Why Superman Matters

I’ve heard it dozens of times:

DC Doesn’t Know What to do with Superman

Zack Snyder Just Doesn’t Get Superman

DC Doesn’t Know What to do with Superman

And, yes, two of those have the same title but, ironically, are not the same video. People say this sort of thing a lot. Like A LOT. To some extent, they’re right. I think writers and filmmakers have gotten Superman “wrong” quite frequently, but why is that? Is there a “right” way to write or represent Superman, or at least are there certain pratfalls one can avoid when adapting the character? Let’s talk about it, shall we?

Superman – Who Is He? Where Does He Come From?

Today is Superman day, but why? Well, as you probably know, Superman started as a newspaper comic strip before he became a comic book hero, and April 18, 1938 holds his first appearance in a comic book. The Superman we know and love today was gifted to the world, to us, today. So Happy Birthday, you Big Blue Boy Scout!

Superman began as the brainchild of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both of whom were second-generation immigrants. This is particularly vital to Superman’s enduring legacy, especially in relation to his creation towards the earlier part of the Twentieth Century. America was still finding its footing after the first World War when Siegel and Shuster were workshopping Superman, and the seismic waves of geopolitical shakeups were still reverberating. Superman embodied a universal acceptance of fundamental humanism: that all are important, and one’s chosen family should be just as dear as one’s given. Superman is emblematic of the delegation of communal love over nationalism – we’re one people regardless of how we look or where we’re from, and we owe it to one another to protect the weak and steward the strong toward a better future.

Superman is The Last Son of Krypton, though in the almost hundred years since his inception we’ve learned that’s resoundingly untrue. When it was true, however, its significance was to illustrate the fact that he has always been astoundingly alone. Zack Snyder tried to demonstrate that by making his Clark Kent more a David Banner character, roaming the world with his thumb out and occasionally skewering big rig trucks on telephone poles. The truth, however, is this:

Superman has never been alone. Like many children of adoptive parents from a very young age, Martha and Jonathan Kent were all Clark knew of parents, and it wasn’t until he was told of his lineage that he felt the absence of blood relations. Prior to that, and even much after, he was always loved. That is one of the things that the titular “they” seem to get “wrong” about Superman – that he’s conflicted by his Kryptonian birth in his feelings toward humanity. Fundamentally, Clark Kent and Superman are both profoundly human, in the same way that Mowgli is a wolf, Loki is an Asgardian, and Orion is a hero of New Genesis. 

What Do We Get “Wrong” About Superman?

Let’s be frank: Superman is a fictional creation. He’s not real, Frank. So how can one “get him wrong?” Well, to be blunt, you can’t. You can’t get him wrong… and don’t call me Blunt.

The first time I watched Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, I was aghast at Superman’s telekinesis used to rebuild the Great Wall of China. That sent me down a rabbit hole of weird powers research for days, and he’s had some doozies. In the films, alone, he also has the ability to redirect the Earth’s orbital rotation to turn back time (that is not how time or space work, by the way) and memory-erasing kisses. The implications of all three of these filmatic masterstrokes make Superman the most dangerous person on any planet, notwithstanding his flying, superstrength, heat vision, chill breath, Fortress that can duplicate him, or his cellophane S nets. 

Re-reading that last paragraph makes it seem like I had a stroke.

But that’s the stroke of genius that is fiction. Let Superman be Super. He went from leaping tall buildings in a single bound to flying, then to flying so fast he can reverse the Earth’s orbit! Let him juggle, play piano, rearrange the atomic state of lead into gold. Who cares? He’s Superman.

Zack Snyder made Superman morose, burdened by his Savior complex and dour in his responsibility to his adoptive home. To an extent, this is a true interpretation of the character. Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, but with a rate of Americans being shot every 4 ½ minutes each and every day, Superman has to be crushed under the weight of knowing he can’t save everyone. Man of Steel leaned into this with a stern Superman and muted color palette. It wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t bad.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder’s follow-up, furthered his messianic interpretation of the character but tripped up by making him vengeful and too focused on one antagonist: Batman. Superman has supersight, omniscience – he sees all of us. You know, like Santa Claus? To have him narrow his vision to one vigilante belies his universal obligations. Plus the movie was slow as molasses. Far from perfect, but still with some redemptive qualities.

Richard Donner brought Superman to the big screen with Christopher Reeve the year I was born; I was raised alongside Superman. He got the color right, the sparkle of hope that Superman represents in even the darkest night. Reeve’s face was the ideal combination of nurture and severity; he was effortlessly comforting to those who needed comfort and stern to those who deservedly felt threatened. His exploits on screen offered diminishing returns and we don’t talk about Superman IV here because we’re all about positivity and there is positively nothing complimentary to say about that film.

Superman Returns gets a bad rap, and not all of it unwarranted. Brandon Routh was a fine Superman, and I’m pleased to see his career has continued in some capacity because he’s a charming actor with a lot to offer. I think after Gunn’s Superman comes out later this year, a lot of critics and pundits will be revisiting Routh’s performance and look and giving him the praise he’s due, even if Bryan Singer’s vision wasn’t quite on the nose.

To get Superman “right” isn’t to adhere to some sacred bible of powersets or skin pigmentation or romantic inclinations – it’s to understand the character within. Who is Superman, or, more importantly, who is Superman to you, personally?

Who Got Superman Right?

So where do we go for adaptations of Superman that are done “right”? The answer is simple: comics and animation. Superman is so beyond us in every way – he’s super, man. Making him flesh is pulling the curtain; he must remain intangible. The Bruce Timm work of the late 90s is a great start – The Adventures of Superman and the paired Justice League series. For my money, there are a few perfect animated Superman adventures for people who think the character is impossible to adapt correctly.

The first is the 2011 DCAU film All-Star Superman. This film depicts a Superman at the end of his career, and he is the measured, altruistic Superman that one imagines he should be after so many adventures. He is contributing to science, defending the weak, solving ancient riddles, displaying vulnerability in opening himself to love, and empowering his foes to redeem themselves. He’s nearly perfect, which many of his critics have lobbed as his biggest detraction – a perfect hero is a boring hero. This film, based on Grant Morrison’s run, disproves that complaint. The Big Blue Boy Scout isn’t boring – he’s just more than we can ever hope to be. People aren’t intimidated by Superman because of his power; they’re intimidated by his model of humanity to which they are unable to aspire. Take away his powers and you’re still left with a human of incalculable love and compassion. We feel weak in Superman’s shadow, not because he’s more powerful than us, but because he is better than us.

The next best depiction is 2020’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow, written by the fiercely talented Tim Sheridan. This Superman is at the beginning of his career, ironically, but the magic of this story is its adherence to the immigrant story; the “otherness” of being Superman. Clark learns he is an alien, a being not of this world, and it upends his ideas of community and acceptance. The appearance of Lobo and the Martian Manhunter send the world in a panic, and the ensuing battles create the Parasite out of an ordinary man. As the Parasite grows larger with power and hunger, it becomes something of a Kaiju, and the natural reaction of the people of Metropolis is fear and hatred. When Superman realizes that he’s been “passing” with ease, his internal narrative shifts, and he leans into his differences to illustrate to the people that homogeny is a false safety, and we need to accept those who are different and celebrate our own “otherness” to realize the dream of community. It’s an achingly beautiful story of universal love and humanity with tights and monsters and explosions, and it’s what Superman teaches us about ourselves that illustrates why he matters.

Finally, the current animated series My Adventures with Superman, streaming on Adult Swim and Max, featuring Jack Quaid as the voice of Supes. Quaid’s tenor timbre gives Superman an endearing, natural everyman quality. The storyline reveals Krypton to be a warrior race, sending young Clark on an emotional journey to discover who he believes himself to be and why he feels compelled to rescue others. Enough pundits and so-called philanthropists exclaim that he’s parading his powers as a demonstration of superiority that he begins to believe it, himself. The true core of the show is his friendship with Jimmy and Lois, who tether him to his farmboy roots and help him to see the human within the alien. Shifts in mythology be damned – this the best Superman show out there!

Why Superman Matters

Superman has always been the story of an immigrant who loves his home and calls everyone his family. That’s the crux of Red Son – even nationalized, Superman can’t help but be altruistic. Kal-El’s exceptional vision allows him to see that the lines that separate us are a falsehood held aloft by manufactured ignorance. There is no “them,” only us. We accept Superman because he accepts us; in doing so, he’s teaching us how to be super in our own right. To accept one another and use the gifts we’ve been individually given to benefit the whole. Earth’s protector isn’t obligated by contract or decree – he loves us because he can. We can love each other, just because we can.

James Gunn seems to get this, I hope. The video released today in celebration of Superman Day features Gunn’s insights on Superman, saying “I loved the purity of Superman. This character is noble. He is beautiful. Superman is a character who is good.” While Siegel and Shuster created Superman to be fantastic, sensational, and captivating, he has become so much more. We know the film will feature thrilling action sequences because that’s what gets butts in seats (are you listening, Bryan Singer?), but I hope to see James Gunn’s Superman be that beacon of hope that Zack Snyder told us he was. Snyder, unfortunately, missed the “show, don’t tell” part of cinema in that iteration, but he’s not wrong: Superman does mean Hope.

I hope we’ll see that this July.

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