In anticipation of the launch of blockbuster season with THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, Wade and Kevin are joined by Reel Spirituality’s Colin Stacy to talk superheroes. What makes a good superhero movie? Will the Marvel Cinematic Universe eventually consume the rest of the cinematic universe, Galactus-style? Will Kevin’s superpower of grumpiness overcome Wade’s superpower of cookie-baking? Find the answers to these questions, and more, on this very special episode.

Theme music by Alexander Osborn and Lindsey Mysse. Interlude by Pipe Choir, “Savior.” Used under Creative Commons license 3.0.

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Cray Allred

Cray Allred is a wandering English major who works in technical writing by day. By night, Cray is a freelance writer and podcast producer for outlets covering sports, faith, and music. He co-founded Sunday Oldskool, a podcast dedicated to helping Christians better understand and engage the realm of hip hop. He spends the rest of his time feeling undeserving of his beautiful wife and daughters, being loved and fed at his church, and vicariously balling via an over-consumption of hoops and hip hop.
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2 Comments

  1. I’m really surprised that you forgot about the obvious messianic parallels between Superman and Christ. Even Man of Steel saw that and played it up to an extent. I think there are spiritual lessons in these movies, but I didn’t feel like you were all that interested in looking for them.

    1. Thanks for the comment, Erin. Your point is a fair one, though I suspect that MAN OF STEEL’s Superman/Christ parallels didn’t come up in our discussion because it’s not a terribly fresh take on the character. Richard Donner’s and Bryan Singer’s Superman movies also posit Superman as a Christ figure pretty explicitly, and do so (in my opinion, at least) more elegantly than Zack Snyder.

      In general, I think that superhero movies (and American movies as a whole) are often far too eager to reach for the Christ-figure parallels, usually in a slapdash attempt to lend their stories a thematic weight that they haven’t really earned. In the end, this gets back to the complaint that we kept repeating in this episode: superhero movies flirt with meaningful themes without taking those themes all that seriously. In MAN OF STEEL’s case, the Christ-figure stuff struck me as window dressing and little more.

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