Thursday, December 3, 2020

Is "him" Superman?

I have no idea what Let Him Go is about it. It looks like a generic heartland movie that Kevin Costner has starred in a hundred times before, squinting up a storm each time.

But I'll tell you what it might be about: Superman.

I knew there was a reason this poster looked familiar, other than being so generic. It's because I've seen those two actors together on screen before.

As Clark Kent's parents.

That's right, in Man of Steel, Zack Snyder's first of now three movies featuring Superman, Costner plays Jonathan Kent, and Diane Lane plays his wife, Martha. I believe she's in each of the next two as well. I know, at least, that she is name-checked in the second, when the fact that both Batman and Superman have a mother named Martha plays hilariously into the resolution of their climactic skirmish.

It's a bit odd to cast these two together again, unless you are intentionally trying to invoke Superman. 

Now obviously, there are plenty of actors who team up regularly, without reminding us of one specific pair of roles they played previously. When you see Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn appear together in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, you aren't necessarily reminded of their characters in Adam's Rib,  because by the time they made that last movie together prior to Tracy's death, they had already appeared in eight other films together.

But Costner and Lane appear to be working together only for the second time, though I have to go on circumstantial evidence from googling, as IMDB appears to have removed its feature that allows you to see how many times an actor has been credited alongside another actor. (The internet says Let Him Go is "reuniting them" after Man of Steel, which suggests that was their first instance working together.)

And in the first instance, they played the adoptive Earth parents of the world's most famous superhero.

I don't have a problem with it. I just find it funny.

And hey, if a movie thinks it will benefit from reminding people of Zack Snyder's Superman movies rather than tainting it, more power to that movie. 

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