Given the box office returns, it seems that I wasn’t the only one ignoring the critics over the weekend and going to see “Man of Steel” anyway.

Good thing, too, because most of the warnings I’d read turned out to be wrong:

• It didn’t really take itself too seriously. Yes, the production was visually darker than the 1978 version, but I didn’t see any more of a messianic theme than we’ve come accustomed to. Yes, like Jesus, Clark Kent is raised by an adoptive father (which has been true since the earliest iterations of the characters), and has a real father who speaks to him in apparent defiance of the natural order (the norm since the 1978 version), and Russell Crowe’s character does predict that his son will be “like a god” to the people of Earth. But we are forgetting what Jor-El said in the 1978 version, perhaps because we just expected Marlon Brando to talk like that: “Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you… my only son.” I mean, come on. Russell Crowe’s Jor-El was quite down-to-Earth compared to that.
• OK, so it was sort of a modernized version, but that came out mostly in the 21st-century production values, and the costume (and don’t ask me how Jor-El managed to get a perfectly-fitted Superman costume, complete with the family crest, onto a ship that was sent to Earth 18,000 years ago; it’s just one of those suspension-of-disbelief things, like, you know, a man being able to fly) had a very updated feel to it. But the reports I heard that the name “Superman” was never uttered in the film were false. And there’s a great flashback scene to Clark as a little boy playing with a makeshift red cape out by Ma Kent’s laundry waving in the Kansas wind that is about as traditional, simple, innocent all-American as you can get. In fact, Superman directly contradicts the reports that he is a sort of “internationalized” version of the hero by telling an Army general (and I’m reconstructing this from memory, not being able to find the quote online), “I grew up in Kansas. How do you get more American than that?”
• Finally, I don’t think the action was overdone. Which is saying something, coming from me. I thought the bams and booms and crashes were about what you’d expect from two Kryptonians having a fistfight among the skyscrapers of a modern city. Neither too much, nor two little.

My main criticism — and this is more a business consideration for Warner Brothers — is that I don’t see how they top themselves after this, plotwise. (And obviously, they intend sequels — after all, Clark doesn’t go to work for The Daily Planet until the last scene.) General Zod doesn’t show up until the second installment of the Christopher Reeve version, and that seems smart to me. First, you establish that Superman has these abilities far greater than those of Earth men. You have him save people falling from helicopters, and having a run-in with Lex Luthor. After you’ve established that nobody can touch this guy (without Kryptonite), you say, yeah, but… what if he faces a threat from another Kryptonian? And it’s at that point that you trot out General Zod and his minions.

Speaking of Zod, one of the updates is that he is conflicted. He is truly devoted to the interests of his own people, the remaining Kryptonians, and his evil arises from his complete indifference to the fate of Earthlings. I sort of miss the unconflicted Terence Stamp version: “Kneel before Zod!”

But I intend to go see it anyway. Every interpretation of Superman has had its flaws. Nevertheless, my younger son and I go to all the new superhero movies (most recently, “Iron Man III”). Every sincere effort deserves its chance.

Still, I go forewarned. Both reviews I read this morning — one by Joe Morgenstern at the WSJ, and the other from my app for The State (from McClatchy-Tribune News Service, of course, since The State hasn’t had a reviewer in many a year) — were pretty brutal. Others I glanced at weren’t much more encouraging.

The flaws they point out were predictable ones.

• First, there’s the matter of taking itself too seriously. There are a number of mentions out there of the rather blunt ways that this Kal-El is presented as a Christ figure. Well, we’ve seen that done in quite a few good flicks — “On the Waterfront,” “Cool Hand Luke,” the Lord of the Rings trilogy — as well as some awful ones, such as David Lynch’s execrable “Dune.” Basically, it’s the most compelling narrative we have in Western culture, which is why it crops up in everything from Arthurian legend to Harry Potter and “The Matrix.” But Superman/Clark Kent, properly understood, is an unassuming sort, for all of his power. The character in the comics, at least in my day, didn’t venture into the realm of blasphemy, even for dramatic effect.
• Second, the production “seeks to reboot and modernize the world’s most famous superhero.” Morgenstern refers to “the darkly revisionist premise,” which immediately makes me want to groan. The two-bit philosophers of Hollywood are constantly trying to “improve” perfectly fine old stories with a “modern” twist. Because, of course, we who live in the 21st century are so much wiser, hipper, more moral, more honest, more realistic, than those benighted saps who lived in previous times. “Darkness,” you see, is hip and smart; lightness is hopelessly passé. Which, to use the edgy language of our better, hipper times, is utter bull___t. Superman, properly understood, is square. And that’s a good thing. He’s a small-town American boy (that’s how he was raised by Ma and Pa Kent) with extraordinary abilities and a code of conduct that would have done credit to a knight in the age of chivalry. (Superman is supposed to be very much like the unassuming, all-American Roy Hobbs in the movie version of “The Natural,” not the cynical version in Bernard Malamud’s original novel.) His decidedly unhip Clark Kent persona is a large part of who he is, not a false front like those of Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel. Truth, Justice, and the American Way — without a trace of irony. Yes, I’m influenced in this by having come up in the Silver Age of DC comics, but that is a tradition that needs to be respected. I know DC has a huge inferiority complex because Marvel has always been cooler. But hip and ironic are what Marvel is, not what DC is, and DC should own its squareness. This production is said to be too cool even to use the name, “Superman.” Which is irritating.
• Finally, there’s the empty, soulless, overdone action, which is compared unfavorably in one of the reviews to the “Transformers” movies, which I have thus far successfully avoided. I’ve gotten to where, even in enjoyable films like “The Avengers,” I tend during the more extreme action sequences to want to do the hand-rolling gesture that means, yes, yes, I know, stupendous action, yadda, yadda, let’s move on. The more extreme the effects, the more bored I tend to be. (I like what Jackie Chan does, and hate “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”) Movie action reached its height in 1963 when a stand-in for Steve McQueen (alas, the rumors that Steve did it himself were not true) jumped over that barbed-wire barrier at the Swiss border in “The Great Escape.” That was awe-inspiring because a real person really did it, and as impressive as it was, it was in the realm of believability that a real man, desperate to escape, really could have done that. Barry Pepper’s skilled sniper, who occasionally missed when rushed in the final battle scene of “Saving Private Ryan,” is impressive because you can believe it. What Superman can do, of course, is meant to be beyond human abilities as we know them. But they’re more “super” if they occur against a backdrop of human scale — which is too seldom the case in “action” flicks today. The “Bourne” movies with Matt Damon did an excellent job of portraying action that is impressive but still believable. Most “action” movies today consider the height of excitement to be tremendous (and unrealistic) explosions that give the multiplex speakers a workout. It sounds like this latest “Man of Steel” is in the latter category.

But hey, they say that the “S” on this Man of Steel’s costume is actually a Kryptonian symbol meaning hope. So I’ll hope this is way better than the reviews say (even though that pretentious “it’s not an ‘S’” conceit is just the kind of thing that makes me groan).

Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Superman, properly understood.

Just thought I’d share this image, which I ran across while looking for a link for an earlier thread.

Regret is indeed hard to live with. Which make me wonder how Lucas can stand himself after making Episodes I-III…