There wasn’t room in my review of “Man of Steel” the other day to discuss one of the most interesting, and surely controversial, aspects of David Goyer’s script (from a story he wrote with Christopher Nolan). In the film’s 20-minute Kryptonian prologue, it’s revealed that Jor-El, identified as the planet’s leading scientist, has defined legally mandated genetic engineering and produced Krypton’s first naturally-bred child in centuries. That would be the soon-to-be-evacuated Kal-El, the future Superman, whose proud dad says something like “I believe in choice.” WARNING: The bigger spoiler is below.
Much later, it’s revealed that the ship that Kal-El arrived on earth in contains what amount to the proto-fetuses of generations of unborn Kryptonians — and the material has also be embedded within Superman himself, as far as I could figure out. The film’s bad guy, fellow Krypton survivor General Zod, wants to re-establish his race after turning Earth into another Krypton. Superman not only foils this plot, but apparently disposes of all those proto-Kryptonian fetuses — or, in other words, exercises his Supreme Court-sanctioned right to abort them.
Like the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie, “Man of Steel” plays up the parallels between the character and Jesus, and adds more religious references, including a scene where Clark Kent asks a minister whether he should surrender to General Zod to save his adopted planet. These seem designed, at least in part, to appeal to evangelical Christians. But will they be as happy with a Hollywood blockbuster’s unmistakable pro-choice message?