I saw Man of Steel this past weekend and while I enjoyed much of it, some of it was troubling, and I’ve been pondering ever since. To be sure, taking up so much brain time with a cinematic version of a comic book seems absurd, but only until you realize how much this stuff means to us as a culture.
Superman is a 20th Century American Myth and it has, whether we like it or not, supplied a good deal of workaday philosophical grist for our collective mills. We keep revisiting it (and revising it and rebooting it and returning to it) for reasons that have nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with how we see—or would like to see—the world.
Disclaimer: I grew up watching George Reeves as Superman on tv. I didn’t collect the comics so much. Some, sure, but not like friends of mine who had stacks of them encompassing years, even decades. As a kid, I was certainly enamored of the idea of being super strong. (I was bullied, you bet I fantasized being able to fly, see through solid objects, and take a punch that might result in my attacker breaking his hand.) But as I grew older I just couldn’t relate to the guy from Krypton as much as I could with Batman. Superman was never top of the heap for me. Just so you know.
I very much liked the Christopher Reeve film. They hit that note perfect as far as I was concerned. And should have left well enough alone as the subsequent films just got worse and worse. (Superman Returns for me was an impressive-looking meh.) I liked Lois & Clark a lot. Not so much Superboy or Smallville. The substance of the myth only goes so far, then it has a tendency to lend itself—badly—to soap opera (is Lois ever going to get this guy in the sack? What about Lana? And Jimmy!), which even the estimable Lois & Clark fell into eventually.
But we’re talking about a 20th Century reboot of a Greek Myth—the god (or demigod) who comes to Earth, does amazing feats, and is wooed, sometimes seduced (or does the wooing, seducing, or, more commonly, just plain raping) by a mortal woman. Resulting in…
Well, the thing about the Greek gods is, every time they came down from Olympus to meddle about with the mortals they left a mess behind. They just didn’t know how to not break things.
I liked that Man of Steel went there. When the film had been out for a time, I remember people complaining about how violent is was. Well, yeah. It would be, wouldn’t it? Part of the implausibility of Superman is how tidily he fights crime. Here, in this instance, he has to mix it up with his own kind, and to be true to its pretensions it was going to get ugly.
Where the film failed for me, thematically, was that it insisted that no new mythology could be concocted from these unlikely elements. Christopher Nolan and company, who did a wonderful job with Batman, were clearly working toward dumping all the old stuff and coming up with a new approach, that is without changing the basic idea. Kal-el is an alien. He was sent here to avoid the fate of the rest of his people. He grows up to become the ultimate Hero. Obviously there are resonances to the Greeks and just about any other ancient pantheon you care to name.
Just as obviously, there’s no good reason to stick to the old template when trying to turn a fantasy construct into a piece of science fiction—which is what they tried to do.
Large doses of Factored Plausibility were injected into this film. The scene of young Clark in grade school, suddenly having his X-Ray Vision come on line and c0mpletely freaking out was superb. Yes, this would seem likely under these circumstances. And the talk with Jonathan in the aftermath of his saving the bus of kids from the river. This is not a Depression Era salt of the earth Jonathan Kent, but a man in the presence of something he can’t handle who is scared all the time.
And the whole backstory of Kryptonian exploration and outposts—it seems they were basing much of this on Imperial China, which was a civilization that at one time had a vast exploratory fleet and maybe even colonies and then decided not to bother with Outside and shut it all down. But of course, they left stuff all over the place. This is good, solid extrapolitive retooling. It made it all less Olympian and far more geopolitical. Good, very good.
But then there is the Christ Imagery.
You know what I’m talking about. Clark wandering the Earth, going out to the wildnerness, becoming Himself—for 33 years before coming out as an alien. And if you didn’t get it with that, then the shot of him leaving the Kryptonian ship, arms extended, a human crucifix…
And Jor-el as the ephemeral father from heaven.
The battle with Zod and the others is obviously a war with demons—or perhaps only with those who would not give up an absolute adherence to tradition, the ultimate evangelists, that have to be tossed out of the temple.
The problem is, it was incomplete and mongrel. They threw that stuff in there in order to play the audience, establish a mythic resonance with the familiar even as they were clearly trying to recast the myth into something more plausible in a science fiction context. They didn’t actually do anything with those little bits. And Jesus is really not the appropriate myth in the first place. Moses was always the grounding myth of Superman, and they actually missed the boat on this one by severing his connection to “his people.”
It’s mix-and-match mythology, done slickly and cynically—the image will mean something, but we don’t actually have to have it inform the story with anything. It’s just a hook.
And not a very satisfying one.
Part of the problem is that Superman is such an uncooperative idea with which to make good science fiction. They tried mightily in this one, but they kept coming up against the parts that make no real sense other than as fantasy—or myth. They tried for an upgrade but ended up with just a patch. So it is neither the old familiar Superman (which Christopher Reeve portrayed so well) or a brand new, fully reimagined Superman that might suit the 21st Century. This wouldn’t matter so much if not for the fact that Superman had been made and has always served to Mean Something. We have long since realized he could never be A Savior, not in the sense perhaps implied by Nolan et al. He’s one man, although incredibly gifted, and even he can’t be everywhere and do everything. So overtly tying him to Christ is a cheat. It’s also not what he was intended to represent. Ever.
At best, Superman represented the idea that limits are intended to be superseded.
That’s my take, anyway. What Man Of Steel was intended to mean, I’m not sure. Maybe the makers weren’t, either. But if they do another one, I would suggest trying to come up with new substance for new myths. The old ones don’t work so good anymore. If you’re going to upgrade something like this, leave the past behind. At least that part of it that no longer answers any real needs.
Either that, or leave it as a comic book and don’t change anything.
Great special effects, though. Cecil B. DeMille would be envious.
