On Superman, Writers and Cynicism

Ok before we get started two things:  SPOILERS If you haven’t seen Man of Steel, don’t read this.  Go see it and then come back…  There are a number of movies mentioned here too, but those are older.  So in general read at your own risk.

Secondly this is a gripe towards WRITERS (and artists)!  If you are a viewer and enjoyed Man of Steel and all, more power to you.  Our job is to entertain you.  If you were, then fantastic.

Now… With that said.  I have some issues with Man of Steel that have sort of grown on me over time.  Admittedly when I saw the movie,  I actually really enjoyed it as a piece of entertainment.  Something about it sat wrong with me for a long while though.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I mean I was entertained.  The plot was solid.  The villain strong… What was it missing?

Then I realized what was missing…   Superman!

Now before I draw the weight of the internet upon me for me being  a curmudgeon let me break down my reasons for being upset… Because this is bigger than Superman.  This is about worldview and the role writers are playing in it.  Now I am just going to say it so we can get it out of the way…..  Spoiler…….

Supes kills Zod in the end to stop him from killing everyone.  Most of us know this already.  This is presented in such a way so that as a viewer we think that there was no other option for him.  And I’ve had many a conversation with fellow nerds and some agree with me and some don’t, but that was an awful decision by the writers.  Note I said decision…  I’ll get into that later.

Superman doesn’t kill people.  Ever.  Why?  Because he doesn’t.  It is an essential part of his character and when you take that away from him…  he stops being Superman and starts being… Something else.  He may look like Superman, but he isn’t.  It’s like saying the only thing that makes Superman, Superman, is the fact that he wears a red cape, is from Krypton and has special powers.  Everything else is fair game.  And sorry, but it isn’t.  He has a moral set of values and ideals and he lives by those. Just like your identity is wrapped up in everything you are and do.  They go together to form an identity.

Why does this matter?  Superman symbolizes something to you, me and everyone.  He’s better than us.  He always does the hard thing over what’s easy.  Killing Zod is easy.  Heck it’s justifiable.  But it’s not Superman.  By having Superman kill Zod, you  have now driven Superman down to a human level that none us can aspire towards.  Humans put themselves in harms way all the time.  And we kill all the time for justifiable reasons.  But what message is having this character who is supposed to be symbol of insurmountable goodness and the high road, sending to viewers and kids?  It’s certainly not, as Jar El says in the movie, “giving them an ideal to strive towards.”  There is no idealism to this Superman.  He’s not better than us.  He is us, only he can’t die as easy.  We’ve made the “better than”… ordinary and mediocre.  Because what makes Superman super isn’t that he has a cape, flies and has super powers… It’s him, his morals.  That he always does the right thing.  And you don’t have to sacrifice that to make him more relatable or modern.

This brings me to being upset at writers…  One of the biggest arguments against my point has been that Superman had to do that.  He had to kill Zod or more people would have died.  Yeah…  True.  If this were reality.  But it’s not.  No part of it is true and no matter how much you want it to be as viewers it isn’t.  It is an orchestrated message by the writer to take you into their world and convey their message.  They didn’t have to take the movie that direction.  And that’s my real rub with this. The message the writers  (Whom I respect immensely.  This argument isn’t about quality of craft.  All of them have made movies I love and I hold them as quality writers.) are conveying to us as viewers tears down the ideal of that character.  They intentionally wanted to change how we viewed him and remove that “better than” veneer from the character and my question is why?  Why send us this message that Superman “might be a loose cannon” (as Goyer one of the writers hinted at)?  I see this movie and I want to know what ideal humanity is supposed to strive towards.  What greater message am I supposed to take from it that every person should internalize?  I’m not sure.  It’s a morally ambiguous movie and one of the genre’s greatest characters is now just a brooding confused young man who does the same things we do and has less accountability.  That’s not a character I can aspire to.

The writers could have had that movie ended in any number of ways and maintained its modern flavor and tonality.  Case in point: The Dark Knight trilogy.  Chris Nolan has actually created a Batman that is a more morally centered and idealistic than Clark Kent…  That doesn’t make sense.  Is Batman broken?  Yes.  But does he break his one rule?  No.  Because he’s better than that.  It’s great example of how you can modernize a character without sacrificing the things that make them them.  Bruce Wayne isn’t different than the comics in the Dark Knight movies, but he lives in modern world with bigger issues.  His morality and sense of right and wrong though, propel him above the chaos.  He gave his city hope by being what they weren’t and wanted to inspire them to rise above themselves.  Superman did not.

Maybe that’s the direction the writer’s will take is a path of redemption and all of that stuff throughout the series, but instead it’s a very cynical ending in my mind.  Ending with the US government spying on him.

Which brings me to my last point…  Cynicism.  Artists get a great opportunity to convey powerful things and messages to our readers and watchers.  There’s a reason books and comics and movies and games are so popular.  Because we respond to stories.   We seem to have lost, though, the idea that you can show how awful the world is while telling them it doesn’t have to be this way.  We can do more and be more and everything doesn’t have to be so bleak.  Our world is harsh right now.  People don’t trust much anymore.  We don’t trust our leaders, our governments, our religions…   Writers and artists are just expressing that lose of faith, but what are they giving us to hope in?  What are you challenging?

Look, I don’t need your movie to know how bad things are.  Or how bad they can get.  I want your movie because I want to know that no matter how bad things are there is a  reason to believe it doesn’t have to be that way.  One of the most panned movies of this summer is After Earth.  I really enjoyed this movie, because it was hopeful.  Sure it was a bleak version of the future in some respects, but the characters and their story was one of redemption.  What saddens me is audiences seem to have forgotten how to believe.  And we keep telling them they don’t have to.  Or that they shouldn’t.

It makes me sad and I guess cynical at my own peers and I’m asking each of us… What are we doing?  What are we saying?  And why are we dragging the world down still in our art?

You know in the 70’s there was a rash of really bleak movies.  Most sci-fi was very dark and hopeless.  After the Vietnam war was over there was a lot of darkness in our culture and media.  It was a  dark time for people mentally.  Like today they didn’t trust much.   But then something happened…  Star Wars came along.  It infused our culture with optimism and hope and adventure.  It gave us one of the most memorable decades of cinema.  Arguably most of our greatest filmmakers would cite that as a pinnacle film for them.  I’m not being so naive to say that it was Star Wars that changed our culture mentally, but people were longing for it.

Man of Steel could have been that film.  He is that character.  That beacon of hope and optimism that we could have rallied behind.  You could have made that movie basically the same way across the board.  But that moment when he snaps Zod’s neck… He stopped being Superman.  He stopped being above us.

And millions and millions of people went to see it.  And love it. And have no problem with that.

And  that’s my problem.

Now… I’ve gotten it off my chest.