Three weeks after my post on the Christology of Superman, CNN comes up with a non-story suggesting (or saying others have suggested) that Warner Bros. is incorporating a Christian allegory into the plot of Superman Returns — basically amounting to He's Gone But Now He's Back — in order to tap into the megabucks that fuelled the box office successes of The Passion and Narnia. (HT to the Jawa Report.)
Speculation was originally prompted by the first teaser trailer which featured Marlon Brando's voice talking about sending his only son to the earth to be its savior. Fair enough. But the article never observes that this stuff was all in the original movie (the origin of the Brando recording, after all!), and Singer is just trying to make his sequel consistent with the Donner films.
Yes it’s true that some of the allegory to christianity was there in the old movies, but in Superman returns they seem to have made it much more clear. Not just the Father sending the Son but many other things such as Superman taking on the worlds “sin”. In the Bible it says that God does not tolerate sin (just like Superman can’t tolerate cryptonite.), and that one man’s sin(Lex) was enough to condemn the world. Then Superman dies while taking on the cryptonite and comes back to life.
In my opinion they have pretty much copied the story about Jesus in this film, deliberate or not.
The film also suggests that Superman has a child, wich is not true about Jesus(according to the Bible), but was done in “The Da Vinci code”.
J.
Comment by Johnny — 15 Aug. 2006 @ 2:21 pm
That’s true. While the first movie follows the overall narrative of Jesus’ life very closely (like the first Matrix does), Superman Returns is more of a theological interpretation of it (carrying the world on his shoulders, etc.). I hope to write a more extended review soon.
Thanks for commenting!
Comment by Nobody — 15 Aug. 2006 @ 8:01 pm