The core trouble with Superman is that Hollywood producers want to see him punch things, (and in his latest movie... he punched nearly
$2 trillion worth of things, and cost the lives of more than 129,000 fictional people... good job, Supes.) This, of course, means that Hollywood essentially tries to shoehorn the Man of Steel into an action movie. As they have learned, it's hard to find believably powerful villains to throw up against a man that can punch a hole in the
fabric of space-time, but that's nothing new. It has long been established that Hollywood writers have no idea how to write Superman, and thanks to the New 52 series, I am starting to wonder if comic writers even remember how to write him either. He is too powerful, too perfect, too good, too "everything," for them to feel like they can make a compelling story. So instead we get things like Lex Luthor buffoonery, Earth-rotational reversions, heavy handed symbolism, and, now, dark gritty uber-violence. So what if writer's were to stop approaching Superman from the point of view of how much he can punch and start examining him in the same way we approach another alien from across the pond.
It's actually not that far-fetched. Superman and the Doctor are not all that different. They are both god-like beings that came to Earth to save humanity. They are both orphans of now extinct races, they are both effectively immortal, and they have both been essentially adopted by two powerful countries, America and Britain respectively. Granted there are differences, (the Doctor tends to pick up with whoever happens to be wandering the streets that day, and Superman is a one woman guy,) but at the core of their mythologies their similarities are much stronger. So before we continue to make the
horrible mistakes of
Man of Steel maybe its time to reevaluate how we approach everyone's favorite Kryptonian.
Lonely Gods
The Doctor hides it well, but there are flashes of moments when we see the true demons of the great Time Lord. His race is dead, his planet gone, and he is the only one of his kind left. Normally he hides his pain among a whimsical exterior, but in those briefest moments you see a man in deep personal pain and anguish. Those cracks in the armor not only makes the alien more relatable, but delivers the appropriate amount of emotional impact. It makes the Doctor more endearing and yet more complex at the same time. Also it is a much more effective tool than if he spent the majority of the time moping about all his problems.
I am not saying that Supes should emulate this kind of behavior to the letter, because quite frankly when the Doctor shows us these moments of rage and sadness he can sometimes come off seeming a bit dangerous and even dark. Superman at his core can never be that dark, but whenever writers do give us a peak beneath the boyscout exterior we tend to get a person who comes off as whiny and wanders the Earth with a homeless man beard for thirty minutes of a movie. Clark Kent will always be somewhat defined by his status as an orphan and an outsider, but unlike the Doctor he never knew his planet or his people. Instead, Clark Kent had a loving family who raised him and cared for him as their own. Despite his secrets and his pain he still has very real and very powerful love in his life. That means playing up the "lonely orphan," angle to make him relatable actually makes him more two-dimensional. Talk to any adopted child, and there are certainly moments of pain, transition, and what ifs, but the greater moments for Clark and those like him are spent with the people who raised him, loved him, and protected him. This is not to say that there is still not an element of pain and longing, but it is a longing for a world he never knew and a life that never was. Superman is a great man whose heart's desire is to be average, and to make his pain the focus of his story is a disservice to the character and to the fans. So let's take a note from Doctor Who and leave that pain buried, except for those small special moments of vulnerability when we get to see the man behind the steel. For a really good example of how this should be done, I highly recommend Alan Moore's: For the Man Who Has Everything.
A Need for Humanity
One of the things that makes the Doctor so appealing is his obvious need for humans, not just in the form of his companions, but on the much grander scale as well. With Gallifrey destroyed you get the sense that Earth is now the closest thing he has to a homeworld. He cares about its inhabitants and the trajectory of its history and future. On the more personal scale, its his human companions that keep the Time Lord stable and grounded. For example take the end run of the tenth doctor, without a companion at his side he lost it, (just a little). He tried to play god and paid for it. The writers on Doctor Who seem acutely aware how important the human relationship is for our alien friend. Its a mutual relationship that balances the show and the Doctor. Superman, like his Time Lord counterpart has human companions too, a fact his writers sometimes try to forget.
Granted it is going to be unrealistic if Jimmy Olsen (no one likes you Jimmy) were to pull Superman's butt out of the fire in the same way that we so often watched Rose Tyler save the day. (However, if Lois Lane did it, that might be a super-horse of a different color, and a bit more believable.) I think we sometimes forget that Superman is Superman because of the people around him. His parents raised him to be a good and caring person. His love of Lois adds a further driving factor to the story, and even more so than the Doctor, Earth is his homeworld while Krypton is just a memory. He fights to defend the rights and freedoms of the people on this planet because he not only has a deep caring for humans, but because they have a deep caring for him. I sometimes think writers have this need to try and isolate Superman, but that is wrong. Maybe that's why I have never seen a need to kill off Jonathan Kent. My favorite incarnations are the ones where Pa Kent lives and is able to have a normal and loving adult father-son relationship with Clark. He's not Batman, he doesn't need tragedy and brooding loneliness to do what he does. He fights for humanity out of love, like the love he experiences from his family and friends, (Batman included.) You can't have a Superman story without his supporting cast. They made him and they keep him grounded, same as the Doctor. For some really good examples of the power of Superman's supporting cast check out John Bryne's limited series: Man of Steel.
Nobody is Perfect
Whatever you want to say about everyone's favorite two-hearted Time Lord, he is still just human. Though it doesn't happen often, he makes mistakes, but his mistakes aren't like yours and mine. When the Doctor screws up timelines get changed, worlds get altered, and people die. Whether it is something as simple as leaving the TARDIS door open or shutting down a satellite that halts the progress of Earth, the Doctor has been known to make a mess of things, in big ways. Partly this is due to the fact that he is last of the Time Lords, and all the responsibility is left on his shoulders. He is often forced into situations where he must make snap decisions to save lives. Most of the time he makes the right call, but every once in a while he does something that comes back to haunt him in bad and horrible ways. From a writer's perspective there is a power to the fallibility of the Doctor. He is the last of a race of beings who used to pride themselves on managing timelines and keeping order in the universe. Now there is only one man left to do that and he's not perfect.
This, above all else, is desperately needed by the Superman franchise. Superman is always perfect. He always does the right thing. He always makes the right call, but why? He acutely feels as much, if not more (Superman is a hero/savior and the Doctor is a wanderer) of the responsibility on his shoulders than the Doctor. He gets forced into situations all the time where he must make quick decisions, but he never screws up. I understand that readers, TV watchers, and movie goers have an expectation of Superman saving the day, and we want to see that fulfilled, but that's not what I am talking about. How great and impactful would it be to see Superman make a decision that saves hundreds of lives in the short term but has unforeseen consequences in the long run. Think about the moment of his realization that he screwed up and that any tragedy that occurs from it is directly his fault. How driven would he be to correct that mistake? How far would he go to absolve his guilt? Would he have to win back the trust of the people of Earth? Having the morals, powers, and responsibilities of Superman are easy when everything is going great, but its in times of tragedy and self-doubt that those things are really tested and conflict is created. If Superman is a god than his mistakes will be bigger and much more far-reaching than our own. The innate justice that guides Clark in all things needs to be tested by conflicts that are more important than punching Darkseid in the face. For the closest example I would suggest turning to the DCAU episode of Superman: The Animated Series, Legacy Part I & II.
Noble Sacrifice
When I talk about a noble sacrifice, I don't necessarily mean that characters like the Doctor and Superman give their lives for us humans, (though they both have on a few occasions,) because what is the giving of one life to an alien that will just regenerate or to a near-immortal comic book hero that will just come back in the next issue. What I mean by "noble sacrifice," is giving up very personal and very real things that can't be found again. We see this a lot with Doctor Who. We see when the tenth Doctor stands on a beach, seconds away from proclaiming his love for Rose Tyler, knowing that he sacrificed any chance of that for her own good and the good of two worlds. We see him tearfully wipe the memory of his friend Donna Noble so that she will forget him so as to be safe. Time and time again we watch the Doctor rip out his own heart (figuratively) just to safeguard his friends and the people of Earth. In many ways that is a lot more powerful than simply dying.
Superman, on the other hand, feels very little consequences for his role as savior. This issue, like many others, is not entirely the writer's fault. Being a comic book characters, we expect Superman to have a certain status quo and to keep to that. We hardly ever see Supes give up something or someone that is part of his long standing history. The closest thing we get, is the sacrifice he makes of hiding the "real" Clark Kent beneath the bumbling nerdy exterior of the "Daily Planet" Clark Kent. What we really need is to see Superman make the kinds of decision that require deep personal loss. For instance, what if he was faced with the decision to save a world of aliens or Jimmy Olsen? What does he decide? Each will have consequences both personal and far reaching. What if he had to watch helplessly as Batman went willingly to his death to protect the world? What if Superman had to give up Lois' love to keep her safe? These are the type of emotional scars that would not only make Superman more compelling to the audience but bring a new layer of storytelling to the same old mythos of the Man of Steel. It might be a little harder for these kind of sacrifices to happen among a cast of characters that has been so fixed in time, but for a good example look at what Nolan did with the Batman/Rachel Dawes relationship. That was true personal sacrifice.
Everything is Going to be Alright
I want to end on this one because its essential to both the Doctor and Superman. Its that feeling you get inside (way down in your chest) when the world is turning to hell, everything is out of control, and you realize that there is nothing you can do about it. Then you turn your head and out of some blue box steps the Doctor, or down from the sky comes Superman, his cape flowing out behind him. It's that moment you want to cheer and leap up because suddenly you know everything is going to be alright. Its almost a religious experience, as if God himself were to step down from the heavens to battle space monsters. It's the feeling that we're not alone, the universe makes sense, and for all the bad and horrible crap that's out there, there is at least one shining beacon of hope. It is this moment, and that one word (hope,) that makes up the essence of both characters.
I understand that some of the suggestions I made here, have the potential to alter certain aspects of the Superman character, but quite frankly I don't see it that way. The important thing in all of this is to stay faithful to the tone of the character. Whether you're talking about Kal'el or the Doctor it is their belief in freedom and possibility that permeates their actions and our perceptions of them. It is a hope in the human spirit and in the rightness and justice of the universe. Above all else, you can't lose that, especially if you're Superman. He can have his dark moments and even have his doubts, but his better nature must always win out, even if it comes at personal loss. Look at Doctor Who, good always wins, even if its not always a clean victory. I cannot stress how important it is that Superman remains the boyscout and the paragon of virtue and morality he has always been. Writer's try to update Superman by changing his attitude, but that is the one thing that cannot change. After all, people like Superman and the Doctor are not just momentary heroes, they are symbols. They are the examples we hold up in our mind and strive to be like. They are the epitome of everything we should want to be. They are our shining light of hope in a dark universe, and above all else, that can never change.
