Oh, So There Are Folks Who Understand Superman

I’m going to start with a controversial statement that’s going to position me in a very peculiar place for the rest of the article, but I have to say it to properly frame everything that will come after…I think Man of Steel (2013) was a good depiction of Superman.

I think Henry Cavill’s depiction of specifically Superman and in a different timeline, probably could have been a decent Clark Kent. It’s not a perfect movie by any means (the death of Jonathan Kent being one of the more egregious moments of the film), but I felt it captured the larger than life nature of an extraterrestrial with superpowers. The last act set up what could have been an interesting interpretation of Superman, who has resolved not to kill after being forced to use force to stop Zod from killing innocent people. However, we never got the chance to explore that as we were thrust into a series of movies that never let Superman be the focus, instead pitting him against a vague ideological opposite, positioning him as a tyrant, killing him, resurrecting him in a primal state, and then never really properly revisiting the character’s optimistic core. And during this time, we got a cavalcade of dark-Superman stories between Brightburn, The Boys, and Invincible that explored the dark implications of a near omnipotent being.

And these are interesting stories. Kingdom Come and Red Son are fascinating explorations of the character, but I think after a decade or so of the uber-serious ubermensch, I longed f…