Here's some Insightful commentary about Superman 1978 and 2025, by Jon Bogdanove, who drew Superman for several years in the 1990s (he also named his son Kal-El; the dude loves Superman). This puts into words something I've felt subconsciously, and I like what he has to say. I'm not sure that his conclusions are entirely justified, but I agree with most of it. (Some spoilers, if you haven't' seen it yet.)
Supremacist Conqueror Lara and Jor-El in James Gunn’s Superman
Jon Bogdanove
Supremacist Conqueror Lara and Jor-El—whether or not that interpretation remains canon—edifies the key themes of Superman by correcting a major retrofit to canon committed by the Salkinds.
As Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created him, the only parents Superman ever knew were The Kents. In the comics, Superman never met his biological parents (barring some weird, time-travel stories of the silly Silver Age and an "Imaginary Tale" or two). He never received any mission from his outer-space bio-parents—neither to be a heavenly savior nor a supremacist conqueror. He chose his mission himself, as a naturalized Earthman, without thought or reference to Krypton. He was an active protagonist who chose his own path.
It was The Salkinds, in 1978's "Superman: The Movie" who added the recorded message from Jor-El/God. They had an extremely expensive major star in Marlon Brando, whom they wanted to make the most of, and so they decided to impose the whole Jesus metaphor. It was a fine idea for marketing to a Christian audience, but it weakened the main character—Superman himself—by making him a passive protagonist.
Instead of choosing his own mission, based on the dictates of his own heart, Superman became a pawn on an errand for a Heavenly father he never even knew. He spends years in the Fortress—off-screen—being indoctrinated by Marlon's hologram, and emerges a completely different man—literally. We never get to see the emotional journey that transforms him—which not only violated basic "hero's Journey" story-structure, but gave us a Superman that people couldn't relate to the way they relate to say, Batman, or Spider-Man or any Marvel hero, actually.
This was the start of the "Superman as a misunderstood alien God" interpretation of Superman that made Superman "unrelatable”. It took him from being DC's flagship character and all-time best-selling hero, to being a stolid back-bencher, with sales as low as 5,000 copies/month by the time John Byrne and Mike Carlin took over the books in 1987.
By destroying the God-sending-his-only-son-to-be-Earth's-Savior trope, James Gunn not only brought Superman back to his roots and made him an active protagonist again, he also corrected a sacrilegious appropriation of the Bible story.
Of course, there have been multiple interpretations over the years, in comics and other media, and STM will always be my favourite film; but I did always lament how the "hero's journey via alien dad indoctrination" was presented in STM. And I did like how S2025 drove the point home that Clark's upbringing by the Kents, plus his own moral choices, is what really made him a hero. In STM, that was certainly the case, too, but somewhat undercut by years in the Fortress spent largely off-screen while Clark got indoctrinated by his space dad. And the one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way with Man of Steel was that his hero's journey happened despite Pa Kent, not because of him.
S2025 has its flaws, but I'm not one to criticize the Jor-El "reveal."
