Casting Call 6.10.08: Issue 58 - Superman!

Posted by Jason Chamberlain on 06.10.2008

He's strong, he's fast, and he looks good in a cape and tights! And not only that, 411's Jason Chamberlain has written a new issue of Casting Call, and it's all about the Man of Steel in his most recent big screen adventure. Superman (Returns)!

It's a bird... it's a plane! It's... a new edition of Casting Call!

...

I need an introduction rolodex, is what I need. I can write two dozen articles a week at my day job, and more than a few columns for 411, and yet writing introductions still vexes me! Which is a problem, because as I was told in my classes, you've got to hook your readers early or they won't hang around!

I'll work on it, I promise!

Now then, onto the subject at hand. Superman!

Presenting Superman (played by Branden Routh) from ‘Superman Returns'.

I don't know if I've really illustrated this in the column to date (aside from my foray into the Spider-Man films) but I am a huge comic book fan. I love stories of super heroes saving the world and battling menacing villains, standing for truth, justice, and soccer moms!

It doesn't really matter if the stories come in comic books (although that's where a number of amazing characters originate). I'm just as big a fan of ‘super heroes' in comics as I am in books, in movies, on TV, in the mirror, wherever I find them!

Of course you know Superman. I don't think you would need to touch a single comic book in your life to know Superman. Some characters, great characters, transcend their original mediums. Sometimes, they transcend ALL mediums. Superman has certainly been portrayed in every medium you can imagine, and his name, costume and that stylized ‘S' has long been part of the cultural lexicon.

Bearing that in mind, there are countless versions of Superman, from Christopher Reeves to Tom Welling and on to Mr. Routh. So the ‘version' of the Man of Steel I'll discuss in today's column is only one take on a character who has been viewed through millions of different eyes in a million different ways.

To be honest, Superman has never exactly been one of my favourite super heroes, and perhaps I haven't given the big guy a real chance. I always wrote him off as being, well, kind of lame, what with his underwear showing and all (somehow it never bothered me with Batman). And the idea of a hero who can literally do just about anything is as limiting as it is limitless. If a hero can do it all, what is there to test him? How can he grow, and change, and learn?

Now, Spider-Man. Batman. Daredevil. Those were my characters. They were flawed, vulnerable, they questioned themselves. Like me! I related to them. Superman, I couldn't really find common ground with.

Not that you need to have common ground with a fictional character to be entertained by them. But if your goal is to lose yourself in a story, it helps to have a main character through whom you can live vicariously. So yes, until recently Superman was never near the top of my list.

For my aforementioned reasons, I avoided the hit series ‘Smallville' for a long time, partially because of my disinterest in Supes and partially because I had a mean hate on for The WB after they cancelled ‘Angel' and stubbournly boycotted all of their products! Of course The WB is gone now, although Smallville still stands, and I finally gave it a chance recently and watched the first season (seven years overdue, but whatever!). I found myself hooked. I couldn't relate to having Clark Kent's powers, though I wish I could, but I could certainly relate to his youthful frustrations and genuinely good intentions. And his jones for Kristin Kreuk.

Then I picked up a Blu Ray player last week and decided to grab Superman Returns, the blockbuster (I think?) Bryan Singer film which brought Kal-El back onto big screens for the first time in twenty years. I'd seen the film once in theatres and I remembered liking it, but I'd never gotten around to grabbing a copy. Wanting to test out my new player, combined with my growing affinity for the character, I grabbed it. And once again, I wasn't disappointed!

So after about 700 words of telling you WHY I'm writing about Superman (the one who Returns) I guess I should start actually discussing him!

The Singer film introduces a Superman who has been away from Earth for five years, searching for the remnants of his destroyed home planet of Krypton. His absence has left the world a little angry at him, and star reporter Lois Lane, his former love, shares their animosity. She even won a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled, "Why the world doesn't need Superman."

Five years after he left, the world has moved on without him. But does Earth still need him after all?

And does he need Earth?

Now this was a big tent pole summer action film, so of course there is a whole lot of action, and explosions, and heroics. There's a villain, the omnipresent Lex Luthor, who has a goal to use Krytopnian crystals to build new land masses with which he will flood the world and demand top dollar for safety on ‘his' continents. But none of that really matters, because the real story in this film is Superman himself, and the real conflict is the one he faces with himself, and with his adopted home world.

As Jor El (Marlon Brando!) once told him, Kal El is raised as a human but is not one of them. And though he is raised by the loving Kent family and finds acceptance, he must of course hide who he truly is. Maybe it makes sense then, that Earth never truly becomes ‘home' for him. Or at least, it doesn't seem like it does. The lure of Krypton, of perhaps something, anything surviving, is an unresistable call to him. One which he has to explore.

We can only imagine what it would be like to be the last member of an extinct race. Even if we found a new world with people who look just like us, would we ever feel truly at home? Would we always be lonely? Is Superman destined to live his life alone?

Whatever the reasons for his journey back to his homeland, it proves fruitless. Krypton is indeed gone, nothing but a grave yard as he puts it, and so he returns to Earth. To an adopted home that, apparently, no longer wants him.

So Superman must find a home for himself. And what is ‘home' all about, anyway? Is it the place we were born, or in Superman's case, is it the place where we were raised, and loved? The place where we became the people we were going to be in our lives?

That's the discovery that awaits Superman in this film. ‘Home' isn't really a place, at least not in the sense of an address or a farm house. ‘Home' is the place you belong, the place you were meant to be.

The place where you make a difference.

Krypton is in the past, and Kal El can never find a home there. There is nothing he can do for a planet that died before his time.

But there is a whole lot that he can do for a planet like Earth, one filled with people of good intentions, and the desire to be great, if only ‘they have the light to show the way'.

Isn't that the whole point of Jor El's message to his son? Live for the present and future, not the past. Use your gifts to save a new planet, not to mourn an old one.

But if Superman needs any further convincing that Earth is truly his home now, it comes in the form of his son. Yes, his son! Lois Lane's child is, of course, the child of the Man of Steel, and so in that sense, Krypton lives on. And Superman knows well the kind of life his son will have to lead, one of feeling different, of feeling lonely and feeling like he doesn't belong.

If there's one thing Superman can teach his son, though (assuming that sequel ever gets made!) it's that being different doesn't mean you don't belong. Because the world does need saviours. And just as the sun comes up each morning, it needs the light to show the way.