Superman has been on my mind a lot lately. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens on Friday and with it a ill, cold wind seems to blow through the online super-hero fandom. I got in to comic book podcasts and started mingling with a certain circle of fans online post-Man of Steel, but it seemed to be this watershed moment: a super hero film that was not critically panned or a box office flop that still somehow seemed to ignite an on-line civil war over how it portrayed our boy in blue. The advent of its sequel feels like an escalation in the schism, ripping the band-aid of a still sore scab that we never stopped picking.
I admit to being very conflicted about Man of Steel and even Superman in general. I liked the film very much. I understand the opinions and positions of its detractors. Kevin Costner's Pa Kent is a much more dour, cynical, tough-love Pa Kent then the heartwarming figure portrayed by Gerald Ford and takes an even harder line then Smallville's John Schneider. Its easy to condemn him as a cold, mean figure. But I think of my son. And while I would be proud if he did something that heroically saved the life of school bus full of kids, if you told me to pick his well-being or theirs, I'd choose his every time. So I get Pa Kent's motivation as portrayed here. Yes, there was a lot of desctruction, but Superman wasn't passive in Man of Steel, he was overwhelmed. Superman couldn't save everyone, and that is one of his classic themes. Also, I cop to it, I asked for the destruction of Metropolis. Not in a literal sense. But ever sense the second Matrix film and seeing Neo and Mr. Smith fight in a deserted cityscape, knocking each other on and off of buildings, I thought to myself, this is the scale a Superman movie should have now. Superman and <insert villain> punching each other through buildings. So I can't complain when Man of Steel delivers a Superman movie with a lot of collateral damage to convey the power of the combatants. The only real problem is breaking Zod's neck.
That scene has become to Superman what the Death of Gwen Stacey was to Spider-Man comics. It's uncomfortable to observe. Its unsettling. It feels wrong. Not from a perspective of morality and motivation. Not from a perspective of character and story. But because suddenly I'm in a Superman movie I can't let my six year-old see. Objectively there is nothing wrong with that. Based on the rating, I should expect that odds are that he shouldn't be allowed to see it. If I want my son, Clark, to experience Superman, I have it in 100 different ways and formats.
So prompted by him over all the Batman v Superman coverage, we watched Superman: The Motion Picture. We split it over two nights because my son is six and with soccer practices he only had about an hour a night for TV: night one was Beginning through his first night out as Superman. Night two started with the interview with Lois through the end. My son and daughter, Alexandria, both loved it, and I enjoyed it as much for the movie sake as their enjoyment. However I noticed a few things that I didn't before or they just never registered. There were a view moments that made me sit up and take more notice:
- "How many 'p's in rapist"
- "Is that how you get you're sick thrills? Planning the deaths of thousands of people? No....causing the deaths of thousands of people."
My son asked me what rapist meant, which I wasn't expecting to have as a topic of conversation that night. And Luthor's "silly" real estate scam was going to kill hundreds of thousands. And Superman, presumably didn't save everyone. I mean we know he didn't initially save Lois and Jimmy, but were they really the only two he didn't save the first time? I don't say these things to literally compare the two movies or to build one up by tearing the other one down, but it was a literal reminder that times change, and we view things with rose-colored glasses. Superman the Motion Picture is not as mature and adult as Man of Steel, but it was moreso than I remembered, though not outside of what I was comfortable with my kids seeing.
The biggest things that I got from this was that I really want Batman v Superman to be good and want it to be on the safe enough side of PG-13 that I can take my kids and I want these things because ultimately I want to have with Superman the experience I've had with my kids in the theater with Star Wars and the Avengers which is a hell of a surprise to me. If you asked whose side are you on, my friends would all guess Batman. Because I've been a Batman guy since 1982. I swore my allegiance to him in a tearful fit when Superman gave up his powers for a stupid girl, and how could he do that when the Phantom Zone villains were loose. But I'm on Superman's side. Not in the way the marketing machine means it. I mean its a stupid and pointless question. We all know everyone will team-up against the bad guys and get along by the end of the movie. I'm on Superman's side, because I feel like he needs this. He needs to break big again like he did in 1978. He needs to inspire again. I want this to be HIS movie, HIS moment, because seeing it through my son's eyes I've realized how much I care about Superman as a character and a concept. He's the first and the best for a reason. We just forget sometime, but in the end, regardless of why we grow out of or distance ourselves from it, we all come back to Superman.
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