Superman Came First; or Why He Feels Wrong in the DCEU
By MrMazz 2 Comments
In April of 1938 a first happened; Action Comics #1 was published featuring a 13-page story of the Superman, and the age of the superhero began. A little over a year later another first occurred in the pages of Detective Comics #27 with the first appearance of The Bat-Man in “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate”. Superman and Batman now existed but not exactly in the same universe. Superheroes wouldn’t crossover (and fight) until July of 1940 in the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics #9 – 10 when the Human Torch (Jim Hammond) met the Submariner. Superman and Batman wouldn’t crossover until 1952 in Superman #76. Super books featuring a stricter continuity, more serialized narrative, or story world featuring other heroes wouldn’t really come along until the late Golden early Silver Age. Through the years surviving retcons and reboots, Superman always came first and that provides a strong thematic point to both his own and larger nature of these superheroes. He needs to be first, and that’s why Superman feels so wrong in the DCEU.
Superman is an aspirational figure, in Man of Steel is birth father Jor El proclaims that he will give “the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards”. On a meta level, every hero created since acts as an off shoot from this foundation, eternally reacting too or co-opting (Captain Marvel) elements of Superman. Something about that feels right for a character meant to inspire the best in us. That desire to inspire goes back to the historical context of his own creation Jerry Sigel and Joel Shuster created him in the midst of the Great Depression and on the backend of President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal. FDR’s New Deal was built on inspirational propaganda meant to breed optimism into a still economically recovering nation (and world). That through hard work and general moral righteousness the chaos of the Great Depression or Nazi Germany can and would be overcome and the general good state of the world would return.
In his recent video essay “Really That Good: Superman (1978)” Bob Chipman encapsulates the essence of Superman’s role and stories.
“Superman doesn’t create good situations he protects them and builds them back up when they fall down. That’s why this character and his world only work when approached from a place of optimism, because Superman only makes sense in the context of a world view where good is the default setting of the universe; and thus the job of a being with god like power is to fix things when they break or thwart evil from spoiling the natural state of goodness.”(time stamp)
If Superman is placed in a world where that default setting isn’t good then the actions of that god like being, in an attempt to make things good would inherently backfire, creating for a story that, well, doesn’t feel very much like Superman. And that’s a world that sounds a lot like the DCEU. This isn’t to imply that the default setting of the DCEU is the opposite of good (bad). The setting is something a bit more cynical and doubting, which make inspiring hard to come by. With his two films, Zack Snyder’s established the universes view of heroism is a burden that breeds nothing but more destruction and badness for all involved. Better if the Superman didn’t exist.
It starts with Man of Steel, which is a mostly functional film with some odd character choices. But its main problem is an insistence on exploring how we look at and react to Superman, as seen in its use of handheld cinematography, religious symbolism and characters. But never really giving us a Superman too react to. This is a deconstructionist view to take that doesn’t work, since there is nothing to deconstruct. Henery Cavill looks the part and has charisma but never actually given a chance just to be Superman and inspire people. There is a montage in Batman v Superman (roughly after the library sequence) that is mean to be an inspiring heroic montage of Superman being Superman. And he just isn’t, he looks away from adoring fans or floats above them like a godlike figure or grimly pulls a ship through the ice (for some reason). He doesn’t look like he enjoys a single second of it. Batman v Superman renders Superman aloof towards everyone around him, robbing him of a chance to be a character audiences can empathize and connect with. He has no connection or reason to protect this world – it certainly never sold the characters inherent goodness.
That doubt was given voice with the portrayal of Pa Kent thus far, he is an overly cautious Father who wants to keep his son closeted due to a misplaced sense of protection. Implying in Man of Steel that it would’ve been better to let a bus full of Clarks school children to drown than risk revealing himself by saving them. And then showing up in Batman v Superman as a ghost to tell his son about how he heard to screams of drowning horses after diverting a river to save his farm.
Now, I know what you’re wondering but Superman was first. Man of Steel kicked off the DCEU in 2013. That’s half right, Superman is chronologically first with Man of Steel as the DCEU a concept wasn’t really a thing until the couple off days before SDCC 2013 along with Batman v Superman. However, the DCEU has been one gigantic act of retconning, retroactively adding years of continuity to seed (mostly) Batman characters and villains. Superman wasn’t first any longer, Batman was*. And suddenly that cynical and doubting worldview begins to make sense.
“I bet your parents taught you that you mean something, that you're here for a reason. My parents taught me a different lesson, dying in the gutter for no reason at all... They taught me the world only makes sense if you force it to.” Batman robotically snarls at the ensnared Superman during their eponymous fight. Poor as this movie is, that is an excellent encapsulation of the vigilante core and ironically not to dissimilar to statements made in Batman & Robin. Vigilante stories are all about the recognition that the world or system inhabited is corrupt and that the only way to fix it is to act outside of that’s systems boundaries to force it back into if not the state of nature, a reformation that is no longer corrupt. That is the world Batman has been creating for the past 20 years. And that cynicism has given way to nihilism and amorality now that Batman brands his victims so that others will kill them, if he doesn’t obliterate them with his various vehicles first. Because Batman has already existed so long and poisoned that natural state, of course the world rejects Superman and stops him from being the character we know him to be.
Without Superman, the DCEU and comics universe in general just isn’t right. Batman is not Superman for obvious reasons, but together they complement each other and form the heroic spectrum, a theoretical chart that you can plot every (at least DC) hero on to show what kind of hero they are in relation the two poles represented by Superman and Batman (Wonder Woman is the theoretical middle/z-axis). It goes back to their roots as the evolution of pulp heroes Doc Savage and the Shadow, respectively. Doc Savage was all about day time science fiction and adventure. The Shadow was about criminality, dark mysticism, and deadly force. With Superman and Batman finally sharing the screen, and WB going forward with the DCEU the ability to create a heroic spectrum was paramount, and it never comes together. It’s not hard, the DCWverse did it in the pilot episode of The Flash in a single scene.
Now, just because the world view of the DCEU is cynical and doubting, doesn’t mean it can’t change to good. It could be redeemed, a theme uniting this movie on every single level. Everyone involved needs and desires redemption: Batman from being a murdering xenophobic psychotic asshole, Superman allowed to become the Superman audiences know, Zack Snyder proving he can actually make a crowd-pleasing box-office hit movie (again), Warner Bros. proving they are not just sitting on the biggest untapped IP goldmine left. Its failure to properly earn that redemption and turn towards good as stated by Bruce at the end “Men are still good. We fight, we kill, we betray one another, but we can rebuild. We can do better. We will. We have to.” Makes this films failings hurt even more. The theatrical cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a barely functional mess that goes through the movements that signal these sorts of ideas but never completes the thought or earns the payoff. I’m hopeful but cautious that the ‘Ultimate Cut’ will at perhaps complete the thought and turn the movie into something more functional. Wonky character choices I can live with if they are earned in the film itself. If not, we’re left with a hollow shell of cynicism and doubt and that’s not a foundation to build the next 5 years’ worth of movies off of.
*Yes, Wonder Woman is technically older then all of them by centuries but she’s also been withdrawn from the world for a good century making her ability to affect change in the universes default moral setting negligible.
I am Michael Mazzacane you can follow me on Twitter and at ComicWeek.org
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