Every time I look at the news I’m greeted by an unending clown car of bad behavior and cynicism. If it isn’t public servants being penalized for doing the right thing, it’s the opposition party rolling over and giving up. But, look… up in the sky.
Today the very first thing I saw when I got out of bed was the trailer for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie. It made me cry.
I don’t know how or where I nursed my affection for Clark Kent and Lois Lane—it creeps up on me sometimes, and I find myself watching adaptations of the comics with a yearning in my heart that I struggle to describe. From the excellent Superman: The Animated Series from my youth to the more recent My Adventures with Superman, I have loved both sides of this character: the perpetually underestimated journalist trying his best to tell truth to power and the man with godlike abilities, sacrificing for the good of the world. (You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the more recent movie adaptations of this work. That is because that character just wasn’t present in those films.)
James Gunn’s take on Superman is, evidently, different from Zach Snyder’s interpretation in Man of Steel and The Justice League. The colors are bright and saturated; Superman saves people; the classic John Williams score from the 1978 movie rings out on electric guitar. Superhero movies have long tried to massage the goofier elements of comics out of the material. In the 2000 X-Men film, a character made a snide comment about “yellow spandex” in reference to the costumes from the comics. In so many films to follow, superhero characters forgo their code names because it just feels too weird to say “Scarlet Witch” or “Quicksilver” out loud.
Gunn’s trailer features no such embarrassment. In brief flashes, we see a fully bald Nicholas Hoult waggling his eyebrows as Lex Luther, as well as Hawkgirl—a comic book character infamous for being incredibly confusing and impossible to write in the comics—wearing her comics-accurate costume with the hawk head and wings. Nathan Fillion’s tough guy Green Lantern Guy Gardener has his classic bowl cut, and he looks gleefully stupid. Edi Gathegi wears the weird T-shaped mask of Mr. Terrific, the world’s smartest man (congrats to the costumers who figured out how to make that stay on his head). In the opening shot of the trailer, Superman himself cries out for Krypto, the super-dog, who obeys his master while wearing a little cape.
These are the things that make people like Superman—a lack of cynicism opens your heart to hope. These elements haven’t been downplayed to make the character serious. They’ve been embraced, to help you remember how it feels to be a child whispering for Superman to save you, to remember that the world has not ended but is instead full of opportunity if we all rise to the occasion.
This movie might suck—bad movies have had good trailers before. But I think it is fine to have hope, to admit out loud that you want something good to happen. I don’t feel a lot of hope in my life these days. Sometimes, though, I find myself thinking of a story of Superman’s creation: Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster were two Jewish kids who loved science fiction. Jerry Siegel’s father was a tailor and owned a small store. In 1932, the store was robbed, and Siegel’s father died. His mother also died of a heart attack. Superman is a character who saves shop owners from robberies, who is always there when you need him most. Jerry Siegel could not save his father, but he gave us a story that can help us save ourselves.
