You would think that Disney would have learned some hard lessons about its role in the world and the financial problems it is finding itself in. However, I don’t like discussing negatives all the time, because a fantastic movie called Sketch hit theaters a few weeks ago and is a sign of many good things to come from Angel Studios, showcasing a much different movie world on the horizon. The Hollyweird crowd has lost all its influence and power and is on a dramatic downward trend. Sketch was an excellent film that was on limited release, so it’s not a box office titan, unlike the way Disney distributes films. However, coming off the success of the fantastic Chosen series, Angel Studios, I think, is fair to say, is replacing the role Disney used to play with families. I thought Sketch reminded me of a modern version of E.T., Goonies, or even Gremlins, movies produced by Steven Spielberg in his prime. And it shows that markets determine success, not PR firms and lawyers who run these big studios these days. The CEO of Disney came a bit unglued this past week, doubling down on his decision to release films that continue to fail to excite the public as they once did. The recent movie, Fantastic Four, which I thought was pretty fantastic, has not performed well. It will be fortunate to collect $500 million, half of what was expected to be made, and that is because Disney has lost the trust of the public. Bob Iger now sees the problem I have been pointing out for a long time, much more clearly. It’s safe to say that his hopes for the upcoming movie Doomsday are in serious trouble because all the films building it up are not performing well at the movie theater.
It just goes to show how little the entertainment industry knows about the psychology of the movie-going public. And I love this topic because movies are something most everyone can relate to. Most of us watch them whether on television, streaming services, or at the movie theater. So, in many ways, buying a movie ticket, as I have always seen the experience, is like voting. People vote for their values by spending money. But there was a communist movement, as outlined by Cleon Skousen in the famous book, The Naked Communist, to take over the movie studios and the message that they broadcast to the world, and that has undoubtedly happened to Disney through the mask of woke culture. Now that people have seen just how much Disney resembles the Democrat Party and how anti-Trump they have been, they have stopped spending money on Disney products and have turned toward other entertainment options, such as those provided by Angel Studios. Currently, they are not financially comparable, even though they may show movies side by side. I think the movie Sketch cost around $ 3 million to make, and it is considered very profitable, having doubled that amount in returns. Whereas something like the latest Fantastic Four movie costs half a billion dollars by the time it’s made, and some media is created for it. And it’s poised to break even, maybe. So it’s not apples to apples, but more like apples and apple sauce. However, the message is clear: people are leaving Disney and seeking alternatives, which is evident in their declining park attendance as well. And in anger over their bad decisions to support woke agendas as an entertainment studio, Bob Iger and the stars of Fantastic Four, like Pedro Pascal, have been complaining about Trump supporters, which didn’t help their case.
Disney assumed that people would support whatever they put together because the public had to. And that is not the case. Trump supporters have taken themselves off the grid because they dislike the products that Disney has released, or even traditional cable. I have been talking about emerging streaming services such as Truth Social, Trump’s personal social media platform, and they have good television that breaks the cycle of traditional cable services, leaving CNN, MSNBC, and all the networks struggling to maintain their audiences because they are all fleeing to outlets they trust more even if they are brand new. Such as Angel Studios, which earned its audience with great projects like The Chosen. And successful films at the theater, such as The Sound of Freedom. However, it’s not just Disney; Warner Bros. has been more successful and less woke than Disney, as evidenced by its box office performance. However, their recent update to Superman didn’t perform well at the theater, falling well short of expectations, which James Gunn was very dismissive about. Superman is all about “truth, justice, and the American Way.” Not the “human way.” The world looks to America to be a beacon of hope, and that’s what the world wants out of American entertainment. They don’t wish to communicate messages that put out the fires of hope. And this Superman just wasn’t that “super.” He was an all-too-human global citizen, and audiences rejected the premise. It might have been a pretty good movie, just as Fantastic Four was. However, the messaging was off-target for the intended audiences. And when Bob Iger is mad, it’s because he thought he understood elements of market trends that he didn’t. For all the same reasons people voted for Trump, they also vote with their market dollars on where to spend their money on amusement parks or movies.
Bob Iger and many others believe that people go to see movies because they like the actors, such as in the upcoming Doomsday with Robert Downey Jr. They are investing massive amounts of money in these actors, thereby inflating the budgets. There will be approximately 100 cameo actors in the upcoming big Marvel movie. But the gamble on Pedro Pascal is scaring everyone at the Mouse House because it hasn’t turned out the way they planned. I personally liked Pedro Pascal in The Fantastic Four. I think he is good as The Mandalorian. But he’s too woke to replace Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis as the new Hollywood leading man. Because Hollywood thought it controlled the message, and that people loved the actors, but that is not turning out to be true. A movie like Sketch features a cast of actors, none of whom are stars, and yet the movie still performed well for its small audience. It will stream well, and people will remember it far longer than these Marvel movies. And rather than learn their lesson, Disney is only digging deeper, indicating that they are going to double down on their woke agenda. And that’s the problem. Nobody cares about their product, and the more they push an openly gay agenda, which they did in The Eternals, people will drop them as an entertainment option, and that includes the $20k vacation to Disney World. Eternals, with its openly gay scenes, was the dagger that halted Marvel’s successes at Disney. The longer they avoid addressing that issue, the more financial damage they will incur. When a studio and its actors go against the political trend of a nation like America, they can’t survive. To fill the void of family entertainment left behind by Disney, there is the wonderful Angel Studios, which is producing great entertainment. Sketch is just one example. And for Bob Iger, a hard lesson that he will learn too late: the market is in charge. Communist leaders are not. And studios, if such assumptions capture them, will lose money in that marketplace because of free choice.
The best thing about art is that it should make you think about things and music certainly falls into that category. That is clearly the case of the new song by Theory of a Deadman called “Rx” (Medicate). I like the mood of the song, it’s sort of spaghetti westernish—however the lyrics absolutely disgust me. I find almost every line of the song repulsive—yet fascinating. If I had to apply a song to the age of Millennials which defines their era I think this song would be it. As I looked into this song a bit I wasn’t surprised to learn that there was a message behind it as lead singer Tyler Connelly stated to Billboard.
“I really wanted to discuss how messed up America is with this prescription drug thing. When I got divorced, I went and saw a therapist and the first thing she said was, ‘I want to put you on some Beta blockers or some sort of anti-depressant stuff’ and I’m like, ‘No! No Way! What? How is that the first thing you want to do?’ I just feel like something’s wrong and I felt like the song needed to be written and people needed to hear it. It seems like every week something terrible is happening. I mean, Chris Cornell…and when we shot the video for it all these directors we talked to were like, ‘Oh yeah, I had a huge prescription drug problem, so this hits home’ and all that stuff. So it’s a really important song and I’m so happy we get to release it first.”
[Verse 1] Wake up to a cloudy day Dark rolls in, and it starts to rain Staring out to the cage-like walls Time goes by and the shadows crawl Crushing candy, crushing pills Got no job, mom pays my bills Texting exes, get my fill Sweating bullets, Netflix chills World’s out there singing the blues Twenty more dead on the evening news Think to myself: “Really, what’s the use?” I’m just like you, I was born to lose
[Pre-Chorus 1] Why, oh, why can’t you just fix me? When all I want’s to feel numb But the medication’s all gone Why, oh, why does God hate me? When all I want’s to get high And forget this so-called life
[Chorus] I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate) I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
[Verse 2] Can’t wait to feel better than I ever will Attack that shit like a kid on Benadryl Chase it down with a hopeful smile Hate myself, I can go for miles They say family’s all you need Someone to trust who can help you breathe Inhale that drug, but you start to choke You fall on the outs of an inside joke
[Pre-Chorus 2] Why, oh, why can’t you just fix me? When all I want’s to feel numb But the medication’s all gone Why, oh, why does God hate me? Cause I’ve seen enough of it, heard enough of it, felt enough of it Had enough of it!
[Chorus] I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate) I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
[Bridge] Superman is a hero But only when his mind is clear, though He needs that fix like the rest of us So he’s got no fear when he saves that bus All the stars in the Hollywood Hills Snapchat live while they pop them pills All those flavors of the rainbow Too bad that shit don’t work though
[Post-Bridge] Your friends are high right now Your parents are high right now That hot chick’s high right now That cop is high right now The president’s high right now Your priest is high right now Everyone’s high as fuck right now And no one’s ever coming down!
[Chorus] I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate) I am so frickin’ bored Nothing to do today I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
The part that really bothered me in the lyrics was the section about Superman and in that the protagonist thinks that God hates him—that they were born to lose like everyone else. What a terrible way to wake up and see the world. That is about as far from my reality as there ever was, but then again I don’t do drugs of any kind. I don’t do the doctor thing these days exclusively because all any of them ever want to do is put you on medication for every ailment. Modern medicine has clearly become just a legalized industry of drug pushers—and I don’t do it. I don’t even take aspirin if I can help it. But I am also in the extreme minority. Most people do take some form of a drug and it comes from their doctors as if that makes it all OK. Superman would never take drugs, his mind is always clear—he doesn’t need false courage to save a bus. But, from the perspective of a Millennial that has been raised in a society of three progressive presidents, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama—where broken families are the norm, drug addiction is justified by prescriptions, economic mobility has been tightly regulated by an overzealous government—this song really is their experience. And that is terribly sad.
Just because I don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t and unfortunately this song is the reality of way too many people. I’d love to tell people to live more the way I do, but then that’s not their experience. I’d say to them that the sum of your total life is precisely what you put into it by way of thoughts, and if when you wake up in the morning, you are depressed about something—you are headed toward loserville by natural inclination. For anybody to be “so frickin’ bored” that they “need” to medicate is just a modern tragedy considering all the options an intellect has these days. When I get up each day my biggest stress is accommodating all my interests. I am never board, about anything. There are just too many interesting things to do and think about—I like my mind sharp so I can do everything. I can’t afford to have a period of “high” just to take away the pain of living. Pain is part of living, and you have to be tough and willing to fight through that pain to get to the good stuff. However, that isn’t the mode of living for most people in this modern age.
I would add that my support of Donald Trump from the beginning to now is largely due to this terrible swing of temperament we have moved to as a country. For years everything has become so negative I think largely because so many people are on drugs—legal and illegal. Just going to get a drink after work is a bad trend in my mind. Trump doesn’t drink or do drugs. If he has an addiction it has been to be productive—he has many interests like I do so I understand the guy. He has brought great energy and awareness back to the public through sentiment—and I think that’s the only way out of this mess—is to have someone say from the top that drug use and addiction is a bad thing to do. People really do need to hear it, and they need examples to live by. That is also why I write these articles every day. I want to help people and if something I write can do that—it is my hope that it does.
So good job to Theory of a Deadman for writing such a provocative song—I wish that reality which they are presenting in it wasn’t the case, but unfortunately it is. We have several generations of this stuff to get through before we see a new generation that has some hope of living normal productive lives under a new day in America where unemployment is at or under 4%. Where families might return to staying together and bank accounts will be filled with opportunities for dreams. I really do think that the age of the Trump administrations may reverse some of these trends because the conditions of this song just isn’t acceptable. I wouldn’t want this to be the reality for a single person anywhere in the world. But it is however the trend—and the household standard for which everyone lives. I can say this as an answer to the song. I’m not “high” right now, and I never will be. And Superman never takes drugs and that’s what I wake up expecting out of myself every single day—is to be superman. Everyone should.
Rich Hoffman
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The critic’s war with the DC movies produced by Atlas Entertainment and distributed rather boldly by Warner Bros. isn’t because the movies are bad. Relative to film history, the Zach Snyder directed films with Christopher Nolan serving as executive producer are damn good movies. Modern critics are suffering from the same problem news pundits and political hacks are in the Beltway industry, they are frustrated know-it all institutionally trained, and they want to make their big mark in life by tearing down other people—because they can’t do what they talk about. I read several of the Rotten Tomatoes reviews by many smug newspaper reporters trying to save their dying industry by bitching about the new Justice League movie. They couldn’t be more wrong, and there is no way any of them could ever produce such a magnificent movie. Justice League on many levels is a breathtaking film. It is one of the greats directed with great love and epic vision and respect to film history. I didn’t realize that Hans Zimmer wasn’t scoring this one until I heard the unmistakable soundtrack of Danny Elfman and the very intelligent resurrection of the 1989 Batman theme. The music alone represented a kind of time capsule of all the great themes of these DC characters even going back to 1979’s Superman at one point. Justice League paid great respect to the last century long love of these charters who are a massive part of our American mythology and the critics just don’t seem to understand what train they are on. Their hatred can be summed up with two words……..Atlas Shrugged.
I certainly didn’t miss it, and I wasn’t looking for what wasn’t there, but obviously Zach Snyder and the fine people at Atlas Entertainment are Ayn Rand fans—and why shouldn’t they be? Ayn Rand was a great American philosopher who made great arguments in defense of capitalism during the middle of the last century. But Marxist supporters hate her. They hate her great American novels—particularly Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead so any semblance to those literary references will draw the fangs of Marxists everywhere and it is that which has caused them to despise the work of Zach Snyder. For example, let me provide some context. Even though I was not a fan of another movie by Atlas Entertainment that was released last year, Suicide Squad, Steve Mnuchin was one of the producers and essentially went straight from that project to Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary. I watched that film flying back from Europe earlier this year and I thought it was terrible, even though I like Mnuchin personally. The film for me really fell apart in third act, so the critics had something to pick on with that one. But Dawn of Justice was pretty incredible and I simply love the R rated Zach Snyder director’s cut. The people making these films look clearly to me to all be Ayn Rand fans which I share with them. I wouldn’t say that is the only reason I love these Atlas Entertainment produced DC moves, but it’s a good place to start. I would say that the dividing line between people who hate or love these new movies come down to whether the viewers are Marxists or capitalists.
As much as I loved Dawn of Justice, I did not like that Superman died at the end—and that clearly had an impact on the box office, which fell short of $1 billion dollars in worldwide revenue. I could clearly see the frustration of Warner Bros. on the screen of Justice League. The movie was only 2 hours long and it could have been four. Warner Bros. from their perspective need billion dollar releases so they can compete with Disney’s Marvel universe—which is finally fading. They obviously put down some creative clamps on Zach Snyder with Justice League to meddle in some of the creative input designed to maximize profit. I was also worried that Snyder had to leave the film during post production due to a death in his family. I wasn’t sure if that was going to show up in this movie, but it didn’t. Josh Whedon stepped in to help finish the film and the results were impressive even with the pitfalls placed in front of it. If this film is considered a trilogy of the new Superman movies starting with Man of Steel, then Dawn of Justice and finishing with this bold Superman who has come to his complete fulfillment in Justice League these films are some of the greatest work ever done in film—as a body of work. And I can tell you why critics didn’t like Justice League, because the point of the entire film was that Superman was dead and the world was afraid feeding the terrors from all over the universe to come to earth and destroy it as just another conquest. Just like the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, Superman was referred to in Justice League as “the engine of the world” which is taken right off the pages respectfully of Ayn Rand’s great classic.
Marxists cannot come to grips of with the Ayn Rand concept of raw individualism. You can see the hatred rather dramatically in the Hollywood Reporter review of Justice League. Superman is the engine of the world and now that he’s gone the world is literally falling apart not just from aliens, but from internal philosophies that are all too similar to our current politics. The failures of progressivism are on display in Justice League in not such a shy way, and industry critics are aware of it. Here is a short clip from that THR review, notice how it ends. It sounds an awful lot like a Washington Post article about Donald Trump—clearly there is a political element to the review process and Marxists don’t want the public to have their philosophy challenged in their movie industry.
“We’re not enough,” Bruce Wayne/Batman declares upon experiencing a setback with Steppenwolf. “The world needs Superman.” And so it gets him, well over halfway through the film. Suffering from psychological and memory issues, he needs to be reminded of who he is by the ever-earnest Lois Lane (Amy Adams) while he wanders around his native farmland, shirtless, until finally coming to his senses with the declaration, “I’m back now, and I’m gonna make things right.” Atta boy.
From there Superman pretty much goes and kicks serious ass in a very satisfying way—the way it has taken three movies to arrive at. In Justice League Superman has his Indiana Jones moment from the great classic Temple of Doom when the hero is unleashed from a dark spell to just kick the crap out of the villains—and it was fun to watch. I think the notion that not even the great team work of the world’s lost gods left behind on earth from an era of greatness was enough really irritates Marxist film critics. And I say that because if you were to go to dinner with any of them and get to know their personalities, I’m sure they are capitalist hating despots to their very core who are so consumed with Marxist fantasies, that they just don’t understand the rules of life. Individuals make the world go, not collective group think. We are not all better together; we are better when great personalities clear the way and make things possible. Even though it was the team of the Justice League who all brought something to the table to resurrect Superman from his deathly slumber, it was out of their personal necessity to survive for which they had to do it—and that was something The Hollywood Reporter review just couldn’t stand.
As much as I am a Hans Zimmer fan the choice to put Danny Elfman at the helm of making music was a fantastic choice. The way Elfman pulled together all the themes of the characters not just from the latest DC films, but from the last forty years was very cleaver—as if all these characters and their histories were converging on this very moment. When you go see this movie be sure to stick around for the end credits—Lex Luther is putting together his Legion of Doom to combat the Justice League which can lead to a whole array of future films that gives all these great heroes something to do. Wonder Woman was great in this movie, Batman was fabulous. The Flash was extremely funny and brought a lot to the table. Cyborg, and Aquaman were also very good additions. The plot to Justice League actually reminded me of the first Lord of the Rings film Fellowship, and everything was done on that type of scale. It was just a wonderful movie going experience. The film looks like it’s going to hit $110 million in spite of the Marxist reviews and that’s great. Because Warner Bros. needs to be paid for their risk in letting Atlas Entertainment make such a great film that goes against the current Hollywood tide of Marxism. There was a scene in the movie where the Flash asks Batman, “what’s your superpower.” Batman says, “I’m rich,” which was a very Ayn Rand thing to say, and it was appropriate, and true. Justice League is not only fun, but I’d say it’s important to the mythology of our species and it’s about time that filmmakers tell such stories without apology and even a little boldness at what really constitutes the engine of the world. Group think or individuals—and in Justice League the answer couldn’t be clearer. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give Justice League a massive 100. If you want to send a message to the Marxist Hollywood critics, put a little money in the pocket of Warner Bros. and reward them for their ambition and stamina in bringing Justice League to life. Because they deserve it, as do the fine people at Atlas Entertainment.
Now………bring on The Fountainhead the way it deserves. I will be the first one in the theater when it’s released! Go Zach, Go!
Additionally, to get insight into how the critics game works read this Variety article that was published early Saturday morning 11/18/2017 ahead of the box office takes from Saturday and Sunday. They are clearly trying to shape the story instead of letting the market do what it needs to do because they don’t like the message–they are out to sink the film because of the content. As of this writing, I think Saturday and Sunday word of mouth will show an uptick and will be well above Variety’s hit piece projections. Read that article for yourself:
It was refreshing to hear my favorite actor, Clint Eastwood say what many of us were already thinking. That is why he has had such a successful career as an actor and director of motion pictures primarily for Warner Bros. Studios. In his mid-80s, I admire him immensely and I relished it when in Variety magazine he stated when asked about why he was supporting Donald Trump for president that we are “living in the pussy generation.” He’s right. Millennials are a lost cause; many have grown up fatherless, or with step-parents raising them with guilt filled ambiguity. Most if not all of them have been raised in a liberalized public education system, a communist oriented college experience, and a progressive media that has turned their minds to mush. I feel so sorry for them—because I know many.
When I was a kid in the area of Liberty Township, Ohio it was rare to find a kid who went to my school who hadn’t had the experience of bailing hay for someone, grandparent, neighbor, friends parents—someone. Now, it is extremely rare for a kid to even know someone who has a farm. These kids of the pussy generation haven’t learned hard work from anybody, and it shows in their lives. When they are in their thirties and forties we are in a lot of trouble not only in America, but around the world because those kids are not ready for life. When people like Eastwood and Donald Trump—classic A Type “American bred men” are gone there won’t be anyone around to teach these kids and their kids anything—except old—outdated movies. We are literally on a precipice and a lot really hinges on this upcoming election. With Trump—there may be a chance to reverse course. Without Trump in the White House, the type of American men who made America an exceptional country will be lost forever.
That isn’t to dismiss the contributions of women. It’s just that the role a man plays in the raising of children and the nurturing they provide toward a positive society has been terribly neglected, and we are just beginning to see the horrendous cost to our society. But it’s not all bad—there are a lot of things that give me hope, and I’ll talk about those things because a lot really hinges on the point of a needle regarding the philosophic approach we all take in just the next couple of months. I just spent the night staying up and playing Uncharted 4’s multiplayer rounds with people around the world shooting guns and reeking havoc with glorious hoards of fantastic violence—and it was all great fun. There were thousands of people playing and picking their ammunition and with each round I played I was quite sure that socially these people might support superficial ideas that Hillary Clinton proposes against guns—but guns are very much a part of the life of Millennials. In spite of Apple’s desire to edit violence from their electronic devices, gun violence and play fighting has left the playgrounds of school yards and moved online much more furiously than I ever experienced as a kid.
I also watched secretly the Batman Versus Superman movie and I found I liked it a lot. I say secretly because my wife can’t watch that movie until the new JusticeLeague film comes out—for a lot of complicated reasons. I find I understand those characters in that DC universe and ironically, I can relate to their “meta human” condition. For instance, in regard to Wonder Woman—she turned away from mankind over a hundred years ago and she at the end of the film is contemplating if saving mankind is even worth it. Believe me, I can relate. I am on the same precipice right now. If Trump gets elected, I may stick around, if not, I will likely do as she did and turn toward my own personal Amazonian paradise and let the world rot. Like Batman, I find hope in the fight for mankind—but it’s an Ayn Rand destination with H.P. Lovecraft villains oozing from inter-dimensional space that is the threat. For mankind to turn toward socialism I would have to say “see you later.” That’s just stupid. I don’t want to live in that world. With these movies, the various films entertaining these young people, there is some rather deep philosophy going on that the Millennials are getting exposed to that is more sophisticated than the days of Clint Eastwood—so there is some positive evolution going on that is worth noting. It doesn’t get reported on the 24 hour news cycles, but it’s certainly obvious at 2:30 in the morning playing online games through PlayStation, that something special is going on. Movie characters had a huge impact on my upbringing and Clint Eastwood led the way.
I have many Clint Eastwood looks that I do subconsciously, burned in my mind as a kid that come out everyday—so I understand how much movies can have an impact on the minds of young people. Ultimately the people I looked up to as a kid were not the people who bailed hay, and worked on their own cars in the garage. To me, they were so common that I wanted to be more than them. So it was Hollywood heroes which I set my goals to. I fully expected myself to be Christopher Reeve’s Superman. My wife actually told me that after I proposed to her and I have expected myself to live up to that high image even today. What you end up with might be more Indiana Jones, but you set the goal high and get the most that you can out of life. That is the expectation anyway. But at least I had a foundation of goodness to start with. Most of these young people from the pussy generation don’t even have that—so all they get are images on a screen or in a video game—but they can’t easily apply those things to real life because the bar is now so low that everything good seems like just a fantasy to them. So they don’t even try. But I wouldn’t say they don’t strive for it—because honestly, they’d rather live in fantasy than reality for a reason—because reality has been taken from them by a political class hell-bent on global destruction.
I know young people have been taught socialism in school and in their political life— but when it comes to video games—they understand capitalism. There is no better incubator anywhere that proves Adam Smith’s capitalism better than the video game industry. Everything in video games is built on merit, individual gratification, and free market ideas—so the idea of capitalism is there—it will just take a special kind of person from the Executive Office to bring it out in our society. In that regard, Trump is the perfect presidential candidate for the Millennial generation. They just don’t know it yet.
I don’t know how long we get to have Clint Eastwood around, or even Donald Trump for that matter. Trump is only 15 years younger than Eastwood, and when they were kids, most everyone thought the way they do now—and that’s not nearly as bad as the progressive media has attempted to paint it. There is something special about men who know how to be men, and women who love them for it. Families grow and prosper based on that necessary biological formula, and when Eastwood and Trump aren’t around anymore—people like me will be as rare in the world as the superheros of the DC comic universe. Honestly, I don’t know many people in my age bracket who think the way I do about things and under me, there are even fewer more. Eastwood is truly part of a dying culture and before he’s gone, we should seriously ask if that’s really what we want. There are many days when I seriously wonder if it’s all worth it. When I listen to Trump, I think maybe it is worth the fight. But through a business day when I deal with people who are literally pussies—even though they may be male by sexual designation—the temptation to leave mankind to rot is quite strong. It’s not because those people are stupid, or even not as smart as I am—it’s because they are just pussies and not worth the time to deal with.
Thank goodness for Clint Eastwood—like the expert in human endeavor that he is, he knew just what to say at just the right time. Trump had been willing to fight everyone leaving Hillary out of the spotlight, which helped her a lot—because the less the pussy media talks about her, the better she does, which was always the strategy. Trump quickly got back on message and the results will show quite dramatically from here on out. It wasn’t Republicans like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich who helped Trump out—likely it was Clint Eastwood’s support through a Variety interview with some 86-year-old advice from Dirty Harry himself. Trump, like me, has obviously had a lot of Clint Eastwood in his life, so I bet he did listened to the wise old director. With that, there is still hope that mankind can be saved, and Trump is the special kind of person who could do it—because it will take someone like him to tap into those undiscovered wells of wealth within the population of Millennials. For a campaign that was finding the Hillary Clinton Democratic Organized Crime racket hard to deal with, Eastwood may have saved mankind one last time with a derogatory word that made everyone look in the mirror—including Donald Trump. And for that, I thank him immensely.
With all the press over the new Batman vs Superman movie the director, Zach Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter that one of the next projects he’s working on is an updated version of The Fountainhead. The faces of nearly everyone in the liberal community of media and entertainment nearly melted off. Snyder is a highly respected film director and is at the top of his game. But it doesn’t surprise me that he and a growing contingent of Warner Bros. directors and screen writers are showing themselves as Objectivists—Ayn Rand’s philosophic dispute against Kantian collectivism. It’s no secret that I was very supportive of the film makers of Atlas Shrugged, which I thought was a successful cliff note to the great American novel—Atlas Shrugged. That book is what America is all about and could have only been written here by our culture. Ayn Rand was onto something with her work and I personally think The Fountainhead is one of the greatest novels ever written and I’ve read Finnegan’s Wake—and I understand it—just for reference. Finnegan’s Wake to me is probably the greatest novel in the history of mankind as far as its scope—but within it there are way too many Kantian limits. Ayn Rand takes away those limits and delivers us to a time before Plato and Aristotle’s great debate—to a time when mankind was contemplating that it was not the gods of Mt. Olympus who ruled the universe, it was the minds of mankind.
This is extremely important to understand because the candidacy and potential presidency of Donald Trump is the kind of story which might be a sequel to one of those Ayn Rand classics—he is a clear combination of characters from both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Trump’s popularity is very similar to the popularity of Ayn Rand’s novels even to this day nearly 60 and 70 years after their release. Atlas Shrugged is the most reviewed book in the Library of Congress behind only the Bible for a reason—people are curious—but the life around them built largely in the summation of Kantian philosophy doesn’t assimilate well to what they feel in their heart and souls.
I know people from every side of the argument regarding Donald Trump. I know the Glenn Beck Tea Party types, I know hard-core Objectivists, and I know traditional Republicans and I see their difficulty in understanding Donald Trump and his supporters. Some of them like Glenn Beck and even Ted Cruz are staunch Atlas Shrugged supporters—they love Ayn Rand—yet they don’t understand her—because religion clouds their thinking on the philosophy of the matter. Ironically, that is their same aversion to Donald Trump—that he’s a godless heathen who lives for himself counseling only himself not seeking the advice of God in times of crises. Trump declares that he relies on his own mind to make decisions—which is a very Ayn Rand type of thing to say—and Beck along with Cruz followed by a contingent of Tea Party supporters are frazzled by such a proclamation. Establishment Republicans hate Trump because he isn’t Kantian enough—meaning he doesn’t think in a Platonic fashion deep enough for them. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES) Then of course Objectivists aren’t sure what to think.
Not long ago I compared Donald Trump to Howard Roark from The Fountainhead and Objectivists sent me private messages concerned about my sanity. They declared that Trump was not ideologically pure enough to be an “Objectivist,” and he certainly wasn’t the hero Howard Roark. But a real life examination into the way that Trump has lived proposes a direct comparison. Trump has always had a very Roark-like certainty about hm. I don’t claim to be an Objectivist. Personally, I think mankind is at a stage where we need to deep dive Rand’s thoughts expanding on Aristotle’s original concepts—but perhaps either going back to a time well before Greek philosophy or into a new period that mankind has never been before. I am personally concerned with flushing out these kinds of thoughts over my years. I see Objectivism as a first step in that process and Ayn Rand was certainly onto the scent. However, Rand’s books were relatively simple-because they are exploring complex concepts and needed a host of adult characters to drape those concepts off of—for instance, there are no children in Rand’s books, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged—which makes it easy for the characters to act on their authentic natures. The world is neatly aligned in a way that represented Ayn Rand’s time period and her personal decisions which was to not have children with her husband and to carry on lavish affairs of her own with other men and force her husband to watch essentially. In the end Rand was a bit broken-hearted with some of her decisions and it hurt her following regarding Objectivism. That doesn’t mean she was wrong—it just means she wasn’t completely right.
I think the life of Donald Trump would be a sequel to Ayn Rand’s classics—and I think his third wife Melania is the key to his present success. I think Donald Trump fits right into the pages of Rand’s heroes with John Galt and Howard Roark and that is essentially why people are so bothered with his presidential candidacy. Objectivists would obviously disagree, but they share with most religions an almost sanctimonious relationship with the purity of Ayn Rand’s characters that they have become Holy figures to them similar to religious fanatics who insist that the life of Jesus Christ as it was written in a book 1700 years ago is testament to the precise way that we must all live today—and that the interpretation provided over the years and nurtured along by Immanuel Kant followed by many others—like Karl Marx would formulate political philosophy around the values of altruism. Donald Trump was a great person before he met Melania—but after she became his Lady of Tubber Tintye. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. She was his hero’s journey much the way Dagney was brought to such a figure in John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. In that case Galt was the type of treasure found in the classic story of The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island. In real life, Melania was the treasure that Donald Trump found and what we have today is a presidential candidate who has successfully completed a hero’s journey equivalent to a classic novel and he is here to bestow upon mankind the boons of his adventure.
Trump supporters have been lied to and manipulated by all the groups mentioned above, religious groups, political groups, activism groups—everyone, and they still see things sliding into an abyss. They have been told that they are bad because they are a particular color, that they are bad if they think well of American sovereignty, and that they are bad if they aren’t willing to give the skin off their very backs to those too lazy to make their own way in life—and they are the majority. People like Trump were allowed to the table of power so long as they brought their check book, but they weren’t invited to help fix anything. For Donald Trump I think love brought him full circle and into this political theater and the instincts of the American people understand it in spite of what everyone is telling them. Trump has great love for his wife, his children, and of course himself. People don’t comprehend it yet, but they know to trust it because literally everyone else has let them down.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche before Ayn Rand likely started the chain reaction—but prior to them in all of known history only gods of some mystic realm held such power of mankind. It was the job of human beings to appeal to the egos of their deities. Trump is not that kind of offering. He is something else that nobody has ever seen before in politics—or philosophy—and Trump supporters feel innately that they can trust it—because they still hope that its possible in America to step beyond the shackles of Immanuel Kant—even if they’ve never heard the name before—and live their lives as free people for the purposes ascribed in Ayn Rand’s classic American novels. Zach Snyder as a filmmaker has his hands on that pulse—and is working on The Fountainhead to show it to us for later analysis. For decades in the future we will still be coming to terms with this time period—and it will be through our art that we understand what has happened. In hindsight, we’ll be glad that it did. But we will rely on art—as we always do—to define it in our lives—even if the Trump train is moving too fast now to do anything but vote in favor of that gut we have in our stomachs. That is the very definition of a Trump supporter.
Essentially the argument in question revolving around the new Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice movie is a philosophic argument between Plato/Aristotle and Nietzsche/Ayn Rand. Batman represents the old human concept of law and order whereas Superman represents the overman. It is a compelling argument and one that I didn’t entirely expect to be conveyed so openly in a comic book movie—but here it is.
Of course it should be expected where my sentiments fall. And I’m sure Ayn Rand would be aghast that I compared her to Frederick Nietzsche. She would break things down by stating that she is more like Aristotle whereas Nietzsche is aligned more properly with the sentimental mysticism of Plato—but for this line of thought I’m breaking down philosophic development into the boundaries of western civilization itself. The minds of man have brought us into the modern age on the philosophy established in Greece. Ayn Rand and the concept of the overman is the future—it is the graduation of mankind from the boundaries of intellectual confinement driven by thousands of years of madness.
I have stated my love for both film franchises, of course the Batman films of Christopher Nolan and the Man of Steel film by the same producer. Both Christopher Nolan renditions of the comic legends have heavy doses of Ayn Rand in them—collectivism versus the individual. Yet Hollywood is directly opposed to Ayn Rand currently favoring heavily the Kantian philosophy of collectivism, altruism, and human depravity. The director of the Man of Steel films and the upcoming Dawn of Justice is Zach Snyder who obviously like Christopher Nolan, prefers Ayn Rand and even though Hollywood may not like it—the hot handed director is at the helm and is poised to deliver a powerful money-making franchise to Warner Bros that will compete directly with the wonderful Marvel Avengers films from Disney.
I’m actually going deeper into this line of thought with my Cliffhanger project, but for the masses right now at the start of the 21st century this Batman versus Superman battle needs to happen, and the trailer captured the essence of it very well. All through human history mankind has fallen in love with power and it has corrupted their minds. An overman on the other hand has no such love for power, because they understand the nature of it. Power is not given to other people through democratic measures. Just because one person can command hundreds, perhaps thousands from the lofty perches of a social title of some kind—there is no real power there—just an acknowledgment of collective will. Real power comes from an individual and will remain no matter what circumstances emerge.
In many ways in a modern since the director Ridley Scott surprisingly grasped this concept in his 2000 release of Gladiator, which won best picture that year along with a best actor award for Russel Crowe. Scott isn’t typically an Ayn Rand fan, but he did grasp the power of the individual in that film where Maximus—the protagonist had been the favored general of Marcus Aurelius due to his skill on the battlefield, but once the Emperor died, his son Commodus, deeply jealous of Maximus sought to put the general to death and kill his family. Maximus escaped, but not in time to save his family. The great man lost everything and is captured and toured around as a gladiator—one step always from death. Yet Maximus is so skilled at fighting that he quickly rose back to the top and eventually challenged again the Emperor of Rome as a masterful tactician. It is clearly one of the best films of its kind and is oozing with Ayn Rand strength centering on the individual over the collective. There is a truth in that particular film that Ridley Scott unintentionally released. I have put that truth to test many times and have discovered that it’s immensely accurate. You can take a great man and cast him onto a remote island in the middle of nowhere and he or she—will succeed in spite of the collective efforts to hold them down. Great people are not driven by collective salvation or sacrifice—they are creators of their own fates and can make success out of any situation—because success is an act of creation—not something granted by luck or the “gods.” A great person will always rise back to the top by default and there is a science to it that is predictable.
Zach Snyder seems compelled by this same resiliency and all the characters in his films embody some aspect of this. So it’s no accident that Christopher Nolan put Snyder in charge of the Superman franchise. There really is no better director today who knows how to handle the Man of Steel mythology. Superman is a superior being from another planet who simply wanted to help mankind become greater. He has absolute power, and came from a planet that collapsed under that power—not by his hand, but those of his people. Superman’s job is to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to earth. Batman on the other hand is a broken man who lost his parents at a young age and has spent his life righting wrongs essentially out of a vigilante need to rectify justice. But that justice is very terrestrial as it has been formulated around human perception. Batman is a second generation man of wealth meaning he inherited much of what his father made for him, but he is competent enough to sustain that wealth and apply it to fighting crime. Batman is always one step away from falling off the cliff whereas there is never any real danger that Superman would or could fall. Because no matter what happens Superman will always rise back to the top just like Maximus did from the Gladiator. So Snyder in the second film of his Man of Steel series is pitting these two heroes of entirely different philosophies against each other which is essentially the debate of our day.
The essential suspicion is that no man can resist the temptation toward corruption if given the opportunity. So Superman is a threat to the world even though all his efforts have been in trying to save it. But Superman is not a man of this world; he is essentially an alien functioning from an inner self-assurance that is a graduation of mankind’s limits. Yes, he has absolute power, but he also is immune to the desire to abuse it for the sake of social adornment. An overman knows where their power comes from so the appeasement of the masses does nothing for them. The only measure they have is themselves for success. Whereas the traditional western perspective is that if the masses support the power and authority of an individual that power is thus provided to control those people. This ultimately leads to a collapse of the individual ego upon itself because power is not generated from within, but from without.
It was the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw who termed the name “overman” or otherwise “superman” in his 1902 play Man and the Superman which would later inspire the comic. In the play established in Act 1 is the concept that the more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. This of course leads to a disastrous life making men miserable for most of their existence. As Shaw states in his play, “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” This is the world of Batman—he’s never really happy and feels he is a Dark Night that stands in the shade between right and wrong. However Shaw was a socialist who did not believe in the abilities of mankind to overcome such faults so he regulated his sentiments toward collectivism being lead by the elite in charge—which of course took Nietzsche’s work and perverted it into the Nazi regime. A couple of high school kids from Cleveland, Ohio inspired by many science fiction writers from the early 20s—inspired by Shaw’s play—invented the comic Superman to fight for the rights of left-leaning causes during the Red Decade coming out in 1933. The big difference between Nietzsche’s overman and Siegel and Shuster’s “superman” was that one transcended the limitations of society, religion, and conventional morality while still being fundamentally human. The other was alien and gifted with incredible powers choosing honorable human moral codes, holding himself to a higher standard of adherence to them, purposely. Over time Superman has evolved ending up in the middle of those two viewpoints under Zach Snyder’s care. And that is a good and healthy thing.
So Batman versus Superman is more than another popcorn movie about superheroes. It’s a philosophy for our age that needs articulation. A lot of history has passed since Shaw wrote his play but what has come out in the end is a fully fleshed out philosophy that works. That philosophy is what the theme of this upcoming movie is between two of the most well-known and loved superheroes of our modern mythology. Under Zach Snyder’s care I think he’s going to produce something revolutionary and I’m very excited about it. But in that battle I know already who will win. The overman always comes out on top—because it’s in their nature to always do so.
The other morning over breakfast my wife and I had a raging debate of mankind’s need and desire to behold simple “concepts,” as philosophy defines them. It is because of concepts that I occasionally detour away from the normally serious matter at this site and dwell in great detail about the nature of Hollywood movies and published books. In my private life I have two basic loves which drive me, a love of philosophy and the mythologies of thought which attempt to frame them to the human world through “concepts.” Most everything else I care about in life drips off the leaves of knowledge from those basic forms of art esthetically. The reason for the raging debate over breakfast with my wife was over the value of concepts in people’s lives versus a given morality. My wife values morality among mankind as the highest honor, even over the air she breaths. If she had to choose between morality and taking another breath, she would choose morality. However, my side of the debate declared that the ability to behold a “concept” of morality is far more important, because without having the ability to grapple with conceptual ideas, morality falters in both human beings and animals 100% of the time. I explained to her that the ability to understand concepts was like getting popcorn into a bowl that has been popped in a kitchen. If a person’s mind is small, they have a small bowl from which they can place popcorn in from which to consume. If a person’s mind is large they can hold a lot more popcorn. In my metaphor I was of course transposing popcorn with ideas, or in this case “concepts” in order to explain why mankind is so sick these days. We spend the first five years of our lives being given gigantic “concepts” from our parents, grandparents, friends, and extended family through the toys we play with and ideas they give us. We are given from birth extremely large bowls which hold a lot of metaphorical popcorn so that concepts can be formed in our minds allowing us to walk, speak, and develop ranges of physical movement. But from every year after our first kindergarten class in public school, we find that our bowls get smaller and by age 10 to age 15 our ability to hold thinking concepts diminishes greatly so that by the time we are grown adults, instead of holding a bowl of popcorn with most of what could possibly be popped in the kitchen, we are lucky to get a few small kernels into our 35-year-old brains. I view human mythology as a way of expanding our metaphorical bowls so that our minds can hold more philosophy about the way life should be lived, and today in all of human history it is the movies produced from Hollywood which are the strongest creators of modern mythology, which makes them of great interest to me. This basic preamble is needed before I say that I understand why so many critics stated that they did not enjoy the new movie which I have been raving about—Man of Steel. They did not like the movie because they are suffering from conceptual handicaps given to them by their crumbling society, of which the most recent rendition of Superman clearly was conceptually articulating. So I will provide you dear reader with a conceptual handicap free review so that you can understand why a slight tear was running down your face at the end of the movie, and why you thought about standing up and clapping at the end while others actually did with a ruckus ovation.
I have spoken before about how important the concept of Superman is to my family in a previous article. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Before seeing the film, we went to Newport on the Levee to view the new Man of Steel film by Zach Snyder and one of my favorite modern film producers, Christopher Nolan and have dinner at Claddah’s Irish Pub. My daughter, son-in-law, and wife wanted to make a big event out of this film with me so we went to that particular theater and dining location to place the experience in proper perspective. The AMC theaters at Newport are built three stories above the mall below, and are unique in their design. Going up the escalator to arrive in the lobby is literally like arriving in some heavenly plateau which is appropriate for a modern viewing of Superman, especially for my family. The reasons I love Ayn Rand’s characters in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are because her characters created during the same era as Superman are about the same elevated sense of mankind’s potential. For Ayn Rand, Superman is in all men who have a thinking mind. Yet for the character of Superman created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students living in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1933 their large concept ultimate man had extraordinary powers given to him from the sun’s energy on earth. But all these creations of the mind were a direct answer to the communism being imported into the United States by progressives during the roaring twenties and early thirties. It was a time when President Calvin Coolidge was going door to door running for office with a miniature chalk board trying to educate voters on the perils of socialism. Superheroes were born in literature as a way to protect the concept of Americanism against the anti-concept of European communism. Young Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman to define what living life in America was all about creating a symbol that allowed the concept of Americanism to be defined in a single character named Kal-El from the planet Krypton.
To understand what this 2013 version of Superman is all about, let me explain how the film ends without giving away any particular spoilers. Superman smashes out of the sky a drone aircraft which is attempting to spy on him and proceeds to lecture the U.S. military of his need for privacy even though he understands the military is afraid of all his vast powers. Superman continues to make clear that nothing the military can do will hurt him anyway, so the effort is useless. The military then asks Kal-El, how they can know Superman won’t use his superior powers against the American people. Superman explains with a smile, “I grew up in Kansas and am as American as there is; you’re just going to have to trust me.” This is almost the last scene of the film. Superman was metaphorically speaking on behalf of all Americans to their modern government which is currently plagued by scandals such as the IRS, Benghazi, and spygates against the American people. Superman represented in mythic form the power of every individual American who may not be able to leap about like Superman, or shoot lasers from their eyes, but hold the potential to be super in their own way which Ayn Rand would get more specific about in her own overmen exploits of literary endeavor. The message at the end of Man of Steel is that Superman wanted to be left alone to live as an American and that if he wanted to he’d crush anybody who stood in his way of achieving that goal. He chose to value the people of earth for the hope he had for them which was something that was lost to his dying planet of Krypton.
Russell Crow who played Kal-El’s father in Man of Steel was very good in his role of explaining how Krypton became doomed in the first place. The highly technological society of the Kryptonians had enjoyed a period of great expansion in their culture where they planted seed societies throughout known space. But as time moved on, their society had become more politically corrupt leaving them to pursue short-sighted goals like stripping out their own planet’s core for power, instead of harnessing the power from neighboring star systems, as they had in the past. The Krypton metaphor was clearly in reference to our own times where space travel has been cut away to virtually nothing in America as left-leaning politicians squabble in endless debate with political apathy serving as the centerpiece of their action. On Krypton, as many are attempting to suggest here on earth, they devolved from a flourishing society that embraced personal freedom and enterprise to one that micro managed the smallest detail of their lives including the birth of children which had been taken over by a technology called the Codex. Jor-El and his wife gave birth to the first free-born child in centuries on Krypton. That child was Kal-El–Superman, a free-born creation of two loving parents. Knowing that Krypton was imploding on itself, even as the political class squabbled in denial of the impending doom Jor-El sent his child to earth to allow the best of what Krypton was to live on elsewhere. All this while General Zod was staging a rebellion to turn Krypton back into a society under his managed care. In Man of Steel, Zod is a collectivist born under the dystopian care of the Codex, not having natural parents, but instead being raised to and for the collective Krypton society. (I knew Christopher Nolan would not let me down.) I was very concerned about how Krypton’s demise would be handled in the film, and it is very appropriate to the direction our current society is devolving. Man of Steel just in this regard is conceptually brilliant……….but that’s not all.
Even Kal-El’s adoptive parents were heroic as Jonathan Kent died in the Man of Steel defying a tornado’s wrath. He ran into the blistering storm as it consumed cars and entire homes to save a few more people only to get caught because he broke his ankle and couldn’t run away fast enough……..but he saved Kal El’s dog! That is a great dad! The good guys in the film were all heroic in their own way. Ultimately the pinnacle decision of the film was Kal-El having to decide whether the society of Krypton deserved to be resurrected on earth through the Codex killing all of humanity, or should the people who live on the planet be given the opportunity to have hope for their own future. Superman ultimately decided that Krypton had its chance, and it screwed it up. The people of earth had a real chance to get it right, and Superman had made a decision to lead them to the light under his guidance. Superman made a value judgment between the two societies, Krypton had taken a noticeably collectivist route and destroyed itself, and earth was headed in the same direction, but could still change course.
On the way home from the movie my family was philosophizing about the very idea of Superman, a man who was invincible and could be harmed by nothing on earth. For many this is a boring idea because the wish is to see conflict in their heroes brought about by fear and weakness. But that is not what Superman is all about. Superman could decide to rule the earth if he wanted as there would be nobody to stop him, but he doesn’t, because he is a good man who chooses to spend his time helping humanity instead of acting as a parasite off of it to feed his own ego. What Kal-El gained from his adoptive parents was a sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong which would be the key to allowing the grown-up Superman to use his powers for good, instead of evil. General Zod, with all his good intentions openly declared at the end of the film that his sole purpose in life was to serve the greater good of Krypton by any means necessary. He was speaking as a product of the collective and might as well have been a Russian revolutionary from 1917 marching around Petrograd destroying any life that stood in the way of communism, as the greater good of mother Russia was more important than the whims of any individual who might think they were serving good as it is defined by anybody. As I was explaining all this to my family a drunk driver nearly ran into the side of our minivan. I reacted as I have hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, with quick aversion out of harm’s way. It happened so quick that I barely paused in my sentence structure and after the danger was averted, I proceeded with the explanation of my metaphor without pause. Such situations are only dangerous if the mind surrenders itself to panic, and I don’t. After years of training myself, there is little that worries me. And it is this kind of attitude that Kal-El maintained throughout the Man of Steel once he had become comfortable in his role as Superman, savior of the planet earth from falling to a similar fate as his home planet Krypton. All men and women come to such a place in their own minds once the concept of goodness is understood by them. But first they must have a bowl big enough to hold the concept of such goodness and behold the definitions of evil in the same container. Once there, the mind can eliminate danger from its life-like avoiding a drunk driver by simply taking evasive action without any fanfare. Panicky social commentary asking politicians for more public safety never works. The truth is politicians are actually quite powerless to provide any safety without stealing from some to give to others in legalized theft. All they can really do is react as a second-hander and write new laws which bring our present society that much closer to the fictional fate of Krypton.
At the conclusion of Man of Steel my family sat till the end of the credits as viewers gradually left the theater. We were the last to leave. Several young men who might look like gang-like thugs in any other circumstance from the streets of Cincinnati were wearing the Superman emblem on their shirts and had obviously given up for the evening any youthful decadence they might otherwise engage in to see a story of “hope” unfold upon the silver screen. A young man covered in tattoos and body piercings saw me smiling at his big “S” imprinted across his shirt as he left the theater to descend the escalator back down into the shopping complex of Newport on the Levee. His first reaction was a bit of anxiety as he thought I was laughing at his immature love of Superman. But I gave him a reassuring wink as he walked by to let the young man know that I understood. He was attempting to behold a higher concept of what “man” should be, and I didn’t want him for a moment to think I didn’t approve. He smiled boyishly as he walked by, realizing that my gaze at him was not condescending, but quite the opposite.
Small-minded reviewers after they saw the movie found that without large concepts in their own imaginations to allow them to behold the messages of the film they were regulated to commenting on the physical appearance of Henry Cavell, the young man who played Kal-El or criticizing the 40 minute climax which took place in an epic battle all over the globe ending in a fist fight between Superman and Zod which migrated into space at times where even satellites fell from the sky in destruction. Critics spoke about the metaphors of 9/11 as half of the city of Metropolis was destroyed in the gigantic battle leaving a crater of cleared buildings in the center where the two earthly gods did battle in the climatic ending with Superman snapping the neck of Zod. When Kal-El broke the neck of the villain there was emotion in the audience. It was 1 AM in the morning, and the audience was filled back to the projection booth. One man yelled out from the crowd………….”damn!” Others clapped. Some whistled. It was not a critical appraisal, but one of approval from the audience, of seeing a battle between right and wrong, good and evil displayed clearly in front of them, resolving itself with the clear decision of a nearly decapitated villain.
Man of Steel is about “big concepts” and it assists the viewer in grasping those ideas which require large conceptual bowls to hold. It is why in spite of the attempts by established Ellsworth Toohey type film critics taught in their institutions of learning to have small concepts in their lives, not large ones; Man of Steel will become the next $1 billion dollar film franchise. Shortly after the drunk driver nearly hit us on the way home, and I dropped my kids off at their house, I thought of the export potential of this film. Man of Steel is about undeniably American ideas and it didn’t waiver from that responsibility for even a moment. Superman didn’t say he stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” at the end of the movie, he simply said…………..”I’m an American.” What a wonderful thing for kids throughout the world to see whether they are in London, or Delhi. The best vehicle for projecting American ideas to the world is the film industry of Hollywood, which has traditionally been consumed by left leaning communist ideologues, like what’s represented in the upcoming Matt Damon film Elsyium. Most movies that Hollywood produces like Elsyium or the 2012 fall attempt with Tom Hanks called Cloud Atlas are not so subtle attempts to sell socialism to America and the world. But the box office take usually tells the story as fans reject the message. They will go see the movies for entertainment, but quickly drop them, as word of mouth does not spread like wild-fire, the way it does during the very capitalist movie messages like Iron Man, and now Man of Steel, which is going to break records during its opening weekend. The film made $21 million just off Thursday midnight shows, and $50 million on Friday alone.
Man of Steel is a fantastic film. It is worth watching many more times than once. It is a pleasure to live in a culture that can produce films like Man of Steel where the story telling is first class, the visual effects epic, the music astonishing, but most importantly, the concept is huge. The value of Man of Steel is in its ability to generate a concept that is epic in scope and definitive in its message. There is no question where the message of Man of Steel intends to go, and it is in no way complimentary to evil, weakness, or even blind dedication to a race of people just because they represent one’s ancestors. It is more valuable as an American export than all the money that is currently spent on defense because the message is clear, and void of politics from any party. Man of Steel is film making at its best and the message to everyone in the world with a mind to think is one of goodness! It is a big bowl of philosophy that will take multiple viewings for those functioning with small bowls of conceptual thinking and will require expanding enough to behold the real message of Superman, which is certainly one of hope. A hope that earth will find its way and not fail the way Krypton did, leaving that society to live on in the rebellion of an innovative young couple who decided to go against their entire society and have a natural child who would have to flee their planet and live again as the shining beacon of truth, justice, and the American way for not just on a continent in North America, but the entire world which desperately needs the message of Man of Steel.
One particular scene in Man of Steel defines the entire film. It’s a scene when young Kal-El is being picked on by a group of bullies who are around 10 years old. The little Superman is reading a book, called Plato’s Republic. It wasn’t Tom Sawyer, or the Diary of Anne Frank. It was a work of philosophy that the budding superhero was reading, and a message to all viewers was that Man of Steel is not just an action movie, it’s a work of conceptual philosophy designed to give mankind the tools it needs to save itself. All society needs to do is listen to the message and allow their minds to conceptually hold the memorandum of goodness which is represented immaculately by Superman: Man of Steel.
Here are the other videos related to the film to satisfy the intense appetite that is emerging for this latest, and possibly most dramatic rendition of Superman.
Superman: My father believed that if the world found who I really was, they would reject me. He was convinced that the world wasn’t ready. What do you think?
Jonathan Kent: You’re not just anyone. One day, you’re going to have to make a choice. You’ll have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, he’s going to change the world.
Jor-El: What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?
Jor-El: You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish wonders.
To understand what Superman means to me, let me take you dear reader back to the time when I met my wife 26 years ago who felt that her father was the only living embodiment to Superman on Earth. She quite literally felt this way about him as he had then and still does have a Clark Kent quality of gentile courtesy even as a very large and strong man. He could crush most people easily, yet he didn’t. He supported the world in a way that Ayn Rand’s character of Hank Rearden did—another man of steel as a business tycoon—quietly, tenaciously, yet graciously. That man, my wife’s father was involved in a very serious accident a few years ago at the age of 65 when he was riding his Vestpa home from the school where he taught geology and was hit by a car driven by a young girl texting on her phone. The crash broke his leg so badly that doctors threatened to cut it off. Being a man of science, he knew that there was a chance his body could repair the fractured bones if only the living tissue within his femur would take and bond again. Doctors were very doubtful. There really wasn’t enough stable bone to even place rods through, so the prognosis was not good at all. Months later he came to my house and my son-in-law and I tried to pep him up with a positive discussion so that his mood would influence his peptides and feed his cells into rebuilding the bone of the femur. At the time, it looked like the bone was dying, as doctors had predicted. Yet his mood was good. He arrived at my house and insisted on walking on the broken leg. He dressed in a very nice outfit complete with a fedora hat and suspenders which was typical for him. He seemed to have a handle on the situation even though amputation seemed inevitable.
Months later the bone began to heel, and it was obvious that his shattered leg would repair. He has recently just returned from a 10,000 mile trip all over the western United States with his spouse, my wife’s mother. He hiked the Rocky Mountains with his leg and countless other places as a 67-year-old man. He’s fine now and can walk without a cane when he wants to. Over the years even during the tragic deaths of loved ones, economic difficulties, social upheavals, and any tribulation known to man, he has always risen to face those problems time and time again. In fact, on the day of his mother’s burial recently, we spent some time in his basement movie theater watching movies and laughing as though nothing had happened in the outside world. His ability to carry trouble on his back so adequately–protecting the more sensitive females in the family boldly is why my wife has always thought of him as Superman. In fact, she is planning to take him to see this updated version for his birthday, which occurs around that time.
My wife let me know from date number one that she expected from me to be Superman too. She wanted nothing less. Now many people who knew me then thought that her expectations were outrageously high and terribly unrealistic. Superman Part II from 1980 was the very first film she and I watched together and I noticed her sincerity when it came to Superman. We were in Richmond Virginia the day that Christopher Reeve had an equestrian accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. She openly wept because reality had come to her mind that Superman played by Christopher Reeve was fictional. It’s not that she didn’t know it already, but it was blatant that the idea of being greater than just a slop of human flesh was not obtainable in the world except in the fantasy of the mind. To her it was sad that such a strong man in Christopher Reeve was imprisoned to a wheel chair for the rest of his life, which was greatly shortened because of the accident. Reeve had put on a valiant “Superman” like fight, but in the end had lost. My wife never really got over it.
When my wife met me, I was very rough around the edges. Actually, I still am. I don’t like dinning customs, social manners that remind me of European Victorianism, and I’ve been so mad that as recently of two years ago I’ve put my head through doors splitting them in two to make my point. I used to hope that my wife would be impressed by those acts of strength, but she never was. Now I only do things like that when I need to make my point to someone attempting to impose themselves on me. What did impress her were the times I rode a bicycle for 12 miles a day round trip in 10 degree weather working two jobs so she could stay home with our growing children. Or when I worked 16 hour days 7 days a week to make ends meet, or when I took on a whole neighborhood of rowdy kids to bust up a marijuana ring endorsed by the police, or the night I caught a peeping tom outside our window trying to get a look at my changing wife—and many other incidents. Not all of them were so obvious and clear-cut, but in my mind I always held in my mind the famous “S” shape that is the second most recognizable symbol in the entire world behind only the Christian cross—and I pushed forward no matter how daunting the feat in front of me was. My wife’s insistence that only Superman would impress her put my mind into the mode that was required. As a result, I don’t belch or fart and I never let even lip saliva run down a glass I drink out of. The reason is that those things are reminders of the grotesque nature of the human body, the simple collectivism of cells running about trying to live one more day in slow decline toward death. The human body needs to be more than that, or at least aim higher. Because of my wife, I hold the door open for all ladies young and old, I walk on the street side of a sidewalk when I walk with her to protect her from dangers that might come from that direction, and I have learned that there is a lot of strength in kindness, which has preserved many walls, doors and windows over the last couple of years. Instead, I have focused that energy not in the misplaced reaction to ill will toward me and my family, but in the pro-active attack of threats—often before they have a chance to manifest.
In short, since I have met my wife, I have tried every day to get up in the morning and be Superman. I expect to be Superman. That doesn’t necessarily mean the physical manifestation, or the ability to fly. But what it does mean is the “IDEA” of superman, the yearning to be more than just an average man, a man of faults, of weakness, of scandalous character, of pathetic whimpering, a man less than super. There were times where I thought such expectations where unrealistic, and that I thought she was the out-of-her mind to expect such high quality from me. But the result is that I am now at an age where I can hear that classic John Williams score and understand it intellectually, not just perceptively. I now have stories worth telling, and they are much greater than they would have been if I had not pushed myself to be a Superman every day of my life.
Sure, there were times like in Superman II where I understand just wanting to be a normal guy, and surrender all the power of the cape to be “human.” But what is quickly learned, just like in that old film, is that without Superman, evil rules the Earth, and hiding in the mountains, or in the Fortress of Solitude with a loved one won’t stop evil from advancing. It advances when there are no Supermen to meet it. So the world needs Supermen. My wife without realizing it set a high standard for me. I struggled to meet it, and in the end, I feel I understand Superman extremely well. I strive every day of my life to be Superman and nothing less.
It is easy to see why my wife was so insistent on living up to the image of Superman now in hindsight. Having kids of my own, they have a father who is someone they can legitimately look up to. Like I always looked at my wife’s father as something to aspire to, I have now given a new generation something to emulate. My version of Superman may be more like Indiana Jones, dirty, gritty, with streaks of blood running down my arms and back routinely. I lack the cleanness of leaping buildings in a single bound and flying around the world to stop time itself, but the idea is what’s important. The yearning to be more than just a decaying human being that simply wants to fill their bellies with food and have sexual relations with the same intensity that one uses the restroom—and for the same reasons, is something to be overcome, not cherished.
Because of Superman, I have looked for real examples of such an idea, and this is how I found Thus Spoke Zarathustra and ultimately became such a fan of the Übermensch idea which means in German “OVERMAN.” This is why this site is named Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom as Overman means Superman.
It sounds as if Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder made their version of Superman: Man of Steel understanding all of what I have said above. After Dark Knight Rises for Nolan, and 300 for Snyder, I am 100 % sure that these guys understand what Superman is. It is highly likely their own wives have a similar yearning from them to behold a Superman, after all, what woman in the world deep in their hearts doesn’t? It is up to such men to be Supermen for their women.
But more than anything, Superman is an American idea. Superman evolved from the German ubermensch of Nietzsche and was carved into a preserver of Truth, Justice and the “American” way through comics. I almost turned away from Superman not long ago when the comic took a dark turn toward statism and Superman declared his alliance to The United Nations, which is to take such an American icon and turn him into an advocate for socialism. This is a trend I trust Christopher Nolan will halt in this upcoming film.
The only thing I am worried about concerning Superman: Man of Steel is the music by Hans Zimmer. I am deeply in love with the John Williams score from 1978, and it will be difficult to accept anything less. It is not rare for me to put that soundtrack on in our family car and blare it loudly with the windows down. My kids know all too often that this is routine with me and comes with riding in the same car. They were raised on that type of music. But Zimmer is my second favorite music composer behind only Williams, and I have a sneaky feeling that the musical score may actually be spectacular on many intellectual levels. Another popular soundtrack that is played all the time in my car and on my iPod is the soundtrack to Gladiator, which Hans Zimmer wrote. So Superman is in good hands.
Superman is great not because of his strength, but because he stands as a symbol of what everyone should strive to become. Unlike Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, which is an entirely socialist scheme, Superman stands alone as a beacon to the world as something to be aspired to, something to attempt to become. Superman is what capitalism is to the world, an example of the best among all human beings and someone who drives all of society forward in an attempt to be better. This is how Superman became the embodiment of the “American way.” It is the same as to say Superman endorses capitalism and fights for the right of mankind to be free and not to struggle under the tyranny of scheming despots, like what Lex Luther always represented as the primary villain.
I feel a little sorry for my son-in-laws. My daughters do expect them to be Supermen, and it will be tough. They don’t expect those boys to be cut the way Henry Cavill is but they do expect the heart of the Superman character to be in their every day life. They do expect their personal Supermen to hold up the entire world and crush any threat to their freedom; they expect a man who would crawl into the depths of hell to rescue a loved one, or to fight an army of millions all alone. Is such a thing unrealistic……………of course…………….that is if the problem is viewed from the lens of being only human. But if the same problems are viewed the way of Superman, then no problem is too great, and not threat is too severe.
The “S” on the front of Superman’s shirt does not stand for “super” but for “hope.” This is why young women desire their men to be Supermen, and if they don’t they should. Young men need such targets to aspire to. They should not look up to weaklings, and belching comedians. They should look up to Superman and work every day to be super. In that fashion, the “S” represents the hope that all people have to be more than they were born into, to be more than any terrestrial goal could otherwise provide. Hope is what Superman represents, and I “HOPE” that Man of Steel is even a fraction of what I desire it to be. I am looking very forward to seeing that picture with my wife, because out of all the characters in film or literature there is not one that she admires more than Superman, and the idea of a man who is more than just average.
Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of my wife and I. Traditionally, a man is supposed to give his wife some kind of silver after 25 years of marriage. But our life has not been conventional to say the least. So some silly silver trinket just won’t do. So what I give her instead is the gift of the Superman. I give her the literal meaning of the “S” and everything it has come to represent. It’s all she has ever wanted, and after 25 years of marriage she has the right to have it. Thus Spoke the Overman.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 