It's a Bird, It's a Plane. .

It's a Bird, It's a Plane. . .

I was excited when CM and I agreedto we review Zack Snyder's Man of Steel movie about Superman. I have been a huge fan of Superman for as long as I can remember. I was pretty young when I sat down with my older brother to watch the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie, and somehow I remained un-jaded enough to keep a place for Ol’ Blue in my heart even as the dimly gothic Dark Knight Trilogy played right into my teen angst. I have always enjoyed the juxtaposition of simplicity and convolution in Clark Kent's story. On one hand, he is a flying guy with super strength, but on the other hand, there are about seven different types of kryptonite that could affect this guy's powers. Superman has been around for a little over seventy-five years, and he has appeared in so many different mediums that he is not always an exact replica of the Superman who appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938.

Man of Steel is 143 minutes of joyless entertainment. It's an action movie about an alien named Kal-El, who was sent to Earth as his planet was destroyed. He ended up being raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent, but he doesn't become the mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet that he does in the comics. At least not immediately. No, this Clark Kent was a gritty loner. He didn't write for the Daily Planet, he worked on a boat. The next time you see Kal-El after liftoff, he’s all grown up and toiling on a fishing boat off the northwest Canadian coast, a filmic ellipsis that abruptly spans decades. Soon enough he’s also shirtless and holding back a tower wobbling on a burning oil platform. And then, like Hercules who rises from his funeral pyre — having cast off his mortal body and assumed his godly form — Superman, aka Clark Kent, is engulfed in flames. It’s a nifty, startling image, even if it transforms HenryCavill, the British actor portraying Clark, into barbecue beefcake. Zack Snyder, perhaps intuiting how fast this image could slip away from him, cuts his way out of there fast.

In other forms of media, kryptonite has always been a factor for Clark. In Smallville, the WB television show that acted as a prequel to Clark Kent becoming Superman, kryptonite was so prevalent that the show actually invented another form, Black Kryptonite.It splits the Kryptonian under its affects into two separate beings; a good side and an evil side. But the green phosphorescent kind is the most dangerous for Superman. Coming into proximity of even the smallest amountinducesacutemuscle weakness, contact causes paralysis, and extended exposure results in death.Fundamentally, Kryptonite ismerely a glowing greenstone, but it’s a real problem for Superman. His enemies have used it against himmany times, but none more so than Lex Luthor. In the original 1978 film, Luthor uses kryptonite to immobilize Supermanso he can carry out his plan to sink half of California into the ocean by firing missiles into the San Andreas fault line. Superman is utterly helpless, and the plan only fails because Luthor’s girlfriend mutinies and removes the Kryptonite from the vicinity.Superman then stops the missiles and prevents a catastrophe. But this is only one in many instances where Luther uses kryptonite against Superman in the original films. In fact, hurling kryptonite at Superman is the M.O. of Lex Luther—that along with scheming and kidnapping Lois Lane. It’s a graceless way to fight that quickly becomes mundane, but how else could an average man conduct battle with aninterstellar alienwho is analogized with gods?

There is no kryptonite or Lex Luthor in Man of Steel, however, Clark has a more basic weakness. It is no longer an element that changes colors and affects him in all different ways. No, Clark's weakness is his compassion for people.It’s an odd weakness for the world’s most powerful man to have. An unethical man would surely use powers like Superman’s for less altruistic purposes, but even a law abiding man might veer towards egotism if he could destroy buildings with a single punch. But Superman is incorruptible. In one scene Clarkcomes to the aid of a female coworker who is being sexually harassed by ahandsy trucker. The man becomes angry and shoves Clark, but to no avail. Clark doesn’t budge. He is irritated and itching to retaliate, but exercises restraint, despite possessing the ability to annihilate the man in an instant. It’s an interesting scene that helps us see Superman’s deep capacity for benevolence, but not quite like the scene below:

Man of Steel spends a great deal of time focusing on the development of Clark’s morals from childhood, and in this it succeeds like no Superman film before. Through a series of interjectory flashbacks we learn of Clark’s adoptive father Jonathan, who died before the events of the film. And as the scenes conflate, they form their own narrative of the past. We see the important role Jonathan’s mentorship had in shaping Clark’s character. In one scene, Jonathan stresses to Clark that despite his extraterrestrial birth, he’s on earth for a reason. The film employs areligious subtext to accentuate the miracle of Clark being on earth, and will either thrill the evangelicals, cause the agnostics to roll their eyes, or both. The religious dialogue can come across as being overly sentimental, but it is an apt device to describe the Christ like qualities of Superman character.

So, its compassion, not Kryptonite, that Superman’s weakness in Man of Steel, and it’s a welcome change that supports the serious tone of the film. In the 1978 version, seeing a man strong enough to lift helicopters by the tail rotor falter at the sight of a small green stone was vaguely comical, but here, seeing a man whose love of humanity becomes his greatest weakness is intriguing. The need to save people is in his marrow. During one of the fight scenes, an antagonist named Faora, another surviving member of the lost Kryptonian race, tells Superman that his compassion for humanity makes him weak, and that she possessed an evolutionary advantage over him because she had no such compassion. It’s anidea that warrants thought, or at least more thought than seeing Supermanfall over from the effects of Kryptonite.

One of the best features that Man of Steel does differently than many other forms of Superman media is the relationship between Lois and Clark. There is definitely a lack of the common love/hate relationship that Lois and Clark usually have. She is in love with Superman, not normally impressed by Clark Kent, but in Man of Steel, Lois kisses Clark. She knows from the beginning that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, which is actually more realistic than any of the other movies. Just because a guy takes off his glasses, it doesn't really make him look all the different, right?

And Superman will always come to the rescue of Lois Lane. It’s a magnetic relationship that transcends the myriad iterations of Superman media. Aniconic scenario that finds its way into nearly every film could be summarized as such: Lois Lane isfreefalling through the air, plummeting towards her dead, then the camera cuts to Superman flying towards her at Mach speed, then we see Lois again falling—dying, and then Superman—flying, and then just in the nick of time he reaches her and saves her from a horrific death. It makes for a fantastic moment to showcase Superman’s chivalry and get female, and male, viewers to swooning with delight. It makes for great movie magic, but it’s also another display of Superman’sweakness.

Man of Steel has a completely different tone than any other Superman movie or television show that either of us has ever seen. Clark doesn't have to worry about the effects of kryptonite anymore, and he doesn't have to hide who he is from his love interest. In the end though, Superman is still the same superhero that we all know. He is still the same selfless, compassionate guy from Krypton that is willing to do anything to save Earth.

At its core, it’s a film that takes itself seriously. It doesn’t wish to be a child friendly comic book adaptation, it aspires to something greater. It wants us to ponder what it means tobe human, not just physically but emotionally. It wants us to questions if the things we truly love could be our greatest weaknesses. If Lois Lane can be Superman’s Kryptonite, maybe our loved ones, in some way, could be like arsenic to us.Perhaps Tyshera’s love of super heroes and my love of novel characters who are borderline psychoticscould somehow lead to our undoing. Man of Steel is certainly a departure from what we’ve seen of Superman in the past, but it also takes us down many new avenues.