NObody has mentioned Joseph Campbell here yet?
Really? I didn’t know that since I have never seen ET (I know I am probably one of only a dozen people who can say that).
Okay, that makes quite a bit of sense.
I have to admit that in the trailer where Brando says “I have sent them you, my only son”, I wasn’t sure what to think. I didn’t remember that line from the first movie, and I had never seen nor heard the Superman = Jesus thing before that.
Screen writer Tom Mankiewicz went out to create the Superman/Jesus thing in the film. Mainly in Jor El’s speeches.
Jor El lines From Superman: The Movie
"You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you… even in the face of our deaths… the richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I’ve learned, everything I feel… all this, and more… I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your own eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. **The son becomes the father, and the father the son. **This is all I can send you, Kal-El. "
“Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, **I have sent them you… my only son. **”
Also there are some elements that can be seen. The ship that carries Kal El to Earth is in the shape of a great star.
Ma and Pa Kent are incapable of having a child until Jor El gives it to them.
Martha even says “We prayed and prayed for the good lord to see fit to give us a child”
Clark wanders into the wilderness and comes back as Superman after 12 years
He is in his 30s.
If Jor El is “God” that would make Zod “Satan”. This is because he is cast out from Krypton by Jor El for trying to take it over due to his Pride and arrogence. He even tries to tempt Jor El with promisses of Power and greatness.
I may be reading too much into this,but isn’t "“EL” a Hebrew word for god?
The same guys also wrote that the Phantom Zone was a big whirly window in space, General Zod could shoot a levitation ray from his finger, Superman thought an effective attack would be to throw a giant cellophane “S” at somebody… clearly liberties with the source material were taken.
Unfortunately Smallville has sort-of followed the same route, where everything related to Krypton is full of heavy-duty significance and symbolism.
“General Zod could shoot a levitation ray from his finger”
I saw an early edition of Superman and he had shape shifting abilities, so I guess anything goes for a fictional character
Yeah, Kryptonian powers got more than a little out of hand in the second movie. That big “S” that Supes threw was probably the most retarded thing I had seen, until I saw cyborg-lady in the third movie.
Actually, “Jor-el” is short for “Jerome Siegel.” Siegel figured that, since he created Superman, that made him his ‘father.’ (Perhaps then Siegel has a god complex.)
I’m just saying we’re an odd bunch, the Ranchoth family.
I’m not very knowledgable about Superman at all, so, experts, please tell me that this is completely wrong; but I happened to stumble upon something that, as I interpret it, and at least as seen with today’s eyes, might be a bit problematic for both the “Superman is Jesus” and the “Superman is based on Jewish mythology” crowds.
Namely, there’s a series of Superman cartoon shorts for cinema, from 1942, directed by Dave Fleischer (n.b. also Jewish (not that it really matters)). The first couple of cartoons have an introduction of Superman, from which I quote:
The “had brought forth a race of supermen,” doesn’t say what methods were used to achieve this, so one could imagine any kinds of genetical modification or cyborg-tech or such. But in the 40’s and without further context I believe it would suggest to the audience some kind of eugenics, which at the time in many different parts of the world was something that was widely considered possible, desirable, or even necessary to implement. And perhaps especially so (no, I don’t have a cite for this) among technology-optimistic sci-fi-fans.
And since “Superman” after all is a common translation of the term “Übermensch” this ties in quite obviously with an interpretation of Nietsche’s thought that most of today’s Nitscheans would consider a totally vulgar positivistic-materialistic misinterpretation, or some such. Basically something like this:
“Christianity has long kept us looking away from Earth and towards the next world. But we have killed God, and now it’s up to us to create meaning and purpose for ourselves on this earth. Here’s how we’ll do it: we men of today aren’t yet capable of this creating-a-meaning, but there’s this thing called biological evolution, which, as everybody knows, means that everything evolves with a purpose and gets better and better. Might it be that mankind is not the final step in this process? (<-- rhetorical question) Hence, we just have to expedite the process a bit by instituting racial eugenics, and the Superman/meaning-creator will be here in no time.”
I believe some muddled thinking in that style was why Hitler gave an exemplar of Also sprach Zarathustra to every soldier in the Wehrmacht.
So, as a conclusion, Superman is the Antichrist and a Nazi.
(Though at least the latter can be somewhat disputed by the fact that in the Japoteurs episode of that cartoon series, Superman does his share of helping with the war effort on the allies’ side, basically by hanging around incognito in Yokohama harbour sinking war ships all day long.)
While in the radio serials and film shorts it was originally true that all Kryptonians were supermen, this wasn’t due to eugenics: it was all down to heavy gravity and a different atmosphere. In any case, that particular detail has never, to my knowledge, been part of the Superman comics continuity, and if it has, it had dissapeared by the early 60’s if not sooner. In current continuity (and for a long time) Superman’s powers are due to exposure to the yellow sun of our earth, as opposed to the red one of his home planet. In other words, it is Superman’s arrival in America that has unlocked his hidden talents and transformed him into the super-immigrant we all know and love!
(I may have just been whooshed.)
Oh yeah, also I severly doubt whether the word “superman” would have gained common parlance outside philosophy students in 1938, and they would have been more likely to use the original German “ubermensch”. Although interestingly I believe there is an Elseworlds comic where Superman lands in Germany, becoming Uberman…
Yes, so much I had heard too before seeing that cartoon. But, just to be excessively clear: that particular cartoon by itself does seem to imply that advanced civilization was what created a race of Supermen.
(If anybody got curious, the cartoon series can be found on the web, although I won’t tell exactly where.)
I’m sorry to have to say that English is not my native language, and I can’t find it in the dictionary, so I have to ask: Does this mean:
A) I may just have been misled.
B) I believe something (Superman?) just passed me at very high speed, making a whooshing sound.
C) In a duel between Tarzan and the Antichrist, the most probable result would be 0-0.
Ah, “whooshed” is an expression we use on this message board, indicating that someone has just made a joke, but that someone else has failed to realise it was a joke, and has replied to it as if it were a serious comment. The “whoosh” sound is supposed to be the “joke” flying over somebody’s head.
It’s an interesting theory, but I simply don’t think it works with either Superman’s established continuity, or the history of the character. In any case, eugenics was not associated with the Nazis and gas chambers in 1942- indeed, the US practised large-scale eugenics programs (such as the forced sterilisation of the mentally ill and criminals) throught the 40’s and, I believe, beyond.
I just got back from the movie, and the Christ imagery is there, and blatant:
[spoiler]1. The aforementioned quote from Jor-el is used: “They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be, they only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son.”
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Supes gets pierced in the side, just like Jesus.
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Supes sacrifices his life to save the planet. As he dies, before falling back to Earth, he assumes a Christ-on-the-cross pose. He goes flat-line at the hospital later.
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Supes is resurrected.
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There is an “empty tomb” scene, when Mary Magdalene, I mean a nurse, discovers his empty hospital room.
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At the end, Supes assures Lois that he will always be around to help those who need him, and then he ascends slowly heavenward.
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Singer acknowledges the imagery in interviews.[/spoiler]
That should give it an extra box-office boost from the Passion of the Christ crowd. The cynic in me thinks that’s what Singer had in mind.
Oddly enough, in the showing I saw yesterday, one of the trailers was for a movie called “The Nativity Story.”
And, of course, one might even say the movie had paralels with…
[spoiler]The DaVinci code, ifyaknowwhatImean. 
Supes, you sly bastard… ;)[/spoiler]
I always understood that the Superman character as a whole was a palidan? I think he is much more a Galahad/Lancelot than a Messiah.
I guess the hero has a thousand and one faces now.
There were also a couple conversations referring to Superman as a savior.