IF HOLLYWOOD is even half-right about America’s mood, the rich and powerful have a problem. Films opening this summer are steeped in distrust of the ruling classes. One (“World War Z”) is about a pandemic that topples governments and leaves America under martial law. Another (“Elysium”) portrays a selfish elite which has retreated to a fortified, orbiting paradise, leaving the other 99% to suffer on a slum-like Earth. In a third (“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”) decadent bigwigs loll about in a thinly disguised Washington, DC, oppressing the masses and making youngsters kill one another on reality TV.

One film offers some cheer: the new Superman flick, “Man of Steel”, which opened on June 14th. True, it shows America looking impotent, as aliens hurl fighter jets about like Tonka toys and lay waste to Metropolis (a city that bears a striking resemblance to Manhattan). The final body-count must be close to six figures. But the film is oddly optimistic, and in just the right way to assuage some of America’s deepest anxieties.

This is the umpteenth time, since his appearance in 1938, that Superman has pulled off this feat. Though a bland, priggish sort—dubbed the Big Blue Boy Scout by detractors—he keeps evolving to meet the emotional needs of his adopted home. During the Great Depression he battled capitalist bullies. During the second world war, he walloped Nazis. During the cold war he confronted villains with atomic bombs. In the primary-hued 1978 hit starring Christopher Reeve, he tackled an urban crime-wave as a sort of super-cop, his heroism wrapped in just enough camp irony to win over jaundiced, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam audiences.

A whole industry of scholarship has sprung up around Superman. Echoes of Moses have been detected in his lonely journey from the planet Krypton as a baby. Fans have spotted hints of Superman-as-Christ (they are glaring in the latest film). Larry Tye, a Superman biographer, has said that as a rule the character “does best when America is doing worst”. He is a hero for hard times.

More than 14m people paid to see “Man of Steel” in its opening weekend. They saw a film filled with nods to modern anxieties, from global terrorism to climate change. Rather than the comic, boastful villainy of earlier versions, this film portrays a clash of civilisations, in which the enemy are fanatics bound to a grimly hostile ideology. On the doomed planet Krypton, doddery politicians squabble in the face of an ecological disaster caused by using too much energy. Subtle, it is not. But it strikes a chord when just one American in ten trusts Congress. (That recent Gallup poll result was the worst score for any American institution, ever.) Once the action switches to Earth, human institutions are little use. Political leaders are absent, the police are no help, and—painfully for a watching journalist—Superman’s employer, the Daily Planet newspaper, is struggling to survive against scrappier internet competitors.

Yet the film is still strangely upbeat. Like all Superman films, it is a paean to immigrant success. Superman, having crashed to Earth as an infant, discovers that he has super powers: ie, an outsider moves to America and makes good. And in this version, Superman is played by a Briton (Henry Cavill) while his father Jor-El is played by an Australian (Russell Crowe). Politicians debating immigration in Washington should pay heed.

“Man of Steel” is a tale for an age of complicated patriotism. In real-life America no institution is more trusted than the armed forces, even though the public no longer really supports the wars its troops have been fighting for more than a decade. That ambivalence is reflected on screen. The film’s few impressive authority figures are military folk. But they must earn the audience’s respect through acts of individual courage, because their weapons are ill-adapted to the fight at hand.

One can read too much into “Man of Steel”. In the end it is a summer film about a superhero, much of which is taken up with aliens throwing large objects, such as trains, at each other. Yet even popcorn flicks can have serious undertones. Every Superman film sees the American way come under attack, before reasserting its primacy. In a nod to today’s anxieties, the 2013 version raises the possibility that the American way—involving such virtues as openness, loyalty and respect for the value of each life—might be a source of weakness, rather than strength.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s an allegory

The enemy—ruthless, pre-programmed, collectivist super-competitors—mock Superman when he interrupts a spectacular, town-levelling bout of combat to save a few soldiers. For every human saved we will kill a million more, scoff the aliens. Cold logic is on their side, not least because crowds of extras have just been squished and slammed to death, unmourned. Yet it is Superman’s compassion that earns him the confidence of American troops, who declare: “This man is not our enemy.” And at the 11th hour American pluck, along with a dose of creative improvisation, defeats the enemy’s well-drilled master-plans. The plot makes little sense, yet it makes all the sense in the world. In an age of confusion and unprecedented outside competition, when Americans trust their instincts and do their best, they can still win. The 1978 Superman caper, a classic of the genre, was about glibly reasserting the prevailing order. The 2013 version has a more modest ambition: keeping faith with the American way. Given that the government cannot control Superman, a debate arises as to whether the authorities can trust the hero, and he them. “I grew up in Kansas,” the hero replies, brushing the question aside. “I’m about as American as it gets.” It is a perfectly sensible answer, and helps explain why “Man of Steel” is much more fun than its dystopian rivals. It is also a cracking film. In the battle of the summer box office, root for the man in the cape.

Economist.com/blogs/lexington