what it takes to save your life" is a completely sane, straightforward, logical and obvious reason to beat on your best friend?
(Still better than anything Johns has ever written with her, though.)
Zod is the quintessential example of why you can have reboots or you can have nostalgia but you CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO COMBINE if you have ever valued coherence at all.