About
articles • book quests • news • library
reviews • podcast • gifts • archives
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

113. What If You Learned Bible Lessons from Singing Veggies and Dead Sea Squirrels? | with Mike Nawrocki
Fantastical Truth Podcast, May 24, 2022

When The English Fall
Reviews, May 20, 2022

Realm Makers Bookstore Returns to Orlando for FPEA Conference, May 26–28
News, May 19, 2022

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · young adult · grown-ups
All novels Search Add a novel
Vivid, Ashley Bustamante
My Soul to Take, Bryan Davis
Into Shadow's Fire, Mark Castleberry
Deceived, Madisyn Carlin
Arena (2022 edition), Karen Hancock
Kurt Nickle-Dickle of Whiskers, N. J. McLagan
"In a city where debts are paid in blood, one young man will learn that everyone needs help sometimes if they want to survive." New in the Lorehaven library: A Matter of Blood, Lauren H Salisbury
Son of the Shield, Mary Schlegel
Maxine Justice, Galactic Attorney, Daniel Schwabauer
Mordizan, Alyssa Roat
Prentice Ash, Matt Barron
Etania's Calling, M. H. Elrich
The Choice, Bradley Caffee
The Obsidian Butterfly, Lani Forbes
Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review

When The English Fall
“When The English Fall tells a bittersweet tale of community and commitment that plunges fearlessly into hard questions about the end of the world.”
—Lorehaven on May 20, 2022

Clawing Free
“Clawing Free is an absorbing tale that seamlessly joins modernity and myth.”
—Lorehaven on May 13, 2022

Vivid
“Ashley Bustamante’s Vivid paints a world built on secrets and carefully controlled color palettes.”
—Lorehaven on May 6, 2022

Prophet
“If great fiction dares explore culture wars, it must show more than perfect people smiling before a flat backdrop. Frank E. Peretti’s 1992 novel Prophet reflects this reality.”
—Lorehaven on May 4, 2022

Book Quests

Join quests in our digital book club

All book quests
Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs

Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney
Book Quests, May 2022

The Green Ember
Book Quests, April 2022

The Seventh Sun
Book Quests, March 2022

Power On
Book Quests, February 2022

Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

113. What If You Learned Bible Lessons from Singing Veggies and Dead Sea Squirrels? | with Mike Nawrocki
Fantastical Truth, May 24, 2022

112. How Does Fiction Help Us Love Our Enemies Even If We Must Defeat Them?
Fantastical Truth, May 17, 2022

111. Why Do Your Kids Need Fantastical Stories for God’s Glory?
Fantastical Truth, May 10, 2022

110. Could We Enter a ‘Golden Age’ of Christian-Made Fantastical Fiction?
Fantastical Truth, May 3, 2022

Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Browse back issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

site archives | statement of faith
Articles Questions? Writers

Yes, Speculative Faith Is Closed, At Least For Now
E. Stephen Burnett, Dec 30

Last Stands, Custer, General Gordon, and Being a Christian Warrior
Travis Perry, Jul 2

How Christian Must Christian Fiction Be?
Rebecca LuElla Miller, May 24

Gender In Fiction: The Implication Of Failure
Rebecca LuElla Miller, May 10

Making a Story Visual UPDATE: Behind the Scenes of the Animal Eye Comic
Travis Perry, May 9

What Does “Woke” Culture Have To Do With Christian Fiction?
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Apr 26

About
Library
Reviews
Podcast
Gifts
Guild
Archives
SpecFaith
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ / Guest Reviews

‘Batman v Superman’: An Exquisite Superhero Theodicy

The sequel to ‘Man of Steel’ neither ignores the world as it is, nor pretends there’s nothing beyond it.
Austin Gunderson · Mar 28, 2016 · 2 comments

If you glance for more than five minutes at any critical or popular-level analysis of the superhero genre, you’ll invariably encounter references to the faux-theology of what is in effect a modern pantheon of deities. Such comparisons are unavoidable: the similarities and even explicit overlap between the majority of DC’s Justice League, Marvel’s Avengers, and the gods of the ancient Greeks and Vikings are obvious: their supernatural powers, clear-cut personalities, limited authority, and fallibility. Also, the fact that they’re constantly fighting each other, with hapless mortals caught in the crossfire.

In light of these abounding metaphysical implications, you’d think the in-world reaction of humankind to its effective marginalization would’ve by now become a central theme in superhero cinema. Instead, what we’ve been given is the Michael Bay … er, Joss Whedon treatment (sorry, Whedonites). That is to say, a lot of pretty explosions, personality clashes, and supernatural soap-opera without any thought invested in how the society and beliefs of ordinary people are affected by such phantasmagoria. Ordinary people are just townsfolk, after all — extras seen only when slapping shut the shutters as the gunslingers face off in the street, useful only when they serve to mirror the viewer’s involuntary cringe. Some of them, gifted with secret-society status or endowed with inexplicable invulnerability, become honorary superheroes themselves. But it’s only when they rise from the faceless masses to align themselves with the Powers that they become worthy of notice. The superhero genre has detached itself from the world of human beings.

“False god”?

Enter Zack Snyder. In Man of Steel, the visually-distinctive director redeemed Superman from a past of cheap grace and unaccountable wish-fulfillment. In Batman v Superman, he continues to play the story straight, as if a godlike alien had actually just saved the real world. What’s the result of this approach? The townsfolk don’t trip over themselves to hit their marks. Many of them don’t like the idea of living under a deity who can’t be controlled. Some of them don’t accept his word that he won’t abuse his power. A few of them actually push back.

Sound familiar?

The story begins where Man of Steel ends: in cataclysm. But this time we’re not swooping through the air in the wake of dueling gods; we’re on the ground as debris rain down, speeding through streets choked by cement dust and streaming with shellshocked mortals. This is Bruce Wayne’s memory of the day when Krypton came to Earth, the day that everything changed.

"You let your family die."

“You let your family die.”

Wayne had become jaded long before that, of course. He’s still haunted by the murder of his parents (and if you think you can’t possibly be moved yet again by that infamous tableau of childhood loss, you need to see this film if only to be awed by the sense of terrible wonder with which Snyder infuses the familiar). Wayne is older now, and he’s seen it all, and whatever idealistic restraint he once possessed has faded into a pragmatic gray. Nowadays, Batman brands criminals like cattle so their own kind will slaughter them in prison. The downward pull of entropy lies heavy on his shoulders; he’s convinced that people only change for the worse. And he sees the red-and-blue alien in the sky and fears what such a being will do once drunk on unchecked power. And so he hatches his plans.

But he’s not the only one. A series of frightening coincidences slowly turns the public against the Big Blue Boy Scout. An outspoken US senator demands he submit to Congressional oversight. And a charismatic young CEO named Lex Luthor sends investigators to the alien wreck which now rises like a tumor from the Indian Ocean. There are sinister forces in motion among the humans whom Superman wishes only to help. He must come to terms with their ingratitude, their suspicion, their rejection. He must decide once for all whether he’s willing to spend himself in service to a people who see him as a threat. Inasmuch as he’s assigned blame for finishing fights he didn’t start, or for not sufficiently mitigating his opponents’ destruction, Superman truly does come to represent America in a way Siegel and Schuster couldn’t have foreseen.

Silicon Valley sinister.

And the worst is yet to come, several times over. For our villain is a man driven by a repugnance for theodicy. “I learned long ago,” screams the shaggy-haired, sneaker-shod Luthor, “that if God is all-powerful he can’t be good, and if he’s good he can’t be all-powerful!” Wait, what’s this? A relevant ideological conflict? Why, yes — yes it is. For if you despise God, you will fight him. And not only him but anything that looks like him — anyone who cannot be coerced or cajoled to serve the will of Man, to serve your own will. In the depths of his industrialist father’s mahogany-paneled study, Luthor gestures at a massive painting. Winged angels, swords raised, driving demons down into the Pit. “That should be upside down,” he murmurs. “We know better now, don’t we? Devils don’t come from hell beneath us. They come from the sky.”

If this is all beginning to seem like a little bit more than your typical two-and-a-half hours of escapist entertainment, that’s because it is. This is the fulfillment of the promise of the superhero genre. It’s a story meta enough to acknowledge in its script that Superman is a “Jesus figure,” yet serious enough to actually weigh the implications of that statement. And speaking as someone sick at heart at the flippancy with which the Shrek generation deconstructs the classic sagas, I love this. This is what it means to infuse new life into decaying tropes. Not to subvert, but to affirm in the face of even greater challenges.

I haven’t even mentioned the film’s performances yet, because I didn’t notice any performances. The actors inhabit their characters, one and all. Not for an instant did I feel I was watching a charade. And this sense of total commitment permeates the production. The camera dives through heaven and then pauses, riveted, upon the tiniest detail, moving with a grace — a sheer confidence — that took my breath. This is a beautiful, an exquisite film, and Hans Zimmer’s near-continuous choral score elevates each successive moment to heights of mythic significance. It’s also beautifully scripted: screenwriter Chris Terrio, of Argo fame, lends his voice to that of David Goyer in crafting dialog that pops and simmers with subtextual heat, and often requires more than a few moments to process.

“She with you?”

There are a few hiccups in pacing, results of the obligatory shoehorning-in of various setup-scenes for the forthcoming Justice League ensemble film. As someone emotionally uninvested in characters I haven’t met yet, I experienced only vague annoyance during the revelation of non-plot-relevant information. But not distracting in the slightest was the note upon which the movie ended: a Lovecraftian portent of perils even darker than those we had yet seen. And so yes, I’m ready for more.

And you, Dear Reader … are you ready for Batman v Superman? Well, that depends. Do you love the superhero genre just the way it is? Do you think nothing about it needs to change? In that case, you may wish to recuse yourself from this film, and from the remainder of DC’s cinematic universe. Because Zack Snyder and company clearly weren’t satisfied with the status quo, and they’ve done something about it. Something deeply self-aware, and yet profoundly uncynical. A film that has meaning beyond the triumph of one spandexed posturer over another. A story that neither ignores the world as it is, nor pretends there’s nothing beyond it. A superhero theodicy.

Austin Gunderson
By day, Austin Gunderson is a media production professional; by night a reader and writer of fantasy, and is the former Lorehaven review chief. He resides in Utah with the wife of his youth and two children.
Website ·
  1. Kerry Nietz says:
    March 28, 2016 at 11:31 am

    Right on the mark, Austin. Well said.

    Reply
  2. Adam David Collings says:
    March 30, 2016 at 9:24 pm

    Totally agree. I love what Snyder is doing setting up the DC universe.

    Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven


Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.