I had re-watched this movie about six months ago, my first time seeing it as an adult, and was impressed by how good-natured it is. I recently watched it again with a friend, but this time was struck by its underlying structure, and the clever way it handles the narrative challenges of making a cohesive movie out of such a sprawling and varied story. The answer: tie it all together on the thematic level, not the story level.
The story, conceived of by Mario Puzo [writer of the Godfather novels], and written for the screen by Puzo and others, tells an epic story in four disparate sections: Superman’s origins on the planet Krypton, his boyhood and adolescence in the heartland, comedic and romantic adventures as he sets himself up in Metropolis, and finally solving a serious crisis that calls on his unique skills. At first glance all of these sections would seem quite disparate, but on closer examination it’s easy to see that Puzo et al have very cleverly approached the challenge of uniting them all by providing very tight thematic continuity, rather than the continuity of plot or events that we are used to from most movies.
The movie begins on the distant planet Krypton, with a trial of three criminals. This is mostly setting up for Superman II, one version of which was filmed concurrently with this one, and I think this part does not fully belong in this story. We then move into the story of Jor-El, Superman’s father, who has tried to warn the populous that their planet is going to explode. With shades of the current global warming crisis, he is silenced and told to cease his work, under punishment of being cast into the phantom zone, where he had just banished the three criminals. Jor-El has, however, created a spaceship designed to carry his son to Earth.
His wife is skeptical of the fate her son awaits there, afraid that he will be outcast and alone. “He will never be alone,” says Jor-El, as he places a crystal into the frame of the boy’s spaceship. This phallic crystal contains all of his father’s knowledge, and, it would seem, his father’s soul, that he is literally infusing his son with. The reproductive imagery continues as the spaceship breaks through a glass hymen to escape the planet, and travels like a sperm through all of this aquatic imagery, finally growing a tail as it penetrates the large round Earth. On the journey the crystal phallus the father has inserted puts all of the father’s knowledge and experience into the inner psyche of the young boy. There continues to be some theme about Superman impregnating the Earth or becoming its father, which I was not surprised to see continued onto one of the posters for the new film, showing Superman standing like a protective father over the expanse of Earth below. Please note that the phallic shape of Florida is placed right, well, you know.
Back on Krypton things do indeed seem dire, and no sooner is young Superman gone than the planet starts to be destroyed. The startling apocalyptic imagery is somewhat shocking and seems discordant with what is to come, with what are supposed to be massive structures collapsing and a rain of people falling into a yawning abyss, but I think it finds its structural corollary later in the film.
Once on Earth Superman is adopted by another father and mother figure, who raise him to hide his abilities. He is frustrated by this, and it leads to the first glimmers of the theme of vanity and humility that will also come together in the climax. His adoptive father abruptly dies one day, leading to the [by now common to superhero stories] reflection that despite all of his powers, Superman was unable to save him. Once the Earth father is gone, the green phallus of knowledge starts to glow, drawing Superman to the North, where the crystal germinates into a giant ice palace, the Fortress of Solitude. The theme of Superman impregnating the Earth is carried through here, as his crystal phallus literally penetrates the Earth and begins to grow there. Here Jor-El appears to Superman and continues his instruction, imparting a strong dictum we hear again and again throughout the movie: Superman is forbidden to use his powers to alter the course of human history. Once this training is mostly completed, Superman is ready to take his place in the world, and the third part of the film begins. This is indicated by the film showing his suit for the first time, and also showing him in the figure of Christopher Reeve, who will play the adult Superman.
Settling in Metropolis, which we are given to understand IS New York, Superman [as ClarkKent] gets a job at the Daily Planet. There he meets Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. During his first meeting with Ms. Lane, Kent is asked to open a bottle, which he does by holding it in his crotch as a surrogate phallus, opening it clumsily, and spewing white foam all over his pants. This indicates his sexual immaturity, and the idea that, now confronted with an adult woman, he is unable to control his unfamiliar sexual urges [we are not shown his father offering any guidance on this topic], and literally ‘pops his cork.’ It is interesting that thus far the film has equated male potency with knowledge, and one of the ways Superman disguises himself is as a bumbling reporter, sexually and intellectually naïve.
This is the beginning of a section in which Superman’s alter ego is ruthlessly humiliated, lending to the idea that because of his advanced powers, it is his duty to carry himself with humility, which will be directly addressed later. The movie also advances the idea that because Superman is indeed such a man [Super Man, y’all], that he has the strength and fortitude to endure such humiliations and not ask for recognition. The most notable example of this is when he prevents a bullet from hitting Lois, but tells her that he fainted from fear.
The movie also smartly doesn’t try to develop some tortured psyche and childhood trauma in order to humanize Superman, and in fact wisely takes the other tack; he is impossibly virtuous and pure-hearted. Lois’ reaction to the character’s innocence and naiveté is split between the two personas: she finds Clark tediously sheltered, whereas she finds Superman’s forthright virtue and old-fashioned morality to be charming and refreshing [especially in light of the morally dubious 70s!]. One of the unique charms of the movie is that it is about leading a virtuous life and being a good person, saving cats from trees, etc., which gives the entire thing a lot of good-natured zest. It will be very interesting to see how this aspect is handled in the forthcoming remake.
During another trip to the Fortress of Solitude, I was surprised to hear Jor-El counsel Superman not to “punish himself for his vanity.” This alludes to one of the earlier speeches in which adolescent Superman complains about having to restrain his natural abilities [this became the entire subtext of The Incredibles], and the theme of his manhood being magnified by his ability to endure humiliation. It’s important that the film acknowledge Superman’s justifiable feelings of pride and vanity, but what follows is a message so convoluted it’s hard not to believe the scene was sloppily edited and some dialogue left out. Jor-El says don’t beat yourself up over being vain, everyone has it, but then blames the destruction of Krypton on vanity, and says it can lead to terrible things. How’s that for mixed messages?
It’s all fun and games [and Superman himself is presented in a goofy, lighthearted way] until Lex Luthor starts to enact his nefarious plan, and in the final quarter of the film we see the serious Superman for the first time. Lex [and the script] cleverly uses Superman’s virtue against him by sending two nuclear missiles in opposite directions, meaning that Superman will able to prevent only one. This is further complicated by Luthor’s moll, Miss Teschmacher, making Superman promise to save her mother first, meaning that he would have to let Lois die [or, good heavens, renege on a promise]. He does fly to New Jersey first [though I was completely unaware that the Grand Canyon lay between Colorado and New Jersey], and the other nuclear missile hits the San Andreas Fault, threatening to dump Southern California into the ocean. The scenes of the fault collapsing and people running from earthquakes at first seemed random, but they thematically provide the correspondent bookend to the apocalyptic destruction of Krypton at the beginning of the movie.
So all of this leads to Superman discovering that Lois has been buried alive when her car fell into a crevice that opened as a result of the earthquake [one of the stranger deaths in movie history]. Note that Lois is being sucked into the Earth the same way the people on Krypton were falling into the depths of their planet. Unable to bear the pain of her death, Superman disobeys the biggest directive his father gave him, not to meddle in human history, and reverses time so that Lois [and the hundreds of people living under Hoover Dam] are still alive. [The movie charmingly demands that we accept the conceit that reversing the turning of the Earth will run time backwards]. This completes the thematic arc of the movie in two ways: Superman is able to save his new planet in a way he was powerless to save his old planet, and it is only when Superman has reached the level of maturity that he can make the decision to disobey his father that he truly becomes his own person and fully IS Superman.
This makes the entire story of the movie the story of Superman’s sexual and psychological maturation from birth to fully-actualized adult [interestingly, you will note that this was also the story of Bambi]. In approaching the challenges of telling such a sprawling story by providing thematic rather than plot-level cohesion, Puzo et al deliver an intelligent film that fully hangs together, despite containing such wildly disparate parts.
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