“You’ll believe a man can fly,” the marketing for the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie assured audiences in 1978. They did. In 2025, Superman begins with the title character, already having begun his public heroics, crashing back to earth. He is bruised, bloodied, and wheezing.
It is not unfamiliar for Superman to be laid low. It’s a necessity. Someone so powerful is uninteresting without a real challenge. So just about every property featuring Superman has to do something to weigh him down. The most common method is kryptonite, a weakness so famous that it has passed into popular parlance as a modern synonym for an Achilles’ heel.
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