Tag Archives: mystery box

Superman III 4.25: Revenge of the Cowboys

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I knew that they were coming; I just didn’t think it would be this soon.

As you’ll no doubt recall, my introductory post for the blog discussed singing cowboys, an unaccountably popular film genre from the 30s and 40s that spawned dozens of movies per year, and then disappeared completely from the American public consciousness. The fate of the singing cowboys looms large over the history of superhero blockbusters, suggesting that even the most successful genres can be abandoned and forgotten.

The singing cowboys will be back one day, when comic-book stories are tired and played-out, to fight once again for their place in the pantheon. They are the existential threat just over the horizon, ready to pounce when the superheroes stumble.

And even here, the cowboys remind us that the eternal sequel is never assured.

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Superman 1.79: K-Rock

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“Wish I could explain my strange reaction to that meteor!” Clark Kent wonders aloud. “Why do I get weak every time I come within five feet of it? And Krypton… Why did I keep repeating that word, over and over again? Krypton… What has the word Krypton to do with me? Sounds familiar, but I… just can’t place it! I must find out, because unless I’m very much mistaken… Krypton is the key to this whole strange business!”

You see, back in the old days, little Kal-El didn’t arrive on the planet Earth with a crystal library full of ancient knowledge and a hologram of his dad to explain how to use it; the kid just crashed, and it was up to the passing motorists to figure everything out from scratch.

So in 1943, when the Adventures of Superman radio show decided that they wanted Superman to know where he came from, they invented a meteor and called it Kryptonite, and then they put it in a drawer and forgot about it for another two years.

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Superman 1.27: House of Wax

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It was bound to happen; it’s how these tall tales work. When you’re telling stories about the strongest man in the world, there’s a natural narrative pressure to make him even bigger and stronger and more unbeatable, over time.

Paul Bunyan, the mighty fabled lumberjack of the Northwoods, started out as seven feet tall, able to chop down tree after tree without stopping for rest. As the legend grew, Paul soared to forty feet tall. In the later tales, Paul could fell a tree just by shouting at it, and his bootprints created the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota.

The same thing happened to Superman. In 1938, he could pick up an automobile; in 1940, he demolished a house with a single blow of his fist; in 1943, he hit a baseball so hard that it circled the globe; and by 1949, he could crash a couple of moons together to make a sun for a distant planet that didn’t already have one.

So when it’s time for him to relax, he can’t sit around and watch TV. He needs to do something spectacular, and if that means creating a creepy private exploding wax museum, then the rest of us are going to have to come along for the ride.

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Superman 1.23: The Myth of the Monomyth

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Around dawn, Clark wakes from a restless slumber and there’s a hum somewhere — some high, electric, pulsing hum coming from the general barn area, and it gets louder, the longer he thinks about it. Something’s out there, something that was buried a long time ago.

People should always dig up mystery boxes, it’s just good protocol. If somebody went to all the trouble to bury their secrets deep in the earth, then obviously it’s supposed to be dug up and exposed to the open air again. Nine times out of ten, something terrible happens, but you never know, you might be the lucky one.

It’s December 15th — just before Christmas, 1978 — and Clark is unwrapping his gift ten days early. Inside, he finds a little green lightsaber, which is literally the thing that every kid in America is hoping for this year.

This is the Call to Adventure, and if you’ve got your Joseph Campbell Hero with a Thousand Faces bingo card handy, you can cross that one off the list. This is the hero venturing forth from the world of common day, aka this wheat field, into a region of supernatural wonder, aka the North Pole, where he’ll get Supernatural Aid and/or Cross the First Threshold, and then go into the Belly of the Whale and set out on the Road of Trials, which I think is the Daily Planet typing test. Unless the Belly of the Whale was the space capsule, of course, in which case the Road of Trials was probably running faster than the train, and now it’s time to meet Woman as the Temptress. Which is probably Lois, but at the moment she’s only nine years old, so it might be somebody else.

Well, today’s the day that we get all this figured out. It’s time for us to ask whether Superman: The Movie follows Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey, as an example of the universal monomyth. The answer, obviously, is of course it fucking doesn’t.

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Superman 1.8: See You Later

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And in the other corner: General Zod and his Kryptonian dance crew, appearing temporarily in their standing-room-only farewell stadium show.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that there were mistakes on both sides. Yes, Non is a mindless aberration whose only means of expression are wanton violence and destruction. True, the woman Ursa’s perversions and unreasoning hatred of all mankind have threatened even the children of the planet Krypton. Admittedly, General Zod — once trusted by this council, charged with maintaining the defense of the planet Krypton itself — was chief architect of this intended revolution and author of this insidious plot to establish a new order amongst us, with himself as absolute ruler.

I think the important thing is that we come together as a bipartisan coalition, put the past behind us, and start working on the issues that really matter to the average Kryptonian.

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