I don't mean to be flip. History has taught us that the fantasies about Strong Men with infinite power seem to go hand in hand with a reality where innocents are rounded up in camps. Seen through the lens of The Road to Guantanamo, the self-righteousness of Superman looks not just absurd but dangerous. Yes, there is debate about the semi-documentary style of The Road to Guantanamo, and yes, Winterbottom is maddeningly vague about certain details, especially in the beginning, which shows Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, and Shafiq Rasul travel to Kandahar on what is made out to be a lark. What were these men really doing in Afghanistan? The point is that it doesn't matter: the rule of law applies to even the sketchiest suspects. What happened to the Tipton Three after they were taken into custody by US forces is beyond dispute: brought to Cuba, they spent two years in tiny outdoor cages, exposed to the elements, held illegally without trial or representation.
Lex Luthor may be on to something when he insists that Superman is "not so good with the little things, like the Miranda Rights and due process of law." Superman never lies, but how does he really feel about the Geneva Conventions? Both movies are supposedly about the threat of bizarre attacks on America (involving alien technology or not), however what's really at stake is justice. Superman pays lip service, but like the remaindered footage of Marlon Brando as Founding Father of the Fortress of Solitude, it's perfunctory. "Does he still stand for truth, justice, all that stuff?" newspaper editor Frank Linghella asks. "The American Way" has now become all that stuff. Who is good, who is evil anymore? In Superman, you don't even have to ask: the bald guy, of course. In The Road to Guantanamo, it seems as if an excess of facial hair is grounds for suspension of habeas corpus.
Superman has been suspected of being a fascist since long before the character even existed--just ask Friedrich Nietzsche. Frank Miller, creator of the milestone comic book The Dark Knight Returns, showed the Man of Steel as a dangerously self-righteous Übermensch. If we needed any more proof, The Road to Guantanamo reveals that power doesn't ennoble, it corrupts--and that's why Superman Returns is a lie. It doesn't matter how much we want to imagine ourselves as god-like heroes hovering above the globe, ready to answer every distant cry for help. For millions around the world, the real face of the last remaining superpower are blindfolded men in hoods and handcuffs getting dragged past barbed-wire fences on the way to interrogation and torture. "I'm always around," Superman promises Lois Lane, but to anybody who has seen The Road to Guantanamo, it sounds like a threat.
Superman Returns: *
The Road to Guantanamo: ****
