Last night I went to see Superman again, to make sure I got in one more showing before it leaves IMAX. And also, because “it soothes me.” I still shamelessly love the movie, but with familiarity it’s now secured itself as “modern classic,” easily my favorite screen version of Superman, but without the electricity of opening weekend, when it was all new.
This time, I was watching it with the mindset of trying to identify exactly why it connected with me so strongly. That’s partly in reaction to talking about it with a coworker who hated it. At first, I was trying to come up with justifications like the Marvel approach to the MCU vs what James Gunn is trying to do with this movie. Or having more familiarity with the comics and animated series. Or being more of a “DC guy” vs a “Marvel guy.” Or even just being more inclined to suspension of disbelief and accepting the wacky energy “because comic books.”
But ultimately, I think it’s as simple as art connecting with different people in different ways, and for different reasons. (This and other observations will be collected in my upcoming book of media criticism titled “Yeah, No Shit”). I’m still working on suppressing my inner Cinema Studies student movie snob, because I strongly believe that art that connects with people where they’re at is Good Art. But it’s difficult to silence the part of myself that treats “Am I enjoying this?” and “Is it actually good, though?” as two separate questions.
It’s pretty easy to tell why Superman connected with me so much, though: in addition to its overall feel-good vibe of optimism, hope, and fearless sincerity, it’s told in the language of the version(s) of the DC universe I grew up with. The part of me that loves the bombastic goofiness of the Superfriends series and gasped at the sight of the Hall of Justice. As well as the part that read the Justice League International comics and appreciated a tone that was comedic and a little self-referential1Because everything had to be at least a little self-referential back then, but came from a genuine love of the characters and the universe they lived in. And someone who loved the Justice League Unlimited series for feeling like a bunch of people delighted to have a huge cast of potential characters to play with. (And most importantly to me: for the gag that Green Lantern John Stewart’s weakness is the movie Old Yeller).
Everything has the tone of treating the goofier and more bizarre stuff not as a liability to be ground down and corrected for, but as an essential part of why it’s so appealing.
And after watching it enough times that I don’t feel overwhelmed just trying to keep up, and I can pay attention to how everything fits together, I think the answer to “Is it actually good, though?” is “Absolutely.” My criticisms have mostly evaporated — I still think the fight scenes at the end go on for too long — not with a shrug and “hey, comic books man,” but because they’re all designed to fit together towards the movie’s main themes.
One interesting thing was realizing how I’ve had such strong presuppositions about how Superman stories work and how action movies work, that I sometimes straight-up missed entire passages of dialogue. For instance: I thought Superman turned himself in to Planetwatch because the DoJ called for it, and Superman is all about truth and justice, and action movies require the hero to become vulnerable at some point. Somehow I missed where he explicitly said he was going to look for Krypto. And that one of the first things he does when gets to the pocket universe is to whistle for him. I guess I was paying too much attention to everything else going on in the “maybe that’s the real punk rock” scene that I’d stopped listening for dialogue that was plot-based instead of character-based.
(In my defense: that’s also when Lex was explaining the creation of a pocket universe, giving his supervillain monologue, showing us a containment globe with neural transmitters broadcasting images of super squirrels, introducing his bank of infinite monkey social media trolls, and a gigantic complex of Cabin in the Woods containment cubes inviting comparisons to Gitmo, as well as introducing the character of Metamorpho. I wasn’t just goofing off; I was paying attention to a lot of important stuff).
Similarly, there are so many ideas in the movie that are character-based or thematic, and I’d gone away from earlier viewings thinking that I’d put the pieces together to make my own interpretation. Only to watch it again and realize, no, they say all of this stuff explicitly.
Again, I don’t think the magic of Superman is in its restraint or subtlety. It directly states a lot of ideas that are familiar from previous interpretations of Superman or super-hero comics in general. The magic comes from how it puts them together and repeatedly illustrates them, inviting the audience to think about the implications of them, and to internalize them. Again, the difference between aspiration and inspiration, between telling you that it’s cool to be kind vs making you feel inspired to kindness without fear of being corny or uncool.
The most notable example is Superman’s final speech to Lex Luthor, where he talks about how Lex doesn’t get it because Clark is human in every way that matters. I’d been thinking that it was fine, but a little too on-the-nose and comic booky, especially after the earlier conversation where Lex explicitly lays out everything he’s about, acknowledging that he’s driven by envy that Superman gets lauded as a great hero simply for having super powers. I was grateful that it was interrupted by an attack from Krypto for cathartic comic relief.
But in fact, it’s actually Clark verbalizing the end of his character arc for this whole story, declaring it to himself as much as to anyone else.
The opening text keeps emphasizing the number three, and the movie is divided into three acts, each with a part of Clark’s process towards defining himself: alien sent to Earth to be its protector, questioning his own self-righteousness and his role as a super-hero, and finally accepting that he’s not someone who’s here to protect humans, but to be human.
First, we’re introduced to the fortress of solitude and the recording from his Kryptonian parents, establishing that he’s here on a mission to protect the people of Earth. The crux of this is is his interview/argument with Lois, where he’s been absolutely convinced that he’s in the right and he’d done the right thing, because injustice was being done and people were going to die. She alleges that he hadn’t talked to anyone in the US government but was still acting as their representative; he insists that he doesn’t represent anyone but himself.
Next, the contrast of what motivates him (helping every living thing as best he can) vs what motivates the Justice Gang (fulfilling the obligations of the mission they’ve been assigned to do). Then the revelation that the recording he’d treasured so much had been effectively a lie; he’d been sent not to protect Earth but to rule over it without mercy. The crux of this is the “maybe that’s the real punk rock” scene with Lois, where she talks about her natural skepticism vs his trust in people and belief that everyone is beautiful. The unspoken part of that is the idea that Clark doesn’t help people because of a mission assigned to him by his long-dead parents, as he’s long believed, but simply because it’s in his nature.
And then in the third part, all of Lex’s machinations are a contrast to Superman. Lex’s taking of hostages (and murdering them) shows that he considers personal connections and friendships as a liability to be exploited, instead of a strength. Superman gets out with the help of others, illustrating that as powerful as he is, he can’t do it all himself, nor should he be expected to. (Rex breaking down, saying “he shot him and I just sat here and didn’t do anything” is another illustration of the difference between aspiring to be as good as Superman vs being inspired to do what we can). The social media and news networks aren’t just pointed commentary about the current media landscape, but an example of letting other people define who we are vs defining it for ourselves.
And finally, he battles against Ultraman, which illustrates that he’s more than just his super powers. That’s the part that Lex, even with all of his seeming self-awareness, still fails to understand. Lex’s hatred of Superman is clearly a barely-even-thinly-veiled example of people using bigotry to try and justify their own insecurities. He doesn’t understand that it’s not Superman’s alien power set that makes him so beloved, but that Lex’s own intellect, technology, and team of willing sycophants will never make up for the fact that Clark is a better person than he is.
Earlier, I said that the story sends a slightly mixed message for a story about immigrants, since it’s all about Clark rejecting his “native” culture and fully assimilating into his new one. I don’t think so anymore, mostly because his “native” culture is American from Earth. His home planet is Earth because it’s the only one he’s ever known. He’d spent much of his life thinking of himself as an alien sent to protect the people of this planet and always set apart from them, to the point of having a remote fortress of solitude filled with alien stuff.
That’s depressingly relevant now, with all of the bullshit attempts to undermine birthright citizenship, or the rights of longtime residents who don’t happen to be citizens. This is their home, they are American, many of them have only ever known America. It’s just plain bigotry barely disguised as immigration policy.
But it’s also extremely relevant to this incarnation of the character of Superman. Everything in this movie from the overall vibe to the costume is designed to keep the character personable, relatable, human, and inspirational instead of being an all-powerful alien who stands apart from us and over us. So that we go away thinking that even if we can’t fly, we can still practice radical kindness.
A lot of people, including me, were happy that this version didn’t include Superman’s origin story. Mostly for storytelling reasons: this is one of the most well-known characters in global pop culture, and almost everyone knows at least the high-level beats of his origin story. Unless you’re making the Krypton stuff a crucial part of the story, or you’re bringing a radical new interpretation of it (like spaceships shaped like dildos), then including it is superfluous.
I’m not super-familiar with the full history of the character, but as I understand it, in the early years, he was more like a human with super powers. The alien stuff was just to be an explanation for why he had powers.2I do know enough about the history to know that it was deliberately intended to be about a hero who was also an immigrant, but his being an alien was an extremely abstract idea for a very long time. Krypton didn’t become a truly alien “culture,” instead of “a planet where other very white people lived,” until later. Over time, there was more and more focus on the alien stuff, mostly because there was more potential for interesting storytelling (like what if a culture had spaceships shaped like dildos?) than there would be in mundane settings like a midwestern farm.
It’s interesting that things are almost completely reversed in the 21st century: decades of urbanism and science fiction stories make it seem like a midwestern farm is more exotic and alien than a city, even a city as cool and futuristic as Cleveland.
Anyway, what I believe started as just a story flourish has expanded over the years to be treated as a central component of the character himself: the question of nature vs nurture, how much of what makes Superman a hero is the result of his upbringing vs the result of his super powers, what would happen if an alien with a similar power set had grown up in a different culture, how Superman reacts to limits to his powers and the idea that there are things that even he can’t do (like reverse Lois Lane getting killed in an earthquake).
Ultimately, I think that the newest version of Superman actually is an origin story, because it’s the origin of everything about the character that matters3Except for the beginnings of the romance between Clark and Lois, which I’d like to have seen play out. Everything before now has been prologue, and this is the story of how Superman became the hero he is: someone with super powers and a fortress full of alien technology, but who’s still fundamentally human, who inspires us to be better humans.
Leave a Reply