Man of Steel

There is a common understanding that superhero movies can only do a certain portion of what other movies can do. A superhero movie is always going to be relatively successful at the box office, and if it is a good superhero movie it has the chance to be incredibly successful. This sort of movie will always contain intense action scenes, the total destruction of a city or two, a villain, a hero's eventual triumph over evil, and a very pretty girl who factors into the plot line somehow.

Man of Steel (the Superman movie which came out last year from Producer Christopher Nolan of Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy fame which you had to live under a rock to not hear about) was no exception. A constant battle between good and evil, this movie had some serious destruction, action scenes galore, plenty of evil characters (and one main villain), and the beautiful Amy Adams playing Lois Lane. If you were looking for a classic superhero movie, Man of Steel delivered.

I realize that I'm writing this review long after the movie came out and most of you saw it, but it's on Redbox now and that's where I get all of my movies so I'm going to write about it now; my apologies if that makes you angry or makes you not want to read this.

Image from IMDB

One of the things that I found most interesting about Man of Steel was the way that it hinted at its underlying moral message, but was nowhere near as conspicuous about it as, say, Nolan's Dark Knight. In the second installment of that Batman trilogy, the Joker was constantly calling to mind moral issues centering on the idea of anarchy and the question of whether people would choose their own good over the good of the other. One example, you'll recall, is the bomb placed on the ferries out at sea. It is the Joker's conviction that the people will blow up the other boat to save themselves, thinking that in all circumstances people will choose their own good over any sense of morals if it is a life or death issue.

In Man of Steel, the issue largely centers around the same ideas, although not for all of humanity as in The Dark Knight as much as simply for our protagonist. The question is presented as it often has before: should he choose his own people, his own race, and his own future, or should he decide to risk his life saving the people whom he grew up with but with whom he doesn't truly belong.

As movies so often day, Man of Steel caused the viewer to confront the issue of morality through the characters in the movie, both Clark Kent and Lois Lane. If, in the face of life or death, you are asked to break a specific code you have chosen to live by, or do something you think is wrong, will you do it? Is it, the movie questions us, in fact the right thing to do, as long as it helps others?

Again in the way that movies often do, Man of Steel presents examples of many of the different answers to this question. There are situations in this movie when Superman chooses to live by his pre-chosen code, and it seems to be the wrong choice; in other instances, it is certainly the correct choice to follow the code.

For us, then, as the consumer, the movie begs the question: what determines how we should act in these types of situations?

I know that, for many of my readers, this answer sounds simple. Double effect, you say. Look to Catholic Moral Teaching and see that it's never permissible to do evil to bring about good. You are certainly right, but isn't there sometimes more to the issue (keep reading before calling me a heretic)? What about times when you have chosen a specific path or code, but it is not necessarily a path of right vs. wrong, but rather two different options to the good? In those situations, then, what is it that allows us to know what to choose in the face of adversity?

For Clark Kent, this was simple: he looked to the way he had been raised, having been trained, as he says in a key part of the movie, to focus on what it is he needs to focus on. In other words, as a child he had been taught virtue and integrity, learning to tune out all distractions and focus on the task at hand, doing what needed to be done and removing all distractions. Clark had been taught by his father on earth that he could choose what kind of man he was to be, and he could spend his life learning to tune out and ignore temptations to be a different sort of man.

"You just have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be, Clark; because whoever that man is, good character or bad, he's gonna change the world."                     -Jonathan Kent

Overall, Man of Steel was another superhero movie. If you don't like loud action scenes, big explosions, and wars with people from other planets, you probably won't like this movie too much. As these movies often do, though, Man of Steel contained a much deeper lesson on morality, one that would be good for each of us to consider.