What The Hell Was Martha Kent Talking About?

Batman V Superman, you mighta heard about it, it had a phenomenal trailer released a few weeks ago, but there's one moment in it that has a lot of fans in a fuss. Martha Kent, Superman's mother says to him "People hate what they don't understand. Be their hero Clark, be their angel, be their monument, be anything they need you to be...or be none of it. You don't owe this world a thing, you never did" Now it's understandable why people would be upset with that because that's a very un-Martha Kent thing to say, but in the sake of fairness, this line is taken out of context and from what we can tell from the trailer, it's understandable she'd be against the world, half the planet thinks her son is a monster when he's not, she probably feels like the world doesn't deserve someone who they're going to label like that, especially when it's her son. Also a lot of this movie appears to be about conflict of ideologies, Superman knows he's going to be a prominent figure in humanities history, but after the events of the last movie, he doesn't know who he can be or more so, who he wants to be. Someone needs to take the side of being against Superman being an idol, someone who understands his situation, and if Lois is going to be on the side of supporting that idea, Martha is the only person left who can be against it.

But then there are the specifics of the line that bug me, firstly the sentence "People hate what they don't understand" is such a cliched line, true, it's usually fear, not hate, but it's still overused and redundant at this point. Then there's the ending of it all "you don't owe this world a thing, you never did" yes he does, he was raised here, he is who he is because of this world, his family and loved ones are here, so you'll excuse me if he owes this world as much as the rest of us when it is his home. But this doesn't detract too much from the overall argument, again, the line is out of context, but the idea of Superman being whatever humanity needs him to be is the essence of Superman, but in this more realistic and sombre adaptation, where Superman is still young, he doesn't know what he wants to be and maybe he doesn't want to feel compelled into the role he's destined to play...regardless of what Uncle Ben liked to tell Peter.

-Danny