New ‘Man of Steel’ Trailer Actually Makes Me Give A Crap About The Movie
I grew up reading and obsessing over comics since the second grade, but as soon as I turned nine or ten, I stopped caring about most superhero comics. It was the 90’s and the whole “do-gooder in tights” thing was just boring and played out at the time.
If my mom gave me five bucks to pick out a comic while she was getting her nails did at the mall and I had to choose between Superman’s chisel-jawed, primp-haired exploits, or something as stylishly violent as Spawn or oversexed like Gen-13, I think you can guess nine-year-old wouldn’t pick.
Superman, like most superheroes, is at his most interesting when his origin story is being told. It’s the whole Heroes Journey thing. But after that story’s over and done with, it’s just a dude in tights fighting the same bad guys and saving the same people & planets from certain doom over and over again. Bleh.
But Man of Steel looks like it could very well be one of the best Superman origin stories - or at least the best one ever told on screen. I like that it seems to capture the human side of the story without seeming all mushy and Hallmark-esque.
You’re a father or a mother who raise a baby from space. It may seem silly on the surface, but, really, how do you deal with that sort of thing? And the same goes for Kal-El; you grow up thinking you’re just another normal kid, then all of a sudden you’re shooting lasers out of your eyeballs and bending crowbars like they were pipe-cleaner.
My favorite part about superhero stories isn’t so much when they’re punching bad guys in the face or using their fancy powers, but it’s watching how they emotionally deal with all the shit that gets thrown their way, and then use their powers to blow it all up, of course.
Here’s to hoping that this delivers on all fronts.
