Kryptonite: Superman’s True Strength

Deconstructing the Indestructible.

As we remain in “rain-delay” mode on our workout series on baseball origin history, here is an article I wrote for the Hollywood Journal years back. It still applies—well, see if you agree. But I used the same concept-based discipline I first used on baseball to deconstruct Superman. And I did it without…super powers.

Kryptonite is what makes Superman, well, super!

No, not just that green crystalline stuff that is a remnant from his dying planet. The concept of Kryptonite – the weakness it creates. The struggle it engenders. The mounds and tonnage of ill effects it unleashes faster than a speeding bullet. Kryptonite.

In Supermanʼs world, itʼs the diamond-hard stuff — pressed into shape by granite forces deep inside the crust of the comic book fantasy world. In our world, itʼs human weakness.

Kryptonite is part of the super sauce that makes Superman the greatest superhero ever created. My Concept Modeling work involves getting to the essence of film projects and in 2010 I did a model on Kryptonite and Superman: Kryptonite is critical to Superman.

Why? Because it is his weakness that makes Superman strong as a character; it is the obstacles buried in his story and ultimately Superman himself, that make him relatable to us. Writers recognize this as a character device.

In Concept Modeling terms, Kryptonite is a “negacept” which I defined as a concept that defines its nature by the negation of another concept. It sounds heady, I know, but it just means that if superman is super, Kryptonite makes him “unsuper.”

If there is nothing to fear, there is no drama. Without a weakness, Superman also becomes boring – invulnerability is dull said Supermanʼs early editor, Dorothy Woolfolk; some credit her for Kryptonite.

Weakness Defines True Strength

How do you write about strength? You set it against weakness.

One of the Zack Synder’s Man of Steel movieʼs posters shows Superman in police cuffs. It works on a psychological level because it hints at his unexpected weakness. We know he could snap those cuffs off like paper-mache bracelets. So what is holding the Man of Steel back? Hard to believe but itʼs the soft, mushy stuff: aspirations. Ideals. Goodness.

What a twist: This strength-linked-to-his-values is his Kryptonic-weakness. If he is to stand for the good, for values, he must accept the weakness it creates—holding true to those ideals despite the cost—doing, not what he can do, but what is right. Not what is best for him but best for others.

In cultural terms, his weakness, unexpectedly, still goes back to a bit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Don’t forget, that is how the character was first created—comic book characters all have their values or lack of them, right? So how are his values a weakness? Because the bad guys do not follow those rules; rather they scoff at them and throw them back in his face. Yet Superman sticks it out. True strength is found in overcoming the bad in spite of “moral handcuffs.”

The Homeland: Great Krypton

Supermanʼs story is Americaʼs story. We left a Krypton-great nation, across the sea, and a vast distance, to a new world – alone. In time, after finding ourselves, we would become the greatest, most powerful nation on earth. We did it through might but also through a moral fiber, imperfect as we are—hard work, integrity, principled dedication.

Itʼs a side note, but it is the reason his cape must be red. His costume is basically the U.S.A.ʼs own red, white, and blue. When he is depicted flying through the blue skies and white clouds, red is the only color that works. Whatʼs the purpose of the cape? Itʼs how Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster conveyed the feeling of flying for a flat page. How do you show flight dynamics in a comic book? A flowing red cape works.

The Kryptonite is his personal journey

Supermanʼs journey is fueled by the aspirations he holds within a modern world that might not be ready for him. The mystery source of such super strengths fuels his search for his own identity and the super-sized mission that he must grow into and accept. A Superman, super alone, super burdened. It is a type of Kryptonite, separating him from the easy joy he should have given his superpower gifts.

A quick recap: You canʼt stand for truth, if you donʼt know the truth of who you are. You canʼt be about justice, if youʼre not willing to abide by hard-set principles. You canʼt take a stand for the “American Way” if you are . . . an alien? Oops.

Thatʼs right, in our film world of green-monsters-from-outer-space and the like, we forget that Superman was one of the first aliens and perhaps the only one, until Star Trekʼs Spock, that we aspire to be like. (All you Trekkies are nodding, right?)

Our number one sci-fi enemy may be an alien but, surprisingly, our number one comic book hero is also alien. Yet if you dive into it more deeply, it is another link to us – we are truly a nation founded on immigrants. Being an alien, becoming one of us, and believing in the “American Way,” Superman super-stamped our traditional principles as universal ones in the 40ʼs and 50ʼs. No small influence there.

The Kryptonite in Our lives?

All of us have some drama in our lives. Victory is about winning. But glory is about winning in the face of eminent failure. Kryptonite makes the super glorious possible. That is the lesson in Superman for all of us. Our weaknesses, as we struggle to overcome them, can make us stronger. Super struggles can force us to become super strong.

Who Would Have “a-thunk it?”

Kryptonite also turns a comic book story into a contemporary fable. Could it be that our daily struggles can make us a little greater? Or that our weaknesses can make victory super sweet?

“Really,” some may be thinking, “life lessons from a comic book character?” Well, I was a bit cynical too: Truth be told, I talked to Warner Bros. about the project when it was first announced. I was concerned because it is easy, today, to make the film cynical; for example, we do not go around promoting “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” anymore. Any cynicism would be Kryptonite for the project. Their response: “Chris Nolan is definitely not cynical.”

Superman is indeed super; so are [Man of Steel] Producer Christopher Nolan, Director Zach Snyder, and Writer David Goyer…

This article first appeared in the Hollywood Journal, an insider’s publication, back in 2013. A few edits added.

And don’t forget Holiday gift season is here for me… oops… I mean for your friends and family who would like to learn how to get to the core of things like baseball, movies, tech, ideas, and other super-stuff!

©2013-23 Winston J Perez