I Have Sent Them You, My Only Son...

You know what month it is? It's June. You know what that means? It means it's Superman month. Bryan Singer, the director who made X-Men 1 & 2 such excellent superhero movies, passed on directing the third installment of X-Men (so in a way, it's his fault that X3 stank like pig feces) to bring back Superman to the big screen. Superman is my favorite hero of all time. Despite my exposure to pretty much every kind of super-hero imaginable, Superman remains my one, true inspiration. Superman is the reason I thoroughly loved and enjoyed the vastly underrated Brad Bird opus, The Iron Giant. It is arguably the best non-Superman Superman movie ever made. I cry every time I see it. This isn't saying much, considering I cry at movies all the time. Heck, I cry at trailers. Speaking of trailers, the teaser trailer of Superman Returns makes me misty-eyed every time I play it. I love this trailer because it embodies pretty much why I love Superman. Of course, Joe Kelly's Action Comics #775 "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" also explains why I love the big blue Boy Scout, but the voice-over in the teaser trailer hits the nail right on the head.

"Even though you've been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. They could 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."

You can replace "Kal-El" in that monologue with "Jesus", and it would work just as fine. One reason why I love Superman so much is that he embodies the "super" we all aspire to be. He has, despite his near limitless power, the most human heart. He's the Jesus Christ of comic books. To avoid getting into a whole string of theological meandering which I'm inclined to do at this point, I will just say how absolutely and utterly excited I am about the movie coming out. I already have tickets to the first showing on the first day at the IMAX theater at 9am, and I think I won't be able to sleep. I'm really stoked about it, and I feel it's like the first day of school. I know I'm going to cry. I don't think I've been this excited about a film since I saw the first Lord of the Rings trailer. Probably more. At any rate, it's June. It's Superman month. And it's less than a week away.