S:TAS reviews: The Way of All Flesh

If John Corben is a heartless mercenary, whose lawful punishments are never the equivalent of just retribution, and whose imprisonment equates to an unending procession of hedonistic delights, then surely he and Luthor are ripe for comparison. Both commit horrendous acts of villainy within the security of evasive corporate and political strongholds, and in subjecting his fellow terrorist to a state of permanent sterility for the sake of Superman’s elimination, Luthor reveals himself to be just as inhuman as the monster he has created.

As Corben’s innate malevolence makes him unsympathetic, his shrieks of rage and brash soliloquies qualify as something more than mere human drama; they speak to Luthor’s insurmountable amorality. Corben has refused to incriminate Luthor, and yet the CEO of LexCorp, believing himself to be above ‘honor among thieves,’ detachedly molds him into a pawn. If stripping away a man’s humanity hardly bores into Luthor’s conscience, then it is logical to infer that he does not put much value on the warmest of human qualities, preferring instead man at his least feeling. While Corben’s yearning for the senses makes him an undoubtedly human creature, his ravenous consumption of privileged prison food is certainly bestial. There is little doubt that Luthor’s devouring of exquisite foodstuffs on his private yacht is intended as symmetry.

What is most appetizing about The Way of All Flesh, more so than its furthering of Luthor’s and Superman’s rivalry and the amplified sense of danger and suspense that rarely accompanies similar stories of creation turning against its creator, is the concentrated awareness of Metropolis as labyrinthine, futuristic jungle. Superman’s first encounter with Metallo begins on an elevated train station, the surrounding buildings coated with an enticing array of whitewashed pinks and greens that casually remind the viewer of the city’s splendor. The prolonged sequence, which eventually arrives on a highway resting in the center of an agglomeration of indecipherable, convoluted industrial structures, calls to mind that Seigel and Shuster originally named Metropolis for Fritz Lang’s landmark science fiction masterpiece of the same name.

It is worth noting that Luthor’s cruelty has been established at great length before, and that much of Metallo’s tale draws from Batman episodes, not the least notable of which is Feat of Clay. But because Superman is a series more concerned with spectacle and bewilderment, it need not necessarily be slighted for a lack of nuanced storytelling, a quality it refreshingly ignores for simpler sensory extravaganzas. If one is to adopt the great critic Manny Farber’s perspective, Superman may as well be analogous to the sprawling fastidious canvas of unpretentious action films, while Batman is more akin to overambitious psychodrama and White Elephant grandstanding. The Way of All Flesh is more notable for its tactile action than for its story, and note that is not at all a barb at what I consider a suspenseful loose canon of a narrative.

As electrifying the collisions are between the ideological Superman, the slimy Luthor, and the unhinged Metallo, the flexibility and magnitude of the third act fight animation is the episode’s real star.