For this Man of Steel analysis I’m going to do something a bit off the beaten path…
First, let me remind the reader that MoS’s story sets up BvS. MoS is the first film of what was a planned five film saga by Zack Snyder. My approach here brings MoS and BvS together as parts of a continuing story. The themes I will be exploring are foundations laid in MoS that continue to develop in BvS.
Second, I’m very taken by the fact that MoS arguably focuses more on the theme of humanity’s “first contact” with an alien civilization than on giving us as an intimate character study of the Superman character himself, as an individual personality. I’m not saying that we don’t get a character study at all. We do. But I’m observing that the momentous event of mankind learning beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is “not alone in the universe”–and that the extraterrestrial presence is far advanced and godlike compared with us–takes center stage in the film.
The notion that ETs that visit earth would be godlike to us, in and of itself, is hardly a revolutionary idea. But the film delivers it in a truly spectacular and visceral way. And Man of Steel uses Superman as an extraterrestrial in a much more grounded way than we had theretofore seen in a live action film.
The U.S. Department of Defense has recently admitted that our military has encountered “unidentified aerial phenomena” (formerly known as “unidentified flying objects”) that display capabilities vastly beyond anything believed to exist in any earthly military inventory, including any nation’s black budget programs. DOD has unofficially been making this disclosure for the last couple of years through spokesman for To The Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In speaking about the military’s UFO encounters with mainstream media Elizondo has actually used the phrase “We may not be alone.”
The biggest story of our lifetime… arguably in all of recorded human history… will be confirmation that extraterrestrial civilizations exist. This will be a massive paradigm shift of identity for humanity. I believe that this paradigm shift serves as a metaphor for the clash of modernism and postmodern as I outlined in my analysis of BvS.
This will seem a stretch to some, but it’s actually a fair and reasonable question just how consciously, actively, and intentionally this theme… i.e., namely that of shock and deep disruption to the collective psyche of humanity from confirming extraterrestrial advanced civilizations exist… is in MoS and BvS. In Jungian theory, by definition symbolism can and quite normally does arise unconsciously in the creative process of art (here filmmaking) from the collective unconscious. The theme is certainly discernible in the film. Again, just how deliberately developed it is by Zack Snyder is a question that only he can answer.
Watch the video below. Let the ideas sink in. Then (re)read the articles BvS is a Watchmen-like Deconstruction and BvS: The Clash of Modernism and Postmodernism. I’ll be writing more soon about how the paradigm shift of mankind learning it is not alone in the universe connects with those articles. Keep an eye out below on this page.
The Snyderverse 