Man of Steel did just (ahem) super at the box office this weekend,
cashing $116.6 million over the weekend and, including some special Thursday
screenings, $128.7 million overall. That's great—mostly. It's great for Warner
Brothers, which now has an honest-to-goodness franchise in play again the year
after The Dark Knight series concluded
last year. It's great for Henry Cavill, who plays Superman and will have a
chance to flash his chin cleft for years to come. It's great for
pop-culture-centric Christian writers like me, who'll have more opportunity to
write about the themes in play.
But I am bothered by the
ending. Not horrified, necessarily, but bothered.
WARNING: The rest of this
post will get very spoilery.
To recap (and I really
hope you took that warning right above this sentence seriously), Superman and
his nemesis General Zod have it out on Planet Earth—right in the heart of
Metropolis. Much of the city is destroyed during their melee. And in the end, a
furious and still defiant Zod turns his newly discovered heat-ray peepers to an
innocent family, obviously intending to fry them. Superman does his best to
stop Zod, but Zod's just as strong as he is and Superman knows that Zod will
never stop and— and—
Well, Superman kills the
guy.
Repeat: Superman kills.
Now, if we get all
theological and say that Superman is a straight-up Christ figure and Zod is the
devil or the epitome of evil or something, we can navigate this. As much as
Jesus wants us to be good to one another, He doesn't have a problem crushing
evil. And Zod certainly feels about as evil as it gets (in his own strangely
principled way).
And sure, he seems broken
up about it at the end. The movie suggests Superman didn't have a choice: It
was either Zod or the innocent family. Given that either-or scenario, you gotta
go with Zod.
But Superman doesn't kill
people. He just doesn’t. That's not part of his character. And that bothers me.
In fact, he didn’t just kill Zod. He fought the guy in the heart of Metropolis,
destroying half the city it seemed. The Superman I grew up with, I think, would’ve
led Zod out of town—never mind director Zac Snyder’s need for crashing
buildings and explosions.
One of the things that I
respected so much about Christopher Nolan's Dark
Knight trilogy was how true he stayed to Batman's long-held mythos. Yes,
they were dark stories. But he never fired a gun. He never killed anyone. Yes,
he was a flawed, complex character. But he held firm to the central tenants of
his own internal morality.
Superman is a better
person (albeit alien person) than Batman. Everyone says so—even Batman. He's an
optimistic, glass-half-full kind of guy compared to Batman's dour skeptic.
While Batman slinks in the shadows, Superman's a hero of light. The movie even
suggests that Superman's super powers are fueled by the sun (its youth and
vitality mixing with Supes' genetic makeup with impressive results). He's
powered, literally, from a light from above.
Moreover, Superman's
supposed to be an example—a guy who, in father Jor-El's words, "give the
people an ideal to strive towards." Batman doesn't consider himself to be
a great example to anyone.
And yet Superman's the
one who's killing people?
Maybe I’m off base. And
perhaps it’s a little quibble in a pretty positive movie. Still, that quibble
keeps me from embracing Man of Steel
as much as I’d like.
Firstly, Batman actually did kill people in the Nolan trilogy. Remember when he blew up the monastery? (I counted 8 on screen deaths) Or when he pushed Two-Face to his death? Or when he shot Talia down with The Bat? And let's not forget that he sabotaged the train that led to Ra's al Ghul's death.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, this isn't the first time Superman has killed on screen (or in the comics either). Remember in Superman II when he threw the powerless Zod into the foggy abyss in the Fortress of Solitude. He even had a smirk on his face when he did it.
The point is that while what he did was certainly shocking, it was not only justified, but (in my opinion) forgiven when we see his reaction directly afterwards.
Thanks, Anon. Very valid thoughts. And yeah, I may have misspoken in that there were some casualties in the Batman movies. I guess I make a distinction--emotional, at least--with the incidental casualties we see in Nolan's flicks and the purposeful killing in Man of Steel. Batman tells Catwoman explicitly, "no guns, no killing." And while the fact that he allowed Ra's to die at the end of Batman Begins (as I said in my book, God on the Streets of Gotham), you never see him try to kill someone, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about Superman II, to which I can only say this: 1. The ending still was very out of character for the canonical Superman we see in the comics (as were a couple of other elements in the flick, and 2. Oddly enough, the movie was originally filmed showing Zod and his cohorts alive at the end--a scene that was shown on the ABC television re-edit. (http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/Superman_II). Go figure.
Thanks for your comments, and best wishes.