Now that James Gunn’s Superman is available at home, more people are experiencing the summer hit. Which means more opinions about the film are coming in and some of them…probably should have just stayed gone.
One such take is that Superman doesn’t “change or grow” throughout the course of the film. Not only is that wrong but the “double down” that I saw online was writer Joe Russo saying that “protagonists don’t ‘have’ to change or grow. They can face conflict that causes them to double-down on who they are.” Arguably, confirming that the character did in fact “grow” because they realized who they were.
The idea that your character doesn’t change after going through something fuels my idea that I have that a lot of men who are “screenwriters” only think about the plot of something and not how said plot effects the characters they put through it.
Clark Kent very much did change which, in turn, means that Superman changed. They are one in the same and sure, on paper, Superman didn’t change to the general public. But we watched as Clark Kent learned about his parents, understood that the people who raised him made him a better man than a message from Krypton ever could, and it all made him human.
That is character growth. The entire speech that Clark has when Lex tries to call him an alien is about his growth throughout the film. So to say that he doesn’t grow throughout the film means that you weren’t paying attention. Clark thinks he’s doing what is best for everyone and has to learn that he cannot just act on his own, he has to learn how to fix his mistakes, and that all leads to him realizing that that is what makes him just as human as the rest of us.
Your plot is not more important than your characters, guys
James Gunn has always had a gift of balancing both the plot of his films with the growth of his characters and Superman is no different. We watch Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) desperation grow when he’s fighting Superman, we get to see Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) explore the idea of letting Clark in, and even Jimmy Olsen (Skylar Gisondo) has a nice little arc.
The point is that all of these characters change from who they are at the start of the film. And it is baffling that people can watch Superman and not see that. But when you have someone who says “Screenwriter here” in his post and claims characters don’t HAVE to change in a movie, you probably think you’re right in thinking that DOESN’T happen in Superman.
At the end of the day, character arcs are just as important to a film as the plot is and so to say the protagonist doesn’t have to change is misunderstanding how character arcs work in the first place. Anyway, Clark Kent very much does change throughout the course of the film so…
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
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