With Earth under attack from a powerful alien race, Lois Lane is hurtling towards the planet in a space pod that seems doomed to crash and burn. Kal-El, soon to be dubbed “Superman,” is on a space ship calmly looking into the eyes of a spectre of his late father Jor-El. In a tone that could soothe a screaming infant, Jor-El tells his son, “You can save her, Kal. You can save all of them.”
With that, the caped saviour moves transcendently into space, above our world, his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Then he disappears faster than a speeding bullet to save Lois.
Superman has long been depicted as a neo-Christ, as the filmmakers remind us again and again in Man of Steel. In a review on gq.com, Tom Carson wrote, “If the folks who wrote taglines for popcorn movies had more nerve, this one’s would be, ‘My kingdom is of this Earth.’ ”
Even those unfamiliar with the comic books, television series and movies are probably familiar with the backstory. Kal-El is sent to Earth from the dying planet of Krypton by his father and is raised by a simple and profoundly moral Kansas couple affectionately called Ma and Pa Kent. He struggles with his alien identity throughout his upbringing and is forced to confront/embrace it when he reaches maturity.
In this film, that confrontation culminates rather violently — director Snyder’s style — in a face-off between Kal-El and the few survivors from his home planet. But this is not a simple tale of good and evil where Superman so clearly falls on the side of good. The story is much more attuned to our day and age. It’s more nuanced and the morality is more complicated. That complexity stems from a very simple choice Kal-El must make: save the humans or save his own race.
Sr. Marie-Paul Curly of Toronto has been a devotee of the on-screen incarnation of Superman through its many iterations since the 1970s. She says it’s one thing to lay down your life for another, but another thing to be alone forever. In this case, doing the right thing involves both. Even in making the right choice there is no good way to fulfill that choice — only ways that are less bad. Superman has always been a product of the world he is saving but that world, and its problems, have evolved. So too has the hero.
Still, Travis Smith, a political philosophy professor at Montreal’s Concordia University and comic book collector of 30 years, points out that core elements of Superman’s character have stayed the same. He says Superman has always represented a reasonable hope, an enlightened optimism that righteousness will triumph if only others could live up to his example.
“It’s not that might makes right,” he says. “It’s that right makes might.”
Smith suggests that Superman empowers us to save us from ourselves through righteous action. We hear it in the haunting words of Jor-El: “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun…”
This journey — this triumph — is fraught with pain and confusion. Kal-El’s humanity does not go away when he puts on his cape and therefore his moral code is not the immovable force that his physical person is. In early on-screen versions of Superman, it was. It was easy for those versions of Superman to do the right thing because the right course of action was always clear.
In Man of Steel questions of loyalty incinerate that innocence and muddy that clear-sightedness. The struggle makes him human. He came to uplift us but first we must drag him down.
In that, it is similar to our Messiah 2,000 years ago, even if it is a very different world.
(Bronca is a freelance writer in Vaughan, Ont.)