Superman Returns


There is another interesting post to be made on the pop-mythology in movies like this, and the fact that I feel a bit chagrined that stories such as Atlas, Prometheus, and even the Gospels are mined to lend this story a feeling of significance and unearned pathos. It's not the echoing and repetition of mythology I find annoying, just the implicit notion that a story like this can only have meaning if it makes its allusions as broad and obvious as possible, which is to say as an allegory. Which is also to say these modern comic book films lack any real purpose of their own, any real conviction in their own stories or characters. Superman doesn't need Jesus to be a moving or interesting story. And frankly, the constant recourse to classical texts that that the audience doesn't know anyway (and has literally explained to them in the film) merely serves to point out the poverty of the crap we're being spoonfed by the movies these days. Some people may find it refreshing that pop-art condescends to inform and make relevant the founding myths of Western culture, but for me it simply reveals how bereft we really are of any meaning our art anymore. If can't find the heroic around us, here and now, Jesus and Prometheus lose their power to truly mean something (sorry for the vagueness, but I'm rushing here) because they are detached from real experience. The crucifixion is merely bloody entertainment if you don't know what suffering means. It's all a hall of mirrors leading back to our continual modern self-regard, shedding the last bit of light left, as it continues to grow darker all around us.

But I digress! All I really wanted to say: Never did I think I would miss Christopher Reeves and Margot Kidder so much. Reeves knew how to play Clarke Kent in a way that emphasizes his utter dorkiness, so much so that the contrast, within himself, that Superman represents has a rare sort of pathos that this new film misses all together. Who is Clarke Kent this time? Just a hunk in glasses. What a shame.