Will Jus­tice League give us a Super­man we can believe in?

Through­out the mar­ket­ing cam­paign for Jus­tice League, fans have been teased with images of memo­ri­als to Super­man, and Bat­man speak­ing about how his death means a loss of hope for all. The only prob­lem is we nev­er real­ly got that Super­man. Both Sui­cide Squad and Bat­man v Super­man were built around the premise that the pub­lic shouldn’t trust Super­man. Noth­ing would make audi­ences hap­pi­er than see­ing DC and Warn­er Bros push the Super­man-as-a-bea­con-of-hope nar­ra­tive, but absolute­ly noth­ing in either of those films sug­gest­ed that a hope­ful Super­man would ever be realised onscreen. Three films in, they’ve achieved what Lex Luthor nev­er could: con­vince the world to fear Superman.

Upon Kal-El’s birth, his father Jor-El (Rus­sell Crowe) claims that he will be a god to the peo­ple of Earth. While Zack Snyder’s fond­ness for Watch­men may have led him to con­flate two god­ly beings, Super­man isn’t Dr Man­hat­tan. You’ll nev­er catch him say­ing that he’s “…tired of Earth… tired of being caught in the tan­gle of their lives.” Super­heroes were invent­ed to remove such mor­tal lim­i­ta­tions. They were cre­at­ed to be a shin­ing exam­ple for the rest of us to follow.

In BvS, Super­man had his oppor­tu­ni­ty to present him­self as such. At a Con­gres­sion­al hear­ing he steps up to the mic, the stage set for him to explain what his pres­ence on Earth means to mankind. It’s one of those lean-in moments you rarely see con­tem­po­rary block­busters. That scene could have defined Hen­ry Cavill’s time as Super­man for years to come – it might even have made BvS a suc­cess. Instead, Super­man makes no such dec­la­ra­tion of hope, and every­one around him dies in a mas­sive explo­sion. And with that, any chance Cavill’s Super­man had to become a mod­ern-day cul­tur­al icon turned to dust.

Man of Steel was chas­tised for its over­ly som­bre tone, but its fol­low-up fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands Super­man to the point that it’s almost a relief when Sny­der does away with him. Super­man didn’t stay dead for long, of course, but BvS left us ques­tion­ing whether the Man of Steel would return the same. It seemed like only a mat­ter of time until a dif­fer­ent Super­man would make an appear­ance in the DCEU. The notion of an evil Super­man was estab­lished in BvS dur­ing one of Bruce Wayne’s night­mares, where he’s shown assist­ing in the enslave­ment of mankind. Sub­se­quent­ly, Jus­tice League set pho­tos revealed Hen­ry Cav­ill dressed in all black and sport­ing stub­ble. Far from the clean-cut Supes we’ve come to recog­nise. Then came the omi­nous con­ver­sa­tion between Alfred (Jere­my Irons) and, pre­sum­ably, an off­screen Super­man in the first Jus­tice League trail­er. All signs point­ed to a Super­man with impure inten­tions return­ing to the DCEU.

This only appears to have changed in light of Won­der Woman​’s suc­cess, with Pat­ty Jenk­ins’ film rid­ing a wave of opti­mism and hope all the way to the bank. Unlike Bat­man and Super­man, Won­der Woman active­ly cares for indi­vid­u­als. Nowhere is that clear­er than in the No Man’s Land sequence where, against orders, Diana (Gal Gadot) saves a group of sol­diers pinned down by ene­my gun­fire. It’s the most mov­ing scene in the film and quite pos­si­bly the most impor­tant scene in the DCEU so far. When Jus­tice League reshoots began ear­li­er this year, the opti­mism seemed to spread from Won­der Woman to the rest of the franchise.

The oth­er big shake-up was the pro­mo­tion of Geoff Johns to co-chief of DC film pro­duc­tion. He’s a guy who under­stands what makes Super­man great. ​“I think peo­ple make a mis­take when they say, ​‘Superman’s not relat­able because he’s so pow­er­ful,’” Johns told Vul­ture. ​“I’m like, ​‘Are you kid­ding me? He’s a farm boy from Kansas who moves to the city and just wants to do the best he can with what he’s got.’ That’s the most relat­able char­ac­ter in the world.” Adding Johns to the pro­duc­tion team already appears to have paid div­i­dends. You sense this renewed enthu­si­asm for Super­man in the more recent Jus­tice League trail­ers, which hint, how­ev­er briefly, at a Super­man who will give Jor-El’s words mean­ing – some­one to ​“give the peo­ple of Earth an ide­al to strive towards.”

Anoth­er teas­er shows Lois (Amy Adams) tran­si­tion­ing to her new life with­out Clark. She wakes up star­tled, only to notice the emp­ty spot on Clark’s side of the bed. Lat­er, he appears at his child­hood home in Smal­l­ville, stand­ing in a field with a dreamy look on his face. He turns back to acknowl­edge Lois and that she is wear­ing her engage­ment ring. The moment is obvi­ous­ly a dream, but it might also be a con­ces­sion on the part of Warn­er Bros and DC that the time for an angsty, brood­ing Super­man has already passed.

When Clark Kent sin­gle-hand­ed­ly lift­ed an infer­no of an oil der­rick to save the work­ers onboard, it remind­ed me of watch­ing Christo­pher Reeves’ Super­man with my father years ago. The pure won­der­ment of watch­ing one per­son pre­vent such an awful tragedy is part of the rea­son why Jer­ry Shus­ter and Joe Siegel’s super­hu­man immi­grant sto­ry sparked the public’s imag­i­na­tion. A reminder that there is a col­lec­tive good to mankind, rep­re­sent­ed by a hero cloaked in red, blue, and yel­low. Maybe with Jus­tice League, audi­ences will final­ly get that feel­ing again.