What do Superman Returns & The Da Vinci Code have in common?
BIG-TIME spoiler alert ahead … not that you wouldn’t guess it within the first reel.
Both Superman Returns and The Da Vinci Code play off the notion that Christ is mortal — or mortal enough to spawn heirs.
There’s been no outcry, no protests, no picketing over Superman Returns (unless you count complaints that Kate Bosworth is no Margot Kidder and Brandon Routh is no Christopher Reeve). And certainly there’s no good reason to protest the movie on religious grounds, but then, why protest Da Vinci Code either? What they have in common is the subtext of divinity versus humanity. Where they differ is in the seriousness with which they appear to raise the issue — although I would argue that Da Vinci Code is no more serious, in its genre way (and certainly no more high-minded or realistic) than Superman Returns.
In the case of SR, perhaps the kind of people who protest this sort of thing are mollified that Superman is just a comic character, not a JC stand-in — despite the fusillade of JC references that are hurled onto the screen like meteors aimed at Metropolis. Jor-El (the holographic Marlon Brando, referenced in a pane of Fortress of Solitude flat-screen-TV ice) gave his “only son” that humankind could learn to be just a little bit nobler. Director Bryan Singer’s Superman hovers, Christ-like, in space, where he spends his nights filtering out the babble of the world’s prayers like a messianic antenna. He decides which prayer to answer, and in what order. The central dilemma of Superman, and of Superman Returns, is how to prioritize.
And yet, Superman Returns is about social ineptitude. Superman returns from a five-year walkabout in space, and Lois is so furious at his lack of social grace — he never said goodbye — that she’s channeled her rage into a good-riddance essay that has won her a Pulitzer. The essay probably doesn’t mention what she hasn’t really discussed with her new boyfriend, either — that she spent a night with the Man of Steel. She slept with her source!
Full disclosure: I’ve written a Lois Lane comic, (a 5-page story within Superman: Secret Files & Origins) and did a rewrite on a Superman script. Should that make me more inclined to like or dislike Superman Returns? Dunno. I doubt the success of the movie will influence sales of my little comic one way or the other.
But if I were a religious protester, one inclined not to see the forest for the trees, I’d protest this movie’s depiction of Clark Kent, not of the savior Superman who answers the most desperate prayers. The human in him knocks up a girl, leaves without saying goodbye, and doesn’t pay child support. What would Jesus do?
Right on Jami! Geez, and it all bored the hell out of me, too. Guess that’s what happens when you hit the audience over the head with messianic references. Warner Bros and DC owe us big time! Pray they don’t copy the storyline in the sequels like they did with this super crap.