In consideration is Alyssa Rosenberg’s article, “The cure for ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’? More religion” (Washington Post, March 31, 2016 AD) wherein she notes, “I don’t think “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was a good movie…I’ve thought a great deal about what might have rescued the movie from itself.”
She references that Alissa Wilkinson, “is the best critic currently working from a Christian perspective” and has reviewed this movie noting, “the careless way ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ trots out theological pondering and imagery.” For example, Lex Luthor’s “trotting out God—or his vengeful and ultimately weak tribalist idea of God—as a metaphor for Superman. He declares loudly that God is dead, or isn’t dead, or will be dead, or ought to be dead.”
Indeed, pop-occulture mythologizing—via comics, TV shows, movies, etc.—has a long history using and twisting theology and appealing to the occult.
Here are some previous articles on this general topic:
Everything I know about the occult, I learned from watching Star Wars
Jeffrey J. Kripal’s Mutants and Mystics
Pop-occulture “Our Gods Wear Spandex” on occultist comic book writers
Pop-occulture “Our Gods Wear Spandex” on comic book superheroes as gods
X-Men: Apocalypse – ancient aliens, God and neo-pop-mythology
For her part, Alyssa Rosenberg states that she would have preferred that director Zack Snyder “had stripped down everything else jumbling up his superhero extravaganza and talked about religion instead.” This appears to be indicative of how our culture wants a fresh new (and erroneous) take on theology—a happy ending occult peppered action story.
She notes, “There’s no question that Superman’s arrival on Earth, and the revelation of his existence and capabilities, would pose profound questions for both science and religion.” Indeed, in the basic story one can discern hints of Moses and Jesus: the former sent down the Nile in a basket to be raised by the Pharaoh’s family and the latter sent to Earth to be raised by His mother Mary and His step-father Joseph—not to mention (okay, mentioning) what Superman’s name is actually Kal’El as in Elohim.
Alyssa Rosenberg states that “Snyder’s movies don’t manage to communicate how profoundly life on Earth must have changed amidst all the chaos.” Indeed, this is a new world order (by any other name) concept and was captured by X-Men: Apocalypse (see link above) wherein order is to be derived from chaos: ordo ad chao.
She recommends that the movie “Show us how the pope and Catholicism’s belief in miracles make sense of Superman, and contrast that with mainline Protestantism.” This is theoretically interesting however, seeing the manner in which Hollywood has traditionally depicted Christianity in general they would simply misrepresent Catholicism and Protestantism and make a mockery of both.
She would also like to see some focus on “new religious movements that inevitably grow up around Superman” and how “lifehackers” (read, Transhumanists) would react. Hey, we know that a sharp bit of Kryptonite can cut Superman; why not get a DNA sample and clone him or otherwise engage upon genetic manipulation experiments?
Alyssa Rosenberg ends up stating, “I think filmmakers and showrunners often tend to shy away from addressing religion explicitly because they’re afraid of doing it wrong or offending believers.” That may very well be the case and yet, this is part of the Hollywood problem: they are not generally imaginative enough to invent a brand new theology and have their movie based upon it. I will grant that considering that humanity has invented so many theologies it would be quite a challenge to invent something new but alas.
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