Man of Steel: For Little Boys and Theologians Only

If Michael Phillips’ review in the Chicago Tribune is any indication, it seems that critics (and perhaps moviegoers) have finally had it with absurdly over-the-top, literally earth-shattering special effects sequences in big-budget action films.  It is entirely okay, and indeed often preferable, to have a movie climax that does not involve the potential annihilation of the planet.  Perhaps moviegoers are finally realizing the boredom of sheer excess—when every movie plot threatens a major U.S. city with total destruction, it’s just about the same as if none of them did.  This is a conclusion the public has needed for quite a while (and it’s a horn I’ve been tooting for some time—see my review of last summer’s The Bourne Legacy).  In the wake of such special effects love feasts as the Transformers series—and amidst legitimately awesome blockbusters like The Avengers—America is in need of thoughtful, clever, yet simple films.  Fewer special effects, more snappy dialogue, and a focus on plot.

Yes, we have overdosed on special effects, and Man of Steel may have finally alerted folks to this grave fact.  I am relieved to see that there may be light at the end of this decade’s heretofore entirely computer-generated tunnel of explosions.  How ironic, then, that I found myself loving Man of Steel, and cannot bring myself to agree with the lukewarm or unfavorable reviews that some critics and viewers have afforded it.

There are two reasons for this.

First, the battles.  The battles in Man of Steel are completely over-the-top, exhibiting each and every symptom of dumb action movie excess, including but not limited to: extreme close-ups of hand-to-hand combat that obscure the events of the brawl and render it less exciting; unconvincing computer-generated body doubles engaging in unbelievable stunts that likewise diminish the excitement of the movie; an absurd scale that requires not just the combatants, but entire skyscrapers and city blocks to be brought down over the course of the fight; disconcerting collateral damage that calls to mind the presumably grisly fate of countless bystanders, who are totally glossed over in the movie’s narrative; and volume jacked up so high that one exits the theater both dizzy and wondering how to treat a perforated ear drum.

And yet, for all that, the battles are awesome.  They are everything I would hope for in a Superman battle.  Superman punches with marvelous strength; his enemy returns a blow of equal magnitude.  Superman grabs his foe, flies a mile into the air, and slams him back to earth—and leaving his mark in the form of a crater.  Watching the battles in Man of Steel, I was taken back to my childhood, which was filled with epic battles between Godzilla and King Kong, Spider-Man and Venom, and a host of other heroes and monsters who filled my toybox and my coolest daydreams.

I smirked as Superman flew General Zodd up into space, only to be smashed by his villainous foe into an orbiting satellite and thrown back into our atmosphere (both of them catch on fire as they hurtle back down to earth, and of course neither is affected negatively by this development).  Yet the smirk was not one of cynicism, but fraternal enjoyment; I knew that somewhere on the other end of this movie was someone who agreed with me that “it would be really cool if Superman grabbed him and flew up so high that he went into space, and started punching him while he was up there, and then he crashed into a satellite, and they both fell back down to earth and caught on fire…”  You get the picture.  And yes, that also goes for the absolutely awesome scene in which Superman tackles Zodd at lighting speed, rolls him through miles of dirt, punching him savagely all the while, and eventually launches him full speed into a truck filling up at a gas station.  This is in response to Zodd bullying Superman’s earthly Mom (while he’s punching Zodd, he yells, “YOU…THINK…YOU…CAN…THREATEN…MY…MOM!?!”).  For any boy who loves his own Mom, this is seriously fun to watch.

The battles are not perfect.  The effects sometimes look a little unrealistic.  It is unclear how exactly Superman wins the fight (because spoiler alert, he wins).  And they certainly display no sense of subtlety or restraint.  But sometimes we’re not in the mood for restraint.  And what better way to indulge such a mood than in a harmless and basically innocent couple of hours in a movie theater?  If you enjoyed making your action figures bash each other across the living room and get crushed by giant boulders (i.e. sofa cushions) when you were younger, you will definitely enjoy this movie.

On to the second reason I enjoyed Man of Steel: it got me thinking about spiritual things.  I am a Theology guy, and I always comb movies, books, and shows for religious, spiritual, and moral messages.  Whether good or bad, they’re always there.  Man of Steel continues the recent superhero movie trend of self-sacrifice and responsibility so wonderfully inaugurated in 2002’s Spider-Man and continued by later Marvel and Batman films.

However, there is something about this movie that goes much deeper than the others.  Man of Steel transcends mere virtue and, I contend, delves into specifically religious and Christian ideas.  Throughout the movie, Superman is presented as a sort of Christ-figure.  On the surface level: he’s 33 years old, he’s lived a life of relative obscurity leading up to his public career as a wonder-worker, his father is dead by the time he’s an adult and he is very close to his mother, and he is met with varying degrees of both admiration and suspicion by those who encounter him.

On a deeper level, we see Superman/Kal-El/Clark as a blend of humanity and superhumanity; we see him interact with and master forces the like of which any number of humans couldn’t dream of taking on; we see him courted by evil and tempted to abuse his power by prideful superhumans who consider humanity an inferior creation; we see the hope of an entire people resting on his shoulders; we see him engage in a struggle that literally no one else could begin to take up; we see him banish evil with an act of total self-sacrifice.

I will dwell on only one scene to illustrate this point.  When Superman attacks the terraforming machine in the Indian Ocean, he is weakened by the atmospheric changes surrounding the contraption.  After fighting off a set of serpentine metal tendrils in spite of his weakened state, he is forced underneath the full blast of the machine’s world-destroying might.  We see him engulfed in blue energy emanating from the machine, apparently being pushed to the limits of his resilience and strength.  It seems that he might not survive as he scrunches up his face in pain and yells in agony.  Yet just when it seems that he won’t pull through, he launches up against this stream of energy and slices through the machine’s innards in a stunning upward flight.

Perhaps it seems absurd, but this scene got me thinking about Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion.  What I saw in the movie—Superman withstanding a torrent of lethal otherworldly energy and emerging the victor—made me look at Jesus’ act of sacrifice in a new way.  Specifically, it focused my attention on the spiritual aspect of the Passion.  Of course we often consider, especially before Easter, the extreme physical suffering Jesus went through for our sake.  But we must remember that we also believe that, in taking the burden of the cross on his shoulders, Jesus was taking the weight of humanity’s guilt upon himself.  During those awful hours of torture and death, Jesus took up the unfathomable mass of man’s evil, carried it with him along the way to Calvary, and ultimately destroyed every ounce of it.  There was more negative energy—more evil, pain, guilt, shame, regret, horror, hatred, disgust, and misery—concentrated on Jesus Christ at that time than on any other person in history before or since, or ever.  How amazing is that, that he did that for us?  The blue energy that almost killed Superman in this movie is, to me, another way of expressing the spiritual aspect of Jesus’ suffering.
 

Now I should already know the amazing nature of Jesus’ sacrifice, and in some sense I do.  But seeing this computer-generated spectacle on screen today made me realize the magnitude of Christ’s spiritual agony as he faced off against the worst stuff that evil could throw at him.  In taking our guilt upon himself, Christ did the most amazing, heroic, and wonderful thing anyone has ever done or will do.

I may not be making myself clear.  We illustrate and meditate on depictions of the physical suffering of our Savior (and this is good and important).  But how often do we reflect on the spiritual aspect?  How could it have felt to carry the punishment incurred by an entire race of beings on a single man's shoulders?  It is a fearsome thing to consider.  And we just don't think about it when we see a picture of the crucifixion, because it's not something that comes through in a picture, or even in the physical event itself.  Onlookers could not see the burden of sin Jesus took up on his way to Golgotha.  It was and is a spiritual reality, accessed and understood only through faith.  We believe it, but we could never see it with our eyes.

Man of Steel is certainly not a straight allegory of Jesus.  If it was intended to be, it’s a train wreck.  But I don’t think that was the filmmaker’s intention.  Instead, I think the idea here was to illustrate certain Christian ideas and images in interesting ways.  In that sense, the movie is a complete success.

So there you have it: Man of Steel, a film for little boys and theologians.  Go see it.  I think you might enjoy it.