Ridiculous Opinions #296
I just finished watching Superman for a second time tonight. I know people are used to hearing me rant about everything under the sun when it comes to films, and if I really wanted to, I could do the same thing about this movie. I walked out of Superman this summer pretty convinced that I didn’t like it. The story is flawed. The characters are paper thin. There’s too much CGI. And, of course, it’s a James Gunn film, and I’ve never been a fan of his.
But let’s not go that route today, shall we? Let us praise something for once in this newsletter.
I liked Superman.
For a good, long while, I have ranted about super-hero movies. They were too deadly serious. They tried to make them all “realistic”. Remember Christopher Nolan’s Batman films? Nolan, bless his little heart, tried his best to bring Batman into the “real” world, justifying every single thing that he did. (Bruce Wayne is a weapons dealer; his costume is armor; Joker is a troubled soul). At the time, I liked it and many viewers thought it was quite innovative. But I don’t think those films have aged well. I tried to watch Batman Begins again a couple of years ago and couldn’t make it through the whole thing. I felt this way because of the very things that I liked when I first watched it. I liked that the Batmobile was a giant tank. I liked that Batman could actually get hurt. I liked that the Joker was a psychopath. But now that I’m older, I don’t like those things much anymore.
It’s the same with Marvel. The Marvel films have been scattershot for a long time now, occasionally hitting the high mark of divorcing us from our current reality and taking us deep into a new universe, but more often than not, delving into the slog of what it’s like to be a super-hero, warts and all. I have long said, “I don’t need to see how Doctor Strange became Doctor Strange, I just want to see him doing cool things!”
And Marvel suffered from the old up-the-stakes mentality as well. (“It’s not New York in danger; now it’s Sokovia! It’s not Sokovia that’s in danger, now it’s Earth! It’s not just Earth in danger, now it’s the universe! It’s not just the universe in danger; now it’s existence!) Where do you go from there? You don’t go anywhere. You pull back from that point, something that Marvel has worked very hard to do and failed at every point.
There’s also the “shared universe” concept that Marvel brought to the fold. It was cool until it wasn’t. Somewhere along the way, it just became a slog. When even someone like me no longer cares enough about continuity to watch one of the nine billion boring tv shows that are connected to the MCU, then you’ve truly lost the plot.
I don’t want to see my heroes fretting about their awful lives. I just want to see them fight! I don’t want to see a realistic looking costume. Give me the colorful outfits! I don’t want you to bend over backwards to talk about this weird, cosmic, existence-ending plot! Just let me watch planets explode and buildings topple!
But here’s the thing: Superman had all of that. It had it in spades. What did Superman NOT have?
Cynicism.
When you ventured into the world of Superman, you were venturing into a world where a singular human being did the right thing because it was the right thing! It wasn’t due to self-interest. It wasn’t due to revenge. It wasn’t due to any past childhood trauma or because he felt different or because he was fighting against his dark destiny.
Superman does good because that’s what everyone’s supposed to do!
We need more of that in the world. And that’s why I liked the film.
Superman, as a movie, failed on a lot of fronts, but I’m not here to nitpick that. I’m here to talk about why I’m happy with what everyone involved with the production wanted to achieve. Does Superman have a shared universe? Sure. Do they explain it? Nope! Does Superman have childhood trauma? Nope. Does Superman have a dark destiny? Uh-uh. Is he seeking revenge? No. Is it due to self-interest? Nah. Superman just does good things. He lives in a colorful universe where not everything is explained. He lives an existence that is there solely for the good of humanity.
And in actuality, we live in a world where a great deal of humanity does not act the same way. The world in which we live today seems to be devoid of heroes; or at least the heroes that I grew up with. The Superman that I read in comics all those years ago was the exact same that was in the movie. His job was to protect people. His job was to do the right thing. And as I grew up, I read those adventures thinking that was the way it should be. Superman was the embodiment of good. He wasn’t conflicted. He never doubted himself. He was there to do what was right.
Eventually, that purity of storytelling was corrupted, both in the comics and the world at large. The comic book writer, Mark Waid, once said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If you’ve made a Superman movie that you couldn’t take an eight-year old kid to, then you’re doing it wrong.” I agree with this.
And that’s the thing when I look at a movie like Superman. What I saw on screen was someone that could be a hero to young kids all over the world. What I saw up there was someone with values; who protected the innocent; who fought for what was right, no matter the personal cost; who existed on a playing field without caring what other people thought or how they reacted; he simply did what was right.
And that’s why I liked the movie.
You might sit back and say, “What a corny load of crap, Randall! Your praise of Superman as some kind of moral paragon of good? That’s the stupidest thing that I’ve ever read!”
Maybe so.
But let’s look at the world in which we live at the moment. It seems readily apparent that the bad guys are winning. Whether it’s the U.S. government, the tyrants of Israel, or the cold calculation of what is happening with Russia, everywhere around us we can see the results of a world that has no one to look up to. There are plenty of good people out there, but what we need is a metaphorical call-to-arms in the world. We need to empathize with other human beings and to understand what that means, we need fictional characters that will wake us up to the reality of what it means to be a good person and to fight for the things that are right in the world.
I appreciate the concept of Superman more than anything else. I grew up with him. His values as a hero were instilled in me as a kid. He did what was right without cynicism. He was a good human being.
So before you cast aside this little essay and think me an idiot, ponder to yourself, Who are your fictional heroes? Who was your moral compass when you grew up and read stories? And How have you lived your life according to those ideals?
The more we can examine those extraordinarily simple questions, the more we’ll have to answer about ourselves and the future that lies ahead of us. We need more stories like Superman. Hopefully, this one is the first of many to come…
I suppose we all feel like Homer every once in a while. Now, more than ever.