Lois Is A No Show In The First Superman Teasers–Daddy Issues Are Plentiful

The first teasers for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel arrived online this weekend. One narrated by Russell Crowe and the other narrated by Kevin Costner, they’re gorgeous teasers with images evoking the esoteric lens of Terrence Malick rather than Zack Snyder’s hyper-stylized technique.

Crowe and Costner, in case you missed it, are playing the two father figures in Clark Kent/Superman’s life. Crowe is the dead daddy who appears to him as a sentient computer in a giant crystal palace at the North Pole and Costner is the dead daddy who brought him up right in the Great American Desert while making out with Diane Lane (Martha Kent always gets the best ladies playing her apparently).

Smallville spent ten years exploring the warring ideology of these two men and some of the show’s densest and least appealing episodes were about Clark’s struggle between the philosophy of his two fathers. So it’s a relief to see that, at least in this early look, Superman’s crisis of character will have less to do with warring ideologies than with the knowledge that he’s Superman and apparently that really sucks.

On the one hand the identical monologues coupled with the images of the trailer are excellent. Wistfulness! Gravelly great actors embodying roles they’re perfect for! Henry Cavill with a beard!

Superman on a boat! And I’m okay with it because unf.

On the other hand…the trailer suggests this is yet another version of Superman where he experiences an existential crisis of self and is guided to peace by the words of his fathers.

And we really don’t need another Superman film like that. It’d be like Nolan’s hyperrealistic humorless Batman being the only Batman ever brought to film ever. That. Is. Boring.

What the trailer lacked was Lois Lane. I know the money shot in a superhero trailer is supposed to be the titular hero in full costume doing something awesome.

So uh…that’s definitely Superman fartbending into space.

But when it comes to this particular hero it isn’t about Superman. He’s a character that’s a little…boring by himself. He sparkles not when he’s floating around space being sad about being the last son of Krypton but when he’s finding himself being overwhelmed not by robots or aliens of Luthor’s idea of a good real estate deal, but by a perfectly ordinary human woman.

Lois Lane humanizes Superman. She’s his Prince Charming and vice versa.

So for me the money shot is Superman or Clark Kent interacting with Lois Lane. Because if I know from a trailer that they’ve nailed that relationship then the rest of it will fall into place.