Man of Steel’s’ Kryptonian spectacle upstages the human touch
Zach Snyder’s lavish, exhausting Superman reboot loses the human touch amid oversized action scenes and religious symbolism.
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In addition to selling comic books and movie tickets, superheroes serve a role as the mythic figures and demigods of contemporary culture. Superman’s origins and essential character prove positively Biblical. Like a sci-fi spin on baby Moses on the River Nile, he travels from his alien home to Earth as an infant. In his human guise as Clark Kent, he invariably turns the other cheek when confronted by flawed humans, while he shoulders the sins of mankind as Superman.
The new movie Man of Steel embellishes the religious interpretations even further, as our Super-messiah emerges on the public stage as the age of 33, while occasionally wearing a Jesus-y beard. At one point he stops by a church for some advice, and the camera frames him alongside some portentous stained-glass windows. Man of Steel bears witness to destructive sequences worthy of the Old Testament and presents a chewy dilemma of Superman being torn between the demand of Earth and his celestial home. Amid all the nose and spectacle, however, the film’s soul goes missing.