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. 

"Our Zod" and "our Khan"

I've long associated Superman II and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in my head, but never before had so many reasons to do so as I do these days.

Not only did they both come out around the same time (1981 and 1982, respectively), they were both installments in series that would run for years and years and reboot in multiple incarnations. They were also both second movies that I loved, following on the heels of original movies that underwhelmed me. In fact, I'm sure I've seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture only once, and I've seen Superman: The Movie twice at most, though possibly only once.

Both movies also gave birth to what, to this day, I consider to be two of the greatest villains in cinema history. Their names should come as no surprise to you, since I've included them in the title of this post and furnished you with pictures of them above.

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW ABOUT STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS AND MAN OF STEEL

Zod (then played by Terence Stamp) and Khan (then played by Ricardo Montalban) have dug themselves into our collective moviegoing psyche to such an extent that they were both rebooted in movies from the summer of 2013 (one in an actual second movie, the other in a second reboot of the series in the last ten years). It's not a secret in Man of Steel; it's sort of a secret in Star Trek Into Darkness, hence the spoiler warning. In fact, these characters' reappearance in these franchises (neither having appeared since their original movies) was such a selling point that the characters' presence alone got people in my generation excited about seeing these movies.

The thing is, they're not "our Zod" or "our Khan."

I thought that was particular felicitous phrasing from a friend over the weekend. I hadn't seen Man of Steel yet (I accomplished that feat Tuesday night), but people were talking about it a little at someone's birthday drinks -- not very positively, as it turns out. They knew not to get into spoiler territory with me present, but I also didn't want my presence to shut down the conversation completely, so I gave my one friend the chance to throw me a bone on something that I thought would be easy: "Is Michael Shannon at least good?" I figured there was only one possible answer to this question.

"Yes, but he's not our Zod," my friend said.

It turns out I both agreed and disagreed with my friend. Michael Shannon wasn't our Zod, it's true. But he also wasn't that good. Maybe my friend didn't think he was so good either, but wanted to give me something I could use to bring a sense of optimism to my impending screening.

However, Shannon was enough like our Zod, appearance and otherwise, to at least be recognizable as Zod. I can't really say the same for Benedict Cumberbatch as (LAST SPOILER ALERT) Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. Cumberbatch is a far more interesting presence than Shannon, more cunning and diabolical, but he's really not that much like Ricardo Montalban. I suppose giving a character in 2013 bronzed muscles and a mane of shoulder-length white hair isn't really practical, but did Cumberbatch have to be so different from that template? Why even call him Khan in the first place?

As I try to make an objective case for those movies from the early 1980s being superior efforts to the movies from the summer of 2013, I must also realize that there's nothing objective about it. I try to imagine myself as a teenager today coming to these movies, and what I would think of them. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a real oddity in a lot of ways, as the hero (Captain Kirk) and the villain (Khan) are never actually in the same place at the same time. Not once. As a teenager today, I'd probably be flummoxed by long parts of the movie in which "nothing happens." Superman II is as much of an oddity in different ways. It does contain moments of the kind of darkness Zack Snyder is going for in Man of Steel -- don't forget Christopher Reeve dramatically yelling "Father!!!" in the shattered Fortress of Solitude -- but it's also got a ton of moments of levity, more than any modern teen is accustomed to seeing in their superhero movies. Whole characters (Lex Luthor, Non) are basically comic relief -- and that's just among the "villains."

So yeah, of course I'm going to prefer "our Zod" and "our Khan" over "their Zod" and "their Khan." They may see it as the reverse. If they're smart, they'll overcome the problem of being born in the late 1990s and find the true genius in the original incarnations of those roles, and in the inimitable performances of Stamp and Montalban, each subtle in their own ways, each chewing the scenery in their own ways as well.

More than anything, though, I see the resurrection of these characters as a validation of two movies from my youth that I have cherished for years, standing up for them even when others in my generation were snubbing them upon discovered "Great films" with a capital G.

Oh, I don't take the fact that they're being offered to the next generation of pop culture junkies as proof, per se, that Star Trek II and Superman II were great. You might say I should draw the opposite conclusion, that if Zod and Khan are being offered to the masses again, it's a sign that they are safe enough for general consumption.

But I don't choose to see it that way. I always thought I was a little weird that I could quote whole sections of Khan's whispered threats to Kirk. I always thought it was a little goofy when I put on my best Terence Stamp voice and operatically performed the line "Why do you say these things to me, when you know I will kill you for it?" Now I feel more prophetic than marginalized.

And I guess I do pity today's kids a bit, because they're not getting movies that are both awesome and sort of ridiculous at the same time. You can't love Zod and Khan without realizing that you are, on some level, getting off on a completely hammy performance. But these hammy performances didn't make the movie suffer, as they might today. Somehow they elevated the movie and made it more grandiose. That's what's been lost today: the ability to look at a big performance unironically. Zod and Khan filled the screen, sometimes with near Shakespearean levels of gravitas that couldn't help but verge on the camp. But that's what made them great.

It's not just that movies tried to be funny back then but they don't try to be funny today. Strangely, you have a flip-flop in the tones of these movies from the movies that revived these characters this summer. Star Trek II is a dour film, containing almost no humor outside of an occasional playful exchange between Bones and Kirk. Star Trek Into Darkness tries to be funnier than that -- not a lot funnier, but somewhat funnier, as the whole character of Scotty (Simon Pegg) exists for comic purposes. Superman II, on the other hand, is practically a comedy for whole patches of the running time, while Man of Steel barely cracks a smile once -- and when it does so, it's inappropriately out of sync with what's going on in the story.

This does make me wonder what today's young people grab onto when they're looking for "their Zod" or "their Khan" -- not those actual characters, but the modern equivalents they will one day cherish. Is it Loki from The Avengers? Is it Bane or the Joker? Is it the character Michael Sheen plays in the Twilight movies? I hear he's frigging hilarious.

What seems likeliest is that they don't have a Khan or a Zod -- and that's the saddest part. Everyone deserves a Khan or a Zod ... even if they have the audacity to have been born in the late 1990s.

Zack Snyder's ultimate test

Zack Snyder is a figure of some controversy among knowledgeable movie fans.

There seems to be near-universal acclaim for his debut feature, the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. But from that point onward, the opinions on him diverge sharply. Some see him as a masterful shepherd of big pictures with big ideas; others see him as a latter-day Joel Schumacher. However, even those who are in his corner seem to recognize that there's something not-quite-right, something impure about championing him as one of today's true visionaries.

So far, this has not mattered all that much, because the "big pictures" Snyder has directed have been big in scope and budget only. Movies like 300 and Watchmen are definitely "big," no question about it -- but it's largely because of how they were marketed to us. Most people were not readers of the graphic novels/comic books that inspired these movies, so our expectations of them were limited to being excited over the first trailers we saw. We had few preconceived notions of what he might ruin or might do correctly. And indeed, some of us were disappointed in 300 (me) and in Watchmen (certainly not me), but it was only because of how they were executed within themselves. It's not because Snyder "got them wrong" -- unless, of course, you were one of the limited groups of fanboys who did have a passionate love for the source material.

Then his next two films, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole and Sucker Punch, were genuine flops, disliked by many if not most of the people who saw them. Sucker Punch in particular, with its problematic gender politics, contributes as much as anything to the negative opinions people have of Snyder. However, again, these were not "big movies" in the sense that they had to either live up to, or fail to live up to, our expectations. Sucker Punch, in fact, was a completely original concept -- a first for Snyder.

So this all changes today, when the latest Superman reboot comes out. Now Snyder can genuinely ruin something we all care deeply about ... or make it transcendent.

You never know which way Snyder's going to go.

The funny thing is, I'd say that I generally like (Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen) fewer of Snyder's movies than I generally dislike (300, Guardians, Sucker Punch), yet I feel like I'm one of the aforementioned Snyder apologists. I think it's that I liked what he did in those two movies so much, I tend to forget that I didn't like some of his decisions in the other movies. The good decisions outweigh the bad ones, especially in the case of Watchmen.

One thing I like about Snyder is that he makes errors of commission, not errors of omission. Anything he does that doesn't work is not for lack of trying. He puts bold ideas out there. Sometimes they don't work. In fact, sometimes they fail miserably.

Then again, you could say that Michael Bay also makes errors of commission.

But I choose to be plenty excited for Man of Steel. The only other pure superhero movie Snyder made, Watchmen, is my favorite of his movies. I do think he has the ability to take this material and make it transcendent, and the original trailers I saw for it (I've tried to avoid them more recently) only confirmed that notion for me. Plus, Michael Shannon as Zod? I'm there.

Just not this weekend. Sunday is Father's Day, but my sister is in town, and Sunday is also her birthday. I do actually think we'll see a movie that night, but I think it'll be This is the End.

Then again, perhaps I should reconsider promoting that movie more than the others that are out there ... since she arrived on Tuesday, I've shown her both Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and Galaxy Quest, and neither of them were the hits with her I was hoping they'd be.

Perhaps comedy is not the right choice for her ... though I doubt that superheroes would be either.

So I may need to seek a compromise. That's the price I pay when I share "my day" with somebody else.