Captain America: “The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little old-fashioned?”
Phil Coulson: “With everything that's happening and the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old-fashioned.”
Batman Begins came out in 2005 during the infancy of the superhero movie renaissance. It’s almost hard to remember that far back since we’ve had over 40+ superhero movies and way more superhero TV shows, games, and animations since then. But, back then, Batman Begins was a new ball game. A grounded, down-to-earth superhero movie that completely ditched the camp of the Schumacher 90’s movies and the 60’s/70’s Batman. The WB clearly expected it to do better initially but as time went on the movie exploded, the sequel The Dark Knight is arguably one of the best movies of all time, and Iron Man took notes from the grounded superhero trope and launched to major commercial success in 2008.
Juxtapose Batman Begins with Superman Returns back in 2006. Brandon Routh’s earnest attempt to revitalize the Superman movies from the ’70s. He looked the part for sure, even had the mannerisms and voice of Christopher Reeve down, and overall it’s not a bad movie. But, it was taking the opposite approach of Batman. It recast Christopher Reeve, erased Superman 3 and 4, and carried on the story in a modern setting (controversially and maybe inexplicably making Superman a sort of deadbeat dad?). Superman did not punch anyone, he defeated Lex Luthor pretty much the exact same way he did before, and the only really cool flex of his powers came in the opening airplane crash scene, the yacht rescue, and the finale where he lifted an island up. It led people to wonder if it was possible to modernize Superman. Can Superman be relevant like Batman?
The Superman Derenaissance
If you look up the “will-they, won’t-they” trope on Google you’ll find many articles outlining how TV shows die after characters who’ve been circling each other romantically finally get together. The chase, the unrequited love, and longing are more of a draw to audiences than the supposedly boring, perfect, “happily ever after” of the guy finally getting the girl. Superman is the embodiment of “happily ever after”. He’s the paragon of human virtue, wisdom, and strength. He captures Nietzche’s “the ubermensch” almost perfectly. And because of that virtue, it seems like again and again no one knows how to deal with him? Or they try and we get 2013’s Man of Steel (MoS).
Now let me say at the outset, I enjoyed MoS. Henry Cavill is such a good Superman, the soundtrack is still one of my favorites of all time, and the core story present in the movie is actually pretty good. But, it’s the execution of it that betrays the character and makes it one of the worst representations of Superman. Mainly because it tried to make Superman’s conflict the same one as Batman - the loss of a parent and the survivor guilt that comes from it.
The first time I started worrying about the movie while watching it was when Johnathan Kent suggests to teen Clark in a flashback that he should have considered letting kids drown to protect his identity. That was such a jarring scene. Clark’s dad is one of the few positive portrayals of fatherhood in modern storytelling and to see him portrayed cynically was upsetting. The problems got worse from there.
His dad believed so much in protecting Clark’s identity that he stopped him from rescuing him from a tornado in front of spectators. And while this is at least set up throughout the rest of the film, overall it makes little sense because it’s not like they set up people in the crowd who knew Clark? And how would they have known he rescued his dad since he’d move so fast not to be noticed?
Finally, Superman’s fight with Zod at the end of the movie is epic and a direct answer to those of us who wanted to see Supes fight. It was chaos, destructive, and just overwhelming. However, unlike the Smallville fight, Supes does very little to protect people. How much more impactful would that fight have been if Supes is doing everything he can to protect people and avoid destruction while fending off a supersoldier? That would have made the fight have even more stakes than it did and would have made us relate to Superman in an incredible way. It also might have taken away some of the controversy surrounding killing Zod to save that family. Probably not, but it could have helped.
This attempt to modernize Superman did not go well overall and Man of Steel became controversial in the fan community because while it gave us a lot of what we wanted in a Superman movie, it betrayed the character’s motivations, roots, and supporting characters to do it. I won’t even get into the subsequent portrayals of the character which further entrenched the problem, but DC Comics and the WB obviously know they haven’t handled the character well in his movie outings because he’s been on ice while a lot of other projects have moved on. So, DC Comics is taking a new approach to the character to try to modernize him - embracing one side of the modern culture war.
Stunning and Brave Supermen
A few weeks ago DC announced that the son of Superman, Jon Kent, would be coming out as bisexual in an upcoming comic. Jon is the current Superman in the comics so many outlets went with “Superman is Gay” to really pump up the ad revenue even though that’s not true. Surprise! This news met with the usual outrage cycle. Conservatives decried the *woke* takeover of comics while Liberals praised the move as a win for representation and the sort of varying lemming “stunning and brave” responses we usually get. But the intent of making Jon bi was clear - Superman needed to be updated and caught up with the times (see here for more on that). But isn’t that such a lazy way to do it? Does modernizing Superman simply mean retconning a straight character gay?
A week later, DC’s CCO announced that Superman’s motto, “Truth, Justice and the American Way” would be replaced with “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.”
Jim Lee went on to explain the decision here:
“will better reflect the global storylines that we are telling across DC and honor the character’s incredible legacy of over 80 years of building a better world. Superman has long been a symbol of hope who inspires people from around the world, and it is that optimism and hope that powers him forward with this new mission statement.”
So in the last 15 years of the Superman Derenaissance, we’ve gone from the loud, concussive MoS rebranding of Supes to the “stunning and brave” culture war updated Supes. Will any of this help modernize Clark Kent?
We Need A Little Old-Fashioned
It might seem weird to have put a Captain America quote at the beginning of a blog about Superman, but it was on purpose. Captain America in many ways is Marvel’s answer to Superman. Both boy scouts, both idealistic and both tied deeply to Americana. Marvel could have easily updated Captain America to be less “problematic” in the Marvel movies, (and in some countries they did just that) but instead, they addressed the so-called problem right out of the gate in the first Avengers movie with the brilliant line uttered by a secondary character. Cap is out of date, literally, but we still need the old-fashioned.
We need old-fashioned Superman. Superman needs to be good. He needs to be a paragon, he needs to be virtuous, and he needs to be something we can all be inspired by. He represents the best of the American ideal. Truth, Justice for all, Peace, and Representative Government. These are good things and America’s ideals capture all of that. Our current storytellers seem to think our modern mythos needs to be updated with anxiety, doubt, cynicism, and suspicion. None of that works for Superman. Superman cannot doubt the need to be Superman. Superman needs to be powerful, he needs ideals, and he needs to wrestle with keeping those ideals in a world that is not idealistic.
And this gets to the heart of the problem. While Marvel made Captain America wrestle with a world and America that is constantly antagonistic to their ideals while still claiming to uphold them, DC made Superman abandon the ideal altogether. DC has been obsessed with copying the Marvel formula until recently so why didn’t they look at Cap and say, “huh, that approach actually works for Superman.”
Instead, DC seems held up by one of the most surface-level, common objections to Superman: he is too powerful. Does anyone complain that Batman has too many gadgets? Spiderman is often way overpowered compared to his villains? Do we ever hear those complaints? No, because Batman and Spiderman often have to outsmart and outwit their villains. What makes Superman any different? Superman’s conflict should always center around the temptation of abandoning his ideals, protecting the innocent, and how to use his powers for good. Superman’s weakness is not just kryptonite but his love for people. There are plenty of ways to tell stories centering around that and we have example after example of that happening. Why not with Superman?
DC seems to be intent on doing the opposite of all of this. And their recent move to modernize Superman I think will fail just as hard as the previous versions to do it because it abandons what is core to Superman. Superman represents transcendent ideals that are universally applicable no matter where he lands or what time period he’s in. With every modern attempt to update the character, be it modern cultural war winks or loud, concussive fight scenes, you move him further and further from those universal ideals and make Superman look more and more like us. And when everyone is super…