The Pecan Park Eagle

While he was growing up on Planet Earth, his adoptive human father tried to keep his special powers secret. “Once the world finds out about you, it’s going to change the way everyone sees everything!”

SPOILER ALERT!!! If you haven’t seen the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, you may want to pass on reading any further. I cannot think of a way to describe the “prequel” qualities of this film without relating certain information you may not wish to know in advance. On the other hand, if you are a longtime loyal Superman fan, read away. – After all, we always know how this “strange visitor from another planet” fares against “the forces of evil” in the end, don’t we?

Not afraid? – Good! – Let’s get with it!

Man of Steel is not one of those Superman flicks that finds the immigrant Kryptonian grown up and working as a reporter for The Daily Planet within the first ten minutes of rolling film. Man of Steel essentially is the prequel story of how this special being even gets his job at that famous fictional newspaper.

The death of Planet Krypton is treated with more causative information than we’ve ever previously received. Krypton is imminently near the end due to its governmental disregard for personal freedom, its dedicated commitment to genetic breeding of new Kryptonians on a “skills needed”, external-to-the womb agricultural breeding process, and its misuse of energy from the planet’s core that is moving everything to a point of imploding destruction of all life.

The writers’ warnings for Planet Earth are clear and obvious.

Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is the chief Kryptonian scientist who has come to see the beginning of the end. He secretly has bred his own infant son by natural childbirth with his wife, Faora-Ul (Antje Traue) with all the genetic skills. He has also built a rocket ship to take the infant to another planet where survival and protection by another compatible species would allow their child to later interbreed and pass on the best of Krypton to another world in need of less imminent salvation.

The future “Superman” is thus framed here as both the saved one – and the savior of others who need his help. Cal-El/Clark Kent (Dylan Strawberry as a teenager; Henry Cavill as an adult)

General Zod (Michael Shannon) wants to kill the failed governmental leaders for their failure and take over control of all breeding secrets so that he can “save” Krypton by military rule. A bloody encounter with Jor-El in the halls of government results in General Zod learning of the former’s plan to launch into space, but he is too late to stop it. After he and his followers are sentenced to something like a 1000-year freeze in space, the future Superman is launched in the nick of Krypton’s end time. He reaches Earth OK, where, as you undoubtedly know, he is raised by midwestern farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane).

The central theme of Superman’s childhood is the message from his earthly father: “Be careful not to show your powers to others before it is time because the world changes forever once everyone can know your power. Aside from a few near misses on total exposure, Clark Kent as a young man is able to refrain from even trying to save his father in a public situation during a tornado.

After his father dies, Kent stumble around though some manual labor jobs, but he uses his special powers enough to draw attention from reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and editor Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) of The Daily Planet.

Enter the action theme of the movie.

The heat from the explosion of Krypton was enough to thaw out General Zod and his small army of followers. They somehow were able to salvage a space ship with enough intelligence and munitions to follow Superman to Earth in the hope of recovering his genetics program that would allow them to kill all the Earthlings and take over the planet as their new Krypton.

The General Zod threat is Superman’s coming out call – blue tights, red cape, flying, fighting, and all.

The action now moves into 3-D delight gear, rivaling anything ever put out there by Star Wars or Star Trek. Superman finally kills General Zod and all his minions. He explains that the large “S” on his chest is nothing more than a Kryptonian symbol for “good luck”.  That’s when Lois Lane explains to him that “down here on Earth it looks more like an ‘S’ – and ‘S’ in your case, has to stand for ‘Superman’.”

Only in the last scene, nearly two and a half hours into the film, does Superman show up in a suit, tie, hat, and glasses at the Daily Planet.  He is introduced by Editor Perry White as “our new cub reporter, Clark Kent.”

Clark Kent and Lois Lane exchange secretive smiles. This time, Lois knows. She knows that Clark Kent is really Superman. She knows that he plans to help improve the Earth’s gene pool. And she knows that he is interested in her. She also knows that he’s more powerful than a locomotive, but she shows no real concern for the fact that he’s also reputed to be faster than a speeding bullet.

If you’re a Superman fan, it’s a deeper twist on an old theme with plenty of action fireworks. If you’re looking for something from Dostoyevsky or Chekhov, don’t bother.