What follows is a collection of thoughts, some erudite and many incidental, that amount to a review of Superman Returns (2006, Bryan Singer). I suppose that it contains spoilers, so beware if that sort of thing bothers you - however, don’t let that deter you, because the movie (for better or worse, depending upon your viewpoint) is predictable down to every particular.
Superman (Brandon Routh) has inexplicably gone on a five year hiatus, during which time he tried to locate the remains of his homeworld of Krypton. Much has changed in the mean time - the world has moved on from its dependence on Superman, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has managed to escape two consecutive life-sentences because of our caped friend’s failure to appear at a court date, and starlet Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has seemingly kicked her Man of Steel habit and instead settled/had a kid with Richard White (James Marsden). Acting on previous experience, Luthor invades Superman’s fortress of solitude and “hacks” his memory-database (which contains the knowledge bequeathed by his long-gone father). Luthor intends to harness the vast energy potentials of some of the framework’s crystals in order to create a giant landmass that will simultaneously destroy much of what currently exists of North America, but will also create a new continent that he will control with his newfound, alien technology. The kicker: his grand conception for this land mass is virtually Superman-proof, as its raw material is laced with shards of Kryptonite. The challenges are vast - our hero must stop Luthor’s schemes, maintain his Clark Kent identity, reclaim his love for Lois, protect Metropolis, and (proceed with caution) come to terms with the fact that Lois’ son is probably his as well.
Superman Returns represents two kinds of extremes that play out like Hollywood writ large. The artisans of mainstream American cinema have long maintained a standard of craftmanship that shows a total and utter mastery of a certain set of conventions. Singer shows the audience that is both aware of this tradition and slightly above it, as his stylistic toolkit far exceeds the most conventional fare. A totally controlled camera (aided, one must cede, buy the best digital manipulation money can buy, as well as some of the best cinematographers) means absolute precision. Moreover, Superman Returns is itself a kind of evolution of the superhero (sub)genre, representing a stage wherein all of the major concerns of the cycle play-out to the highest dramatic tension. The macrocosmic concern is with redeeming the world, in some way (as many big press critics have pointed out) that makes this film seem especially Christ-like and particularly Christian. Our superhero, equal parts id, ego and super ego, must save the world from wide environmental devastation, as only he can. To the film’s credit, it does pit Superman against worthy concerns. He does not actually fight anyone, in the way that Blade and Batman progresses through destruction - rather, his concern is purely in preserving order through conservation. The words resonate in two registers. On the one hand, Superman’s cause is progressive, seeking to use peace and cooperation for environmental causes, or toward the eventual goal of bringing equally attainable happiness to all. On the other, his (especially, even as pitted against the trajectories of other superhero genre work) is a deeply conservative mission. All of Superman’s actions are corrective in nature, in an attempt to preserve a kind of order that is presumed superior to any aberration. His preterism harkens back to the rediscovery of the primal/American city upon a hill, where a lone patriarchal savor can benevolently preside.
This psychoanalytical trajectory demands attention. The quote at the top of this article, spoken at the beginning of the film and later revisited, poses a central concern to both the Oedipal cycle and to Christianity as a whole. Patriarchy works through friendly father types, whose absolute rule must occasionally be challenged and superseded by sons. In Christianity, the transcendent personification of God on Earth (Jesus) corrects and conquers the grim defeatism of the grumpy Old Testament God of order. In Oedipus, we see a model that maintains the place of the female in the male’s quest (Superman Returns illustrates this very well in our virgin/whore/mother/lover Lois Lane) but at the same time provides the stage for the conflict of one absolute ruling personality overcoming another.
Superman Returns, explicitly in the narrative and as implicit sub-text throughout, maintains that these sorts of single figures of control and order are necessary for the continued preservation of the world. Our brief vision of the world without superheroes, shown through a pastiche of supposedly harrowing nightly news events, is supposed to convince the viewer that five years is far too long to go without a hero. In its cyclical insistence on father/son trajectories of rule, the rise and fall of order over chaos, the film takes a seemingly strong Right-wing stance.
This brings me to conflicting part about reading or thinking about this movie. Leaving modern day political affiliations aside, it begs a bigger question, namely “Why does our culture keep telling these stories?” “Should it?” “Are there better, more considered or less didactic variants that could do the same job?” The current cycle of superhero movies, now nearly 7 years strong, operates on a weird logic. To start, a little history lesson. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hollywood had a renaissance of sorts, wherein a generation of young, independently-minded directors and writers began making films unlike the nation had ever seen. For a variety of personal, financial, and political reasons, this practice ended in the late 1970s, during the era of Carter’s struggles and am ideological reshuffling throughout the nation. In its wake was the age of Reagan (a time that uses his name as a figurehead, but which more realistically lasts from 1978 until 1990 or so). Here, the nation took a decidedly conservative turn, and as numerous scholars have pointed out, so did the movies. With Rambo in the mainstream and Deckard in the margin, the stage was set for blunt movies that simply stated the need for jingoism, war-mongering, and U.S. superiority, rather than allegorizing its alternatives. Feminism and alien ways of thinking are the enemy, and the goal is a world in the spirit of the 1950s in the clothing of the 1980s. In the 1990s, American film split among different lines, as “Indy” work, the nihilism of Generation X and a new blockbuster mentality slowly emerged. Without getting too attached to the cliches, the events of September 11, 2001 caused yet another stir, at which point Hollywood took another decidedly conservative turn and strangely revisited its previous station, twenty years later. Throughout, American film had reshuffled, rediscovered and reinvented older genres (evidenced in the boom of the remake, or in the sudden resurgence of [say] the superhero subgenre) while supposedly maintaining a standard of innovation (ha).
Spiderman, The Punisher, Batman Begins, Hell Boy, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and on. Why does our society keep telling itself the same stories (with minor, cosmetic differences)? My notion is that it is because it is the easy thing to do, the safe thing to do, and in the money-making business, the surest thing to do. I do, however, feel that this sort of endless repetition, or blatant narrative complacency, will eventually take its toll. One of the great legacies of the theoretical practice of Structuralism was to show that the practice of storytelling can be surprisingly predictable, falling into one of but a few predetermined and well-known formulae. Will mainstream (and surely the public deserves better, or at least the option – though monopolies in distribution, advertising, and popular conceptions of the movies – of choice) film ever take up the challenge of proving them wrong?
But what of all this? Superman Returns is a superhero yarn par excellence, for me taking the cycle to its grandest possible scale, literally the point of no return. Its suspense is surprising given Luthor’s plan (a kind of inverse Manifest Destiny, as if the synthesizing of new land is a final frontier) and the requisite musical smaltz, obligatory melodrama, and languid pace. So many things were at stake and saved this time around, the spectacle reaching such heights as to render anything more (even under the careful-est adherence to photo-realism and naturalism in presentation) as too absurd. However, its celebration of a very narrow, very dangerous kind of thinking tells me that the superhero film needs to either reformulate itself to the tune of some of the more progressive comic books (mine the margins and the underground!) or perish. We have too many instances of the Superman story, some of which are very nearly biologically programmed within us, to waste our lives never thinking beyond its limited horizons.
Leave a Reply