"Even though you've been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all -- their capacity for good -- I have sent them you. My only son."
Superman.
A Boy Scout with a people-pleasing complex and with questionable respect for Habeus Corpus and Miranda Rights who wears his underwear outside of his ridiculous red and blue tights and flies around making all us men feel so inferior.
We need him.
And that's an interesting conclusion to come to.
***
I took my oldest son, barely 6 years old, to see "Superman Returns." He cried and asked to go home when Lex Luthor and his goons beat the living hell out of a Kryponite-weakened Superman and shanked him with a shard of the only known thing that can kill the Man Of Steel.
I told my son to wait it out. Superman's going to be OK.
And, of course, he was. Saved the world from cataclysmic destruction, saved Lois, saved all the fine citizens of Metropolis who always seem to push their babies in strollers in the midst of an epic battle right above their heads, etc., etc.
Just like he did when I was 6 and held my hands over my eyes for fear that a chain necklace of Kryponite would force this indestructible savior to succumb to an undeserving fate at the hands of all that is wrong with the world.
You see, that's what Superman does.
He saves us. Whether we deserve it or not.
***
We embrace Superman like the cliche he is -- the kind that makes us realize why cliches are what they are and why we need them sometimes to make some sense of the world when we can't find more-clever phrases (the ones that we use to delude ourselves into thinking we've discovered something no one else has before).
Cliches are true.
They burn away our cynicism. If we embrace them, we are yielding a piece of ourselves that is afraid to believe in something.
Superman is an alien, if we remember the mythology.
The only thing that can hurt him is the radioactive remains of the shattered world he left behind.
"How is this interesting?" the question is sometimes asked.
The guy can do anything. How many stories can you tell with that? Doesn't it get old when the only problem he has (as long as there's no glowing green alien rock in sight) is that he can't be everywhere at once?
And who is he to go around policing the world? In a bright red and blue suit with a pretentious cape?
He answers that question in "Superman Returns."
He's been gone for five years searching for anyone who might have survived the destruction of his home planet. Lois Lane has won a Pulitzer for her editorial "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman" (she's kind of pissed at him for not giving her one last memoring-erasing kiss goodbye).
Superman asks if she'll come with him. He takes her high above Metropolis and asks her to listen.
She doesn't hear anything.
"I hear everything," he tells her. "You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one."
And therein lies the essence of Superman.
His only real weakness is his compassion for us.
***
To defend Superman:
Heat vision is cool. So is breaking the sound barrier and flattening bullets with your eye and meditating in the weightless vacuum of space.
He didn't name himself "Superman." We did that for him.
His real name -- Kal-El -- rolls effortlessly off the tongue.
He doesn't lie and he doesn't kill. That's hard. And it's not a superpower.
His dad was Marlon Brando.
He has a fortress of solitude ... and it's not a garage with a dorm refridgerator and cable piped in. It's an actual fortress.
In the movie, he drinks a Budweiser.
I'm told he's quite attractive in the eyes of women (I can see it ... not like I'm gay or anything).
He could rule the world, if he felt so inclined.
Or, seeing as he's an alien, he could abduct some of us and conduct anal probes. Just because.
Or he could do nothing. Enjoy flying around and not having to worry about breaking a sweat or mosquitoes piercing through his skin to suck his blood and give him some exotic disease.
And, you know, that X-Ray vision. Scandalous.
He grew up on a farm in the Midwest with an adoptive father who groomed his son for humility. Forgive him if he's a little idealistic.
Yes, all he does is put on glasses and bumble around to conceal his identity.
But, as Quinten Tarrantino points out in "Kill Bill," Superman is the only hero who disguises himself as a human. He is Superman, not someone playing Superman. Is he supposed to wear a mask, then?
Maybe that would be a little more foolproof. But perhaps the bright red, blue and yellow costume with the underwear on the outside is enough of a mask -- an absurdly bombastic image that acts as its own disguise (who could ever really think that Superman would reduce himself to something as pitiable as Clark Kent, a caricature of ... us?).
He has no true home. It's gone. The world he lives in now is one of alienation. How can a man so powerful ever fully be a peer in the human race?
The perplexing -- and endearing -- thing is that he wants to be.
***
In today's world, a figure like Superman might seem outdated.
But the truth revealed in an exquisite movie like "Superman Returns" is that a person with the power to be a god would give his life for something he'll never truly be a part of. When is that ever not relevant?
Hours after seeing "Superman Returns," my son couldn't sleep and came to me late at night. He was troubled. There was something he couldn't quite reckon in his mind. And it scared him.
Lex Luthor kicking the shit out of Superman.
Is there someone in the world who has the power to impose evil anytime and anywhere just ... because? Is there someone Superman can't overcome just ... because?
No, I tell him. It's simple: No Kryponite and Superman's just fine. Lex Luthor's just another douchebag with a brain and a motive.
But the real, deeper truth is far more reassuring. It's what makes Superman mean what he does to us.
His greatest power isn't all the things that make him invincible.
It's that when he's at his weakest, we are so overcome by all the nice things such a nice guy does for us that we can't help but want to help him, risk our lives to help him, because he's always been there to help us.
He's willing to say, "I am only as powerful as those I love allow me to be," because that's all he really uses his power for: to help the ones he loves.
Superman is bound to us, even if he doesn't have to be.
It's good to have a guy like that around.
"You will carry me inside you all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your own eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father, the son."
***
Observations regarding "Superman Returns" (with revelations of plot and details that those who have seen it might not care to know):
Bryan Singer has this character down. Singer is a master of making a story feel so complete. And creating an introspective, inspiring depth of character (like Nightcrawler in "X2").
It tips its hat to the first two movies (and mercifully casts aside the third and fourth disast ... er ... installments). Yet it is distinctly its own. It lacks the breezy exchange between characters of the originals and suffers a bit from slower pacing. But "Superman Returns" surpasses them in depth and detail and continuity. It only forces our suspension of disbelief so far.
Original footage of Marlon Brando's Jor-El is carefully and reverently inserted, giving an authentic majesty to the whole production. The music intertwines the old and the new seamlessly (the new music holds its own eliciting a visceral poignancy).
Superman has a kid. And he's not annoying. In fact, he's pretty cute.
The excellent foreshadowing of his perhaps one day taking his father's place makes me excited for a new generation of epic series (from the subtle: the cloth that looks like a cape just as Superman pulls his son out of the water; to the overtly sentimental: Superman reciting the same speech about a son fulfilling a father that his dad gave him).
The franchise can go anywhere now. It can tell as many stories of Superman/Clark/Kal-El and Lois Lane it wants. Or, it can leave them behind and tell the story of a new Superman, which, to me, is far more exotic and enticing.
Brandon Routh plays the part well, particularly of Clark. That warmness of Christopher Reeve is there to bask in. He doesn't quite overplay Superman like I thought Reeve did. Aloof enough, but still kind and aww, shucks like he's supposed to be.
Kate Bosworth worked for me as Lois, but only if you're willing to separate her from the Margot Kidder Lois. They aren't the same. Bosworth is channeling Kidder like Routh is Reeve. Lois is more hardened (now a mom and hurt by her beloved's long absence).
Nice touches that globalize Superman. Footage of him saving the world ... worldwide. Perry White asking if Superman still stands for "Truth, Justice ... all that stuff." It's diminishing to limit Superman to standing for the "American Way." He's here for the world, not a particular country.
We see Superman solving problems that he can readily fix. He doesn't intervene in the nuanced and complicated issues that humans must figure out for themselves to ever be free of them.
The effects are understated. They provide believability to his powers (flashes of heat as he re-enters the atmosphere; flying that is more effortless; heat vision that can spread like a shield, etc.).
Action is all that you could ask for. There could be more of it, however.
Lex Luthor maintains a certain glib evilness. Kevin Spacey plays him a little more sinister, which is probably more accurate. Still, Gene Hackman did it best, and Kevin Spacey always seems to be playing Kevin Spacey.
The savior theme -- complete with death and resurrection -- is thick, but not overly intrusive. The idea that Superman has this capability to remake the Earth into a new Krypton, but doesn't. That when a semblance of his world is being created, it is a cancer. It resembles one. And he removes it from us. Embraces us as his own.
The idea of Superman as a lonely outcast is essential to what makes the movie work. It allows for the introspection. Superman floating above the Earth, hearing everything. Almost sleeping. Alone, without a real home.
Yet the irony that he traveled light years away to see if anything were left of his homeworld when his most-real connection to his heritage is right here on Earth with his son.
And the kid. It's high stakes, but how exciting it is to introduce a kid. It adds a whole new dimension, one that's more easily experienced than explained. It helps us reconnect, as fathers, with this iconic figure we were introduced to as children. And the children of today, they can see a kid their age become an iconic figure themselves.
