(courtesy IMP Awards)
If there’s one thing that I have never truly liked about superhero films, it’s how unrelatably inhuman so many of these heroes of our age seem to be.
Oh, they try to make them seem like one of us, and to some extent they succeed, but even in many of the Marvel films where the storyline has the characters wearing their humanity very much on their spandex sleeves, you finish the big crescendo narrative with a sense that here are people who aren’t like us at all.
Maybe that’s the point, and we do like the idea that there are beings more powerful than us to save us – I mean, that’s why religions exist, right, he says somewhat controversially – but this reviewer likes the idea that there’s a point of real human connection to bond me with these larger-than-life personalities.
That’s likely why Superman, released this year as part of a rejuvenation of the DC Extended Universe by James Gunn, resonated with this reviewer so powerfully.
Here was Superman doing all the things we expect him to do – flying, saving people, fighting evil with a red cape and outer-undies savoir faire – and yet full of the kind of angsty humanity we all struggle to resolve and work with on a given day.
What’s so clever about Gunn’s treatment of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster’s creation, who debuted in 1938 in the first Action Comics issue, is that he manages to imbue Superman with a huge amount of grounded humanity without taking away from the superhero-ness of him at all.
Further, all this humanity is accompanied by a huge amount of humour which leavens out some very dark passages where fascistic intent, principally executed by a diabolically capitalist, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), sees political dissidents and threats to the established order locked in quite fantastically nightmarish prisons and power centralised in the hands of those with only their fetid self interest top of mind.
It’s a brilliantly executed package which might seem on a first watch to be all confected lightness and not lot of dramatic or emotional punch.
After all, gone is the souped-up superhero grim seriousness we’ve come to expect, for the most part, from these films, replaced by the sort of authentic humanity which is as apt to be light and silly as it is to be dark and intense.
Where Superman truly succeeds is that it embeds much of this lightness and brightness fairly early on in the movie, establishing Clark Kent aka Superman, played with endearing vulnerability and gathering strength by David Corenswet, as someone in love with Lois Lane (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Rachel Brosnahan), good at his job and deeply devoted to the Kansas farming couple who raised him, Ma and Pa Kent (Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vance respectively).
And where it does inject the humour, especially during the biff, bang, boom second half, it does so in the service of adding some humanity to grim fights for the soul of humanity, for the lives of those in Metropolis and to the heart of Superman himself.
It’s a perfect mix of seemingly disparate elements held in truly effective tension, ensuring that while there is a big climactic battle, which is pretty much de rigeur for superhero movies these days, it’s always infuxed with humanity, humour and a sense of the real world not playing second fiddle to hyper-up reality.
So, if you’re the sort of person who likes big, huge, epic blockbustery events, you will get plenty of those as conspiracies are tackled and exposed, villains unmasked or given their much-deserved comeuppance and authoritarianism is exposed for the self-servingly destructive force it is.
But if you like all that larger-than-life storytelling to feel awkward, vulnerable and honestly human then Superman also delivers, serving up a protagonist who can be heart and broken, who can doubt and be lost but who, when push very much comes to titanically nasty shove, can more than rise to the occasion and make sure that justice is served.
It’s an intoxicatingly enlivening brew and it works a treat, making Superman one of the best superhero films in years which takes us back to why this much-loved character came to exist in the first place.
Superman was created as a character who would stand for what was good and decent and right – look at when he was created; if ever people needed reminding of those essentially human values it was then – and while those values might seem a little old-fashioned, they carry the same sort of emotional grunt and heft that the world needs to hear right now.
No doubt, Superman has been derided by a certain group of people as hopelessly woke, his latest iteration proof the bleeding heart left is all marshmallow niceness and weak posturing, but the truth of the matter is that Superman has always been this person and all Gunn does, with some humour, vulnerability and relatable humanity, is take us back to who he has always been.
And right when we need that messaging all over again.
Humanity, for the most part, has not heeded the lessons of history (when does it ever?) and as we careen to an ever more fascistic future, we need stories like Superman which acknowledge our raw and emotionally fragile our humanity can be but how amazingly strong it can be too when its tenacity and willingness to fight for the very best parts of humanity is called upon.
If you are feeling like superhero movies have done their dash, and all you’re getting are recycled, soulless tropes and cliches in one long wholly unrelatable line, then watch Superman and be reminded what while yes, we often need to be saved from ourselves and mythical beings might be the only ones to do it, that we can, all vulnerability aside, more than rise to the occasion when needed and make a real difference when it counts, not just for ourselves and those we love, but the world around us too.
An interview with the star …