Live and kicking: why Superman is still relevant to modern filmgoers

Sometimes it is necessary to thank the Kryptonian heavens for small mercies. Reports that Michael B Jordan is being considered for the role of Superman in the DC extended universe (if we can even call it that any more) might easily have formed the basis of the latest race swapping backlash from the darker corners of the internet. After all, narrow-minded keyboard warriors have recently managed to get their knickers in a twist over such “oh-so shocking” shifts as Disney’s live action The Little Mermaid being played by an African American.

Instead, Variety’s report this week on all things DC has inspired some Twitter users to lament the eminent publication’s suggestion that Superman needs to be made more relevant for modern audiences. It is for this reason, the Hollywood trade suggests, that Jordan has been in talks to pitch his own vision, while Star Wars and Star Trek’s JJ Abrams has also been sounded out about a reinvention for the age-old hero.

“The sad thing about WB’s handling of Superman is that this is THE PERFECT time for a Superman movie. He is the embodiment of hope. He’s an immigrant created by two Jewish dudes in the late 1930s. Wtf are you doing if you don’t know how to make that relevant right now”, writes one Twitter user. Another opines: “Superman is a space immigrant living in rural American and you are saying he is not relevant?”

Such outbursts rather miss the point, of course. Being a Hollywood publication, Variety is concerned with the reasons Superman has failed to connect with audiences over the past four decades. Its writers are simply pointing out that successive film-makers have fallen short when vying to establish the relevance of Kal-El’s tale of the ultimate outsider in the modern world. From the descent into clumsy knockabout comedy of the post-Richard Donner films, to Bryan Singer’s bland and overly reverential Superman Returns in 2006, to Zack Snyder’s half-cocked Man of Steel and Justice League, the son of Jor-El has somehow lost his big screen majesty – to the point where he was long ago overtaken by ostensibly more prosaic heroes such as Marvel’s Iron Man.

Donner had to earn the sense of wonder at the cosmos that 1978’s original Superman film inspired, and it is perhaps no shock that his successors have struggled in the absence of matching raw materials. There really is no modern equivalent of Marlon Brando available to film-makers these days, even if Russell Crowe did his best to recapture the regal dignity of his predecessor as Jor-El in Man of Steel.

Perhaps Superman has struggled not because successive creative teams have failed to delve too deeply into his immigrant psyche, but because the world in 2019 is very different to the one Christopher Reeve’s blue-eyed Kryptonian entered in 1978. Maybe audiences in these faithless times are simply less likely to warm to Christ-like figures sent from above to solve all the Earth’s problems, even if we need them now more than ever. We are less open-hearted, and more likely to find ourselves narrowing our eyes in disbelief at our so-called leaders’ latest misdeeds and falsehoods than we are to raise them to the cosmos in hope. Or perhaps every Superman movie since the early 80s has failed because they were all, largely, utter crap.

The logic of asking Abrams to reinvent Kal-El for modern audiences is easy to process. Not everyone has warmed to the film-maker’s new takes on Star Wars and Star Trek, but few would suggest that he has not taken on his task in each instance with a gusto and verve rather lacking in those who have been placed in charge of Superman. An Abrams Superman movie starring Jordan would be a tantalising prospect, even if the latter’s fame (certainly not his skin colour, which has grounding in the comics) makes him an unlikely candidate to play a hero who really ought to be played by an unknown.

Abrams is of course responsible for the infamous Superman Flyby screenplay of the early noughties, a never-made movie in which Lex Luther turns out to be a Kryptonian masquerading as a government agent obsessed with UFOs (and can fly!) The script was subject to ridicule when it emerged in 2002. But given the man of steel’s struggles in the intervening years, perhaps such fanciful, far-out cosmic whimsies encompass the sense of madcap adventure that anyone taking on Superman is going to need to inspire new interest in the long-running character. After all, Hollywood has tried pretty much everything else.