I'll go see "Cars" again. There's a film we'll still be watching and enjoying when yet another incarnation of Superman hits the big screen in a decade or so.

If you doubt Ms. Zacharek's premise, turn for evidence to the vast body of popular songs in the rock era that invoke the big guy - you can make an hour-long mix tape with no trouble. My favorite is the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman's Song," because it draws from the same melancholy strain Ms. Zacharek found in the film. The last line of the chorus - "I despair the world will never see another man like him" - is perfect because, of course, the world never has seen a man like him. As she points out, not even God lives up to the ideal embodied by Superman. Childish innocence? Of course. That's where the melancholy comes from.

Say it ain't so!

Yes, Superman has become an eternal myth. And although some have always claimed him for the world, he's really an American myth, the best kind. Two Jewish immigrant boys, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, created him out of their imaginations. Sparked by many other fictional heroes they read, true, but out of their own experience as strangers in a strange land.

To make the American myth even greater, Siegel and Schuster got little credit for their work for most of their life. They sold the rights to Superman outright. Only in their old age, with Schuster nearly blind and Siegel reduced to being a civil servant typist, did they succeed in reclaiming part of him. It was a civil uprising among fans of the comics who found out about the injustice - the voice of the people demanding that those in power redress a great wrong.

Ever since that first movie, made just after they reached a legal settlement with Warner Brothers, the best moment for me in any Superman project is seeing the visual part of their legal settlement - the words, "Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster." No matter how good or bad the film is, seeing those words is confirmation that sometimes, just sometimes, the good guys win in reality.

I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" last night, which is why this particular line from Stephanie Zacharek's review struck me: "Superman doesn't really exist, and in the face of the unspeakable, there's no one who can save us."

As "An Inconvenient Truth" points out, faced with an uncertain future and drastic change, we are the only ones who can save ourselves.

When her reviews are this lyrical I'm a bit nervous that I won't enjoy watching the movie as much as reading Ms. Zacharek's review. Great article.

There was a discussion among comic producers in the forties on how to handle the war with regard to their heroes. Some put human heroes like Captain America punching Hitler on their covers, others like Superman stayed out of the war all together.

The reasoning was, of course, that if Superman were to enter the war, the war would have ended in a few weeks, and with the real war still raging would no doubt have had a negative effect on the reader’s enthusiasm for the war, as well as the sales of the comics.

But beyond that there is a deeper question that hero comics, and their spin off movies, books and television programs, now address. What would be necessary for Superman to win the war in weeks? All that power resting in the hands of one person answerable to no one can be just as scary a notion as an evil organization or real life threat. What is the bloody mess that Superman must face to eliminate evil? Does Superman have the right to take lives to save the world; does he have the power to hold a pax superior over all the world? And the haunting of these questions to man who tries to do good is the crux of the modern hero mythos. Superman hears voices crying out for a savior, Clark Kent must deal with the human costs involved in saving the world.

It is truism in the hero genre that the villain is the hero of his own story. In fact with the notable mystical exceptions few major villains (of the world conquering variety) feel they are evil. Most seek the bring peace, justice, and order to the world, and see freedom as a minor price to pay. If there were a Superman, how long could he ignore the suffering of people before he was forced to act, and in that action destroy the things he once believed in, Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

The American Way was of course a bit of jingoistic rhetoric added at the time to Superman's Credo, but in our modern world it takes on added importance. The American Way is the ideal of America, a place of fairness, justice, and a place where no one can rise to absolute power. It is this that keeps Superman in check, the red state populism on which he was weaned that reminds him that though he has the power to rule the world, it is up to each man to make his own choice for good or evil, and the role of the powerful is just to check those others with power who choose evil, and not to force all men to do good.

Thank you for your time and consideration of my humble opinions.

An absolutely beautiful review. Makes me want to write better. I agree with the poster that said that a lot of her reviews are better than the actual movie.

I often wear a Superman t'shirt, a fashion item that it appears to me at least to have never gone out of style. After 9´11 an elderly black man approached me and said, ¨Hey Superman, where were you last week?". Good question. It has also been pointed out to me that unlike Batman, Superman´s real identity IS his secret identity.

Whenever I mention one of your reviews I say "Grumpy Butt said..."

Anyway, so I don't always appreciate what appears to me to be this underlying premise to how you see movies; it seems like you often give too much credit to a certain kind of "popular" movie and don't offer the same benefit of the doubt to a lot of "indie" or "art-house" or "experimental" movies. Not always. But often enough that it does bother me. That review of "New World" was probably the most off-base you've been in my humble opinion.

That said, I usually still appreciate your writing and this was a nice one indeed. I wasn't going to go see "Superman." But your review and the info on the writer's and director changed my mind.

Sometimes... sometimes, I get annoyed at the quasi-philosophical tone of a lot of movie reviewers and music reviewers (especially Pitchfork) not because I don't like the philosophy and the cultural analysis but because of the "quasi" part. Ideas sort of thrown around and not followed too closely (which is fine) but then the music or the movie is held to this not too closely thought out idea and the point gets lost in what ends up looking only like bitterness or snark--or an inverted sort of snobbery.

Anyway, when it's done right it's simple, not overstated, arguments that make the case and I think you do that here.

Here's hoping the movie lives up to it.