...And So He Sent To Us His Only Son, Kal-El

I saw Superman Returns this evening. I don't have a review of the film "propper," and I'm going to try to avoid any "spoilers" for those who want to see it, but there are a few thoughts I'd like to share on the message I took from the narrative.

First of all, I must say I loved the original Superman the Movie, and Superman II kicked so much ass as well. These two films had more affect on me and my development than any others I have ever seen. For me, as films, they were right up there with Star Wars while I was growing up, but from a point of philosophy, the Superman mythos has always remained in my mind.


For the 1978 film, the tagline read, "You will believe a man can fly!" I remember that line better than most anything else I learned in school. When I saw the movie for the first time, it lived up to its promotion. The lesson I learned many years later is that a child will believe almost anything you tell them, Superman, Santa Claus, and Jesus Christ, to name a few popular iconic myths. That's not to say that any of these myths took away from my childhood. I think an imagination must be fed. The more positive the message, the better. "But a man grows up and starts to see things differently..." as Jonathan Kent said in the first movie, and I did as well.

The story of Superman, as told in the films, is very derivative of Christianity, and the words of Jor-el make that very clear. Kal-El was sent by his father to live with adoptive parents to save the people of the Earth. Watch the first movie with a critical eye for these details and one can pick them out every few minutes. The message of the importance of "Good" is very strong in the films, and this new adaptation is no different.

I saw the movie with my friend, Chris, who said he thought it was too long, there was not enough of Lex Luthor, and that "putting kids in a movie just spoils it." Lois Lane now has a young child. The boy figures in the film very prominently, because to Superman, it is proof that Lois has moved on by leaps (tall buildings) and bounds with her life away from her old schoolgirl crush on the Man of Steel. In the very beginning of the film we see that Kal-El had just returned from a search of the universe, around the remains of Krypton specifically, where he had been searching for others like him. The feeling of the lonely hero is very strong in the character.

The theme I walked out with was as follows:

Superman and Lex Luthor are each searching for what they believe is the most important thing in life. For Lex that thing is property. For Superman that thing is family. The desires of Luthor, of course, are shown to be the wrong way of thinking, and so in the end he must have his wish with dire consequences.

When Superman sees that Lois has had a child, not only does he see that someone whom he loves has changed during the time he was away, but he sees that she has something that he can never have. She posesses a greater personal meaning in her life. In flashbacks of Jor-el in an early part of the movie, we realize that the only biological family that Kal-El ever had is long since dead. Superman is out of place being an alien, so he obviously must find a way of making those connections differently, right?

I cannot say I am overly thrilled with the constant repetition of the mantra "you gotta have children" told over and over to me by both contemporaries in my life and the media. Sure, we are animals, and animals must reproduce to allow the species to continue. Scientifically, this is the "meaning of life." However, I am not pleased with it being so bloody important to everyone. Every culture seems to be rife with it.

I don't know if I will ever want to have children. It isn't that I have a problem with them (although I have a problem with most, and especially their parents), but I cannot see the good in creating a life which must deal with the condition humans have left Earth in so far, and I am still having a difficult enough time dealing with the ultimate end of my own life, let alone trying to explain to a kid why life is so important. I would have to create an illusion of greater meaning, despite what appears to be the inherant pointlessness of it all. But every tired-eyed parent who has no focus on themselves due to the constant care and feeding of their progeny will still tell me, "It's a wonderful experience that you can't know until you know it." Wonderful.

Now I am caught between my my cynicism and what could be the only real "meaning" of life. I wanted Superman to save me from this conflict with a couple of hours of flash and boom, but instead he dragged me deeper into it. Yeah, thanks a whole hell of a lot for saving me Superman. You're on my list now.

As far as a review of the film, I would like to say that there was not enough of the villian, and too much time spent without any real action. A Superman film is, after all, an action movie by definition. However, it is likely I will take away something from this movie that is as important to me as the original films. Where the original movies were made for me as a child, this new film was made for me as an adult. And now not only do I believe a man can fly, but I see a man can also find connections in his life that bring deeper meaning. Although that is not nearly as catchy a tagline.