Krypton is gone.
It hangs in the sky no longer whole, but as dust and debris.
But that doesn’t mean its not in our minds, far from it. I personally have been contemplating the Kryptonian aesthetic for a while now. By that I mean, the architectural sensibilities of this fictional dead race.
There seems to be a few strong pillars in this realm.
The Zap Bang pulply science fiction look
The cold and crystalline look made famous by the Christopher Reeves movies
And finally, the outliers—
We’ll get to those outliers.
But first lets explore the first pillar, and how it was articulated by the Superman the Animated Series:
As can be seen here, the Krypton portrayed takes its look very much from Pulp Sci Fi era of which Superman sprung from.
Very bold shapes, lovely use of composition and lighting, even the colour palette is pleasing.
Even Kandor, contained and bottled up, retains this luster.
The interiors however…
These portray the far colder nature of Kryptonian society. Complacent with the façade of paradise.
A carefully constructed ruse by a certain computerised inhabitant of the planet. But not one that needed a great deal of convincing.
Its with the House of El, their garb and sparing of their infant child, that colour is speared into the interiors.
A splash of hope jettisoned into the unknown.
Moving swiftly on to the most visually distinct of these three pillars, and the most widely referenced or paid homage:
The Richard Donner 1978 Superman version of Krypton.
The most frigid among the Kryptons, the sheer iciness indicates that perhaps this world is already dying visually. It also echoes the later growth of the Fortress of Solitude in the Artic.
The interiors don’t do much to dissuade this idea of the cold and clinical. Even their garb, adorned with just the sigil of their House (an invention of this movie), is monochromatic.
There is an expressiveness to the use of crystals and light and darkness. But it remains very alien to viewers, despite the humanness of the characters.
This is further compounded by the courtroom scene, the banishment of the colour coded villains to the Phantom Zone.
Held in perhaps the starkest and most eerie of locations in the rather colourful and bright movie.
The spinning the rings around Zod and his compatriots, the very Wizard of Oz style shaded faces, even the Judge robed Jor-El. Although we aren’t shown much of Krypton, the drastic colour change creates the necessary tone for us.
Furthermore, the thing we connect to more than anything… is Kal-El, draped in his familiar blue and red.
But even he is jettisoned, as is tradition, in a sci fi Reed Basket. Although this version scarcely looks like the Rocket of Old.
How about those outliers I mentioned?
This is the most vague category I admit, but its the rebels. The defiant aesthetic, attempting to be neither the 78 or the classical.
And will be the subject of the next installment!
As always thank you for reading :)