Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 15-August-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Superman (1978)
We have come to expect a dark side in our superheroes --- Spider-Man's amorous angst, Wolverine's tortured past, Batman's controlled fury --- which partly explains why the first "Superman" movie now looks so extremely tame. A paean to American corniness with a hint of sci-fi and a dash of Marlon Brando grandstanding, Richard Donner's 1978 hit spares no amber wave of grain and misses no opportunity to mention "millions of innocent people" as it catalogs all the things the pre-Gen-X public knew and loved about Superman. An innocuously pleasant film, it deserves, like all others, to be judged on its own terms and as a product of its time; but this doesn't change the fact that because it lacks any trace of darkness, "Superman" doesn't really make sense.
The movie opens on ill-fated Krypton, where the august scientist and statesman Jor-El (Brando) prepares to blast his infant son into space to escape the planet's demise. (The extended DVD also includes several scenes in which Brando and Trevor Howard relive their "Mutiny on the Bounty" days, which were logically edited from the theatrical cut.) The wee tyke sets off on a three-year journey to Earth, where he is adopted immediately upon landing by the nicest darn folks who ever shucked corn in Kansas. Jump ahead 15 years, and Clark Kent has grown into a solid kid who avoids bitterness even though he's different than his schoolmates (stronger, faster, and more aeronautical). Eager for experience, he leaves on a vision quest, spends 12 years in a crystal palace learning the knowledge of 28 galaxies from a hologram of his biological father, and then moves to the big city to write and fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
When he arrives in Metropolis, Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) is not the boy who hugged his Ma good-bye in a wheat field at sunrise. Nope, by day he's a large, girlish nerd on two left feet who could never stir the loins of his fellow reporter, Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), and by night he's a buff, confident crusader who foils bad guys, rescues kittens from trees, and makes Lois blush by obligingly checking out her underwear. The ruse of social ineptitude allows him to avoid wearing a mask as Superman, but his real motivation for double-identity is disturbingly vague and doesn't seem to correspond with the sweet, wise person he was brought up to be.* All one can surmise from the movie is that the adult Clark Kent is a bit condescending and a very good liar, who has no problem with wooing his beloved in two different guises or perpetrating a fraud upon his employers, friends, and the public in general.
If this situation doesn't present Superman with a moral dilemma, the appearance of big evil does (or, actually, middle-of-the-road evil with a strong comic flavor). With remarkable ease, criminal mastermind Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) hijacks a pair of nuclear missiles and launches them in opposite directions, forcing the Big S to decide who lives and who dies. Following the teachings of his Kryptonian parent, he chooses to honor his word and the call of civic duty and suffers a horrible loss in return. So, miffed that he didn't get it right, he uses his power to grant himself another opportunity, and this time he follows the example of his human parents by placing humanity over practicality. The plot at this point becomes fuzzy and the chronology of events unclear, leaving the viewer to wonder how many people died because Superman changed his mind. But it serves the point of the story, which is that the hero can have it both ways: he isn't trapped between the responsibility of his extraordinary talents and the dictates of his heart; he can be both a man and a god, a member of his community and its savior. In short, he does what he wants and gets away with what he does, and (when not busy rescuing Air Force One) sleeps like a baby at night. It may be the 21st century Zeitgeist talking (a critic, too, deserves to be judged as a product of her time), but that doesn't seem like a hero to me.
If the new Superman movie ever gets off the ground, I'm sure Clark Kent will get his fair share of misery, and it will be interesting to see if this deepens the story without severely changing it. For there is merit in the combination of his tumultuous beginnings and his passionate cleaving to the American dream. (There is also merit in aspects of Donner's film, notably Kidder's performance and the design of Luthor's nifty subterranean pad.) When played only for sentimentality and laughs, however, the Superman tale rings a bit hollow, and the central character is almost unsympathetic in his omnipotence.
*Particularly in the extended version, where Jor-El admonishes his son to keep his superhuman identity a secret after both Clark Kent and Superman have made an appearance in Metropolis. Why was he willing to make a mockery of the name the Kents gave him, and why did he feel the need to don tights before performing feats of derring-do if the protection of his privacy and good intentions hadn't always been his goal?
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
