The Newest Superman is a foil to Joseph Smith, and Reminds me of Nuanced and Post-Mormons
Spoiler warning: This post contains some spoilers for Superman (2025). You’re advised to watch first!
“Who knows how large his secret harem is already?” Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) asks about Clark Kent (David Corenswet) in Superman (2025). It’s a strange line I didn’t expect to hear last night when I went to the movies. It grabbed my attention, inviting me to look at the writing through a Mormon lens. Luthor has just leaked information that even Clark didn’t know about himself. By breaking into Clark’s secret base in Norway, and employing the skills of meta-human villainess “the Engineer,” he hacks into Clark’s personal IT system. Luthor discovers, translates and publicly broadcasts part of a video message from Clark’s alien parents that Clark has never managed to access himself.
Clark has only ever heard the first half, a simple message explaining that they love their son and sent him to earth because they felt he could do the most good there. This brief clip serves as a soothing personal mantra he listens to when injured and discouraged.
It turns out that his parents actually went on to encourage him to “take many wives,” spread his elite alien seed, and install himself as a powerful ruler on earth.
News channels spread word that Superman’s real purpose is to harm and dominate. His already shaky public approval plummets. Antagonists and past fans use hashtags such as #secretharem, and the discovery launches Clark into a painful identity crisis.
The audience has no reason to think the recovered message isn’t legit. Luthor assures a fellow villain he’s presumably honest with that the message is no fake. News casters claims linguistic experts have verified the translation.
At home on the farm of his adoptive parents after a bad injury, Clark says something along the lines of I don’t know who I am anymore.
His situation reminds me of Joseph Smith’s, who believed he received messages from the heavens (considering his worldview, from heavenly parents) that required him to take many wives. Despite partial ambivalence, he obeyed these instructions, eventually illegally and secretly marrying around 35 women. He literally did form a kind of secret harem for himself, and he did have sex with many of these women. He also spread religiously-motivated plural marriage practices to his followers.
Joseph went along with his alien parents’ imperialistic schemes. He chose this despite the fact that it deeply hurt others and changed their lives in ways they didn’t want, especially his first wife Emma, the additional women he formed relationships with, and the men he pushed into practicing polyandry with him.
For Clark, it’s not even a question whether he’d be interested in following through with the morally questionable elements of his parents’ plan. His concern is whether these parents were actually ever good or worth listening to. This makes this film version of Clark an interesting foil to Joseph Smith. His alien parents’ less than benevolent philosophy make Clark throw the whole basis for his life into crisis, even though it doesn’t lead him to justify taking advantage of others.
I wish that Joseph Smith had asked himself and God the kinds of questions Clark ponders–if my heavenly parents are asking me to do bad and controlling things, what does this say about them? Can I trust them? Are they worth venerating and listening to? Can I trust this message, or is it a deception? Am I actually pure hearted and well-intended, or is something wrong with me, do I need to change course? If he had, I think he would have corrected himself and would not have left us with the still-burning dumpster fire Mormon plural marriage doctrines we’ve inherited.
Clark could easily choose to start obeying his parents’ instructions to take advantage of people. He has movie star looks, virtual invincibility, super strength, and capabilities most others simply can’t have. He could easily date and impregnate multiple women at once, accumulate wealth, and in general set himself up as an alpha male at the top of the world’s hierarchy.
But his heart seems to be pretty pure and emotionally healthy. He doesn’t crave wealth and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He cares more about saving squirrels, getting his cousin’s dog out of prison, and spending time grounding himself at his adoptive parents’ farm than getting attention from others. He doesn’t even spend time getting dopamine hits through the comments and likes of adoring fans online.
He also seems to recognize that relationships worth having are real, gritty and challenging, not just about sex, personal fantasies, power, or, heaven forbid, raising up seed unto yourself. He is willing to work it out with Lois and listen to her concerns even though their intuitions and values are a little different. He doesn’t reduce her to an object or a pawn.
Clark is a healthy person who doesn’t have the kinds of emotional issues that lead to that kind of disordered and selfish behavior. He grew up in a loving attentive home where he felt really wanted and had a good community and wasn’t taught to prioritize material things or to objectify others. He has a strong sense of worth, and isn’t haunted by shame. (As a side note, I feel a lot of compassion for people who deal with the emotional wounds or sexual brokenness that can lead to strange behaviors like Joseph Smith’s. It is confusing, painful and rough).
The one who is living as if he is following Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van’s dominance-oriented Kryptonian philosophy is actually Lex Luthor. Lex dates many women and treats them like crap. One girlfriend wrote a negative blog post about him, so he imprisoned her in a pocket dimension, leaving her to perish. When another girlfriend sends selfies to another man, he pulls her by the hair out of the closet she’s hiding in and does the same to her. He admits jealousy and desires for power are his defining character traits. He uses his immense wealth and tech genius to acquire enormous political power for the sake of personal gain and global importance. (In the film, his character appears to parallel Elon Musk and the despicable power-hungry president of a foreign nation allied with him resembles Trump in my opinion, someone should write about this!)
The struggle Clark does face, his identity crisis, reminds of the experiences of nuanced Mormons and post-Mormons. We started out believing that the Church was deeply benevolent and motivated out of love and desires to help the world. But then, we realize it is just as flawed, fumbling, and ineffective as many of the other large institutions (secular and spiritual), and that it asks us to do things that are not truly loving or good to ourselves and others. We essence, realize there is a second and not-so-great part of the Church’s message to us.
I had one such moment of recognition last spring when my stake president taught at a conference that we shouldn’t trust our own moral instincts, voices or writers online, or academic research when forming our perspectives on difficult issues. Instead, we should trust the voices of the General Authorities, whom, we were assured, are not at all out of touch. This messaging seemed to come straight from the desk of Pres. Oaks. Hearing it was like getting the second half of Clark’s message. Any therapist will tell you it is harmful and spiritually abusive to teach people to not trust themselves or external sources such as university research.
There are countless topics we could discuss here about the things the Church has done or expected of us that we have come to recognize as oppressive or abusive rather than truly loving, spiritual or divine. The conditions in which the Church expects us to raise our kids. Its inflexible platforms on complex and sensitive social issues that impact us personally. Or its recently increased emphasis on institutional loyalty, ideological purity and temples at the cost of investing in community and outward facing service.
We nuanced and post-Mormons know how Clark feels. Who am I? Are my roots actually good? Was I tasked with a purpose I actually believe in? What makes me who I am? Can I trust myself?
He has to hold contraries– his parents seem to sincerely want him to do great good on earth by helping people, but they also wanted him to assert a supposed right to exploit others and gain dominance.
We hold comparable contradictions in many cases– the Church and the Mormon tradition made us who we are to some degree, gave us a sense of belonging and identity. We thought our purpose was so pure, so good, even unquestionably divine. And then things got more complicated. We realized things like the fact that early Saints greatly harmed Native American communities. That Joseph Smith had a secret personal life that was a huge mess. Or that the Church doesn’t actually act as if it cares about us as individuals, even about our children.
And both these things are true at once: the Church has been a source of great goodness to us, possibly even a way we’ve felt very close to God at times, and it is also a self-focused hegemony with major blind spots and corrupt traditions.
Increasing numbers of Church members hold two contradictions relevant to this post: Joseph’s Smith’s plural marriage teachings and practices were uninspired, selfish and wrong, and it is still possible that he had genuine encounters with God that brought good into the world. As plural marriage doctrines are failing to stand the test of time, members have to hold these two things inside of them with care if they want to hold onto LDS faith. It’s not comfortable or fun, but it leads to personal growth and increased nuance, independence and maturity. That is what happens when we are willing to hold contraries together without deciding things are simple–all good or all bad.
Clark’s adoptive dad (Jonathan Kent) assures him that our personal choices and chosen values matter much more than inherited narratives or identities. There is no need to adopt values others try to task us with that we discern as wrong, however powerful these people are or however important their relationship to us. At the end of the film, we see Clark is leaning more into his relationship with his supportive, humble adoptive parents. He has replaced his habit of watching his alien parents’ recording with a montage of clips of Martha and Jonathan playing with him as a young child. There might be parallels for us here. Personally, Mormonism has always meant the most to me when it has helped foster creativity, love, and inspiration in my relationships with people immediately around me. The part of it I like most is not lofty or abstract.
Our Mormon heritage matters. We can’t just delete it from ourselves, and it can inform good values and insights in our lives however our spiritual worldviews change. But the LDS Church and faith tradition ultimately do not define us and cannot take credit for all we become. They gives us some interesting building blocks we respond to and use to build our own values and beliefs. But they do not determine how our spirituality, religious perspectives, values, or personal paths develop. That is up to us.
The photo is a press release from Warner Bros. featuring NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor and DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,”
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