Is Superman the Antichrist?

Warner Bros. hired a Christian marketing company to pitch The Man of Steel to churches, on the grounds that this was really a movie about Jesus. And apparently, this strategy has backfired, somewhat. As in, people are calling Superman "the Antichrist."

Sometimes pandering to religious groups — or trying to manipulate them into promoting your movie for you, depending on how you look at it — can backfire. According to the Washington Post, a number of pastors who got roped into seeing Man of Steel weren't happy afterwards:

“[Superman] is the anti-Christ,” as the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and commentator for National Catholic Reporter, tweeted after he saw the movie. In “Man of Steel,” Reese wrote, “Superpowers, not love, conquers (sic) evil. Bash the bad guy, don’t turn cheek.”

Or as Jackson Cuidon put it in his “Man of Steel” review in Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine: “Superman ... is there mostly to satiate that part of the American psyche that wants their messiahs to punch things, too.”