Everybody knows about Superman, right? I don't just mean everybody reading this, I mean everybody knows about Superman. More so by far than any celebrity or historical figure, Superman is America's prevailing cultural export. If you were to travel to the remotest locations on Earth and ask the natives, I would bet more of them have heard of Superman than Humphrey Bogart or Thomas Jefferson.

With cultural influences and parallels covering everything from the Golem to the Übermensch, Jesus to Gilgamesh, Superman is timeless and transcendent. In the 74 years since the character's creation there have been a handful of feature films, several television shows and serials, a few animated series and thousands of comic books. Then of course there's the merchandising. In nearly every market in the world you could sell more of any item by slapping that familiar S crest on it.

Tough job these filmmakers have set for themselves, recasting a global icon. With a character this big everybody's going to take a piece of it, from Space.com to Christianity Today. It takes some nuts for the filmmakers to make themselves that big a target.

Before I go any further, I have a confession to make. I never much liked Superman. He was always too powerful, too unreal, a little too fantastic. I always preferred Batman, the darker, grittier anti-hero.

Batman was always just like you and me, more or less. There were no super powers there. Batman was just a rich kid who had such a bad day that he spent the rest of his life getting over it. He devoted decades and untold millions to arming and preparing himself for his new career of dressing up like a flying rodent and beating the shit out of street crooks. That's a hero with issues. That's an interesting read.

Superman was always different, always cleaner and more noble. In addition to having a genuinely alien set of abilities, his unspoken moral code always placed him in an entirely different class. Superman was nothing like you and me. He always knew the right thing to do and always did it immediately. I can't even comprehend that kind of decisive moral clarity.

Until fairly recently, my all-time favorite Superman comic was a Batman book wherein the Dark Knight figured out a way to beat the shit out of the Big Blue Boy Scout. But don't get me wrong, Superman was never all bad in my mind.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of watching Superman from the backseat of my parents' red AMC Matador in the summer of 1978. I was four years old and I believed a man could fly. Throughout the rest of his too-short life, I could not think of Christopher Reeve without picturing him in the blue tights lifting Margo Kidder and a helicopter back to the roof of the Daily Planet while that incredible John Williams march plays in the background. When I was four years old, Superman was the shit.

And then I grew older. I began placing more value on complexity and depth, things I never found with Superman. In a complete turnabout, the things about Superman that repelled me as a youth are the very same things that draw me to him now. I no longer see Superman as a caricature, but as a paragon. I don't have to imagine vigilantes and flawed heroes. Life has those in spades.

I want to imagine nobility of spirit. I want to imagine the kind of purity I can never achieve, but to which I should always aspire. See, now I get it. The hero was never important. It's always been the symbolism that's transcendent. Superman is like God walking the Earth, and yet he'd still carry home groceries for a little old lady.

And then there's me. I have almost no power of any kind and The Bunny has to remind me to say thank you at the drive-thru window.

This is supposed to be a movie review, isn't it? Ok ok, I'll talk about the movie.

Superman Returns was too long by about thirty minutes. The story was overly dramatic in some places but completely charming in others. The big plot twist felt out of place. Brandon Routh was excellent, a surprisingly good successor to Reeve. Kate Bosworth is considerably prettier than that frayed dish cloth Margo Kidder. Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor was frighteningly sociopathic and yet endearing enough that I almost wanted him to win. The visuals were superb. The music was so-so. The movie mostly works, but has a few noticeable flaws.

Alright. That's out of the way. Moving on.

A few days ago I stumbled across the highly quotable "Criticism is really just veiled autobiography; whenever someone writes about a piece of art, they're really just writing about themselves." And so it is.

Warts and all, I loved Superman Returns. Not for what it is, but for what it represents. When I was four years old, I loved Superman because I didn't know any better. Now I'm 32 years old and I love Superman Returns because I do know better.

With tremendous amounts of respect for the 1978 film and iconic imagery that resonates long after the end credits, watching this movie felt a lot like taking my four year old self to the movies. Sure, there were places that struggled, parts where I wanted to groan or thought "get on with it already." But I would gladly suffer twenty clunky scenes for each moment that filled me with wonder and reminded me what it felt like to be a little boy who believed a man could fly.