Why James Gunn's "Superman" is the Movie America Needs Right Now
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I don’t really do superhero movie reviews, but I just recently saw James Gunn’s Superman and….I have a lot of thoughts and feelings right now. Most of them are [more] jumbled and unorganized [than usual], but I still felt the need to talk about this movie sooner rather than later.
Because I want to talk about why James Gunn’s Superman is the movie America needs right now.
It certainly was the movie I needed.
There was a big, goofy smile on my face the entire time I was watching. Watching Superman save the day (spoiler alert: Superman saves the day) just made me feel giddy with delight.
You can chalk this up to me being a superhero fan and really liking superhero fiction, and you’d be right, but there is more to this movie than that. I want to say right now (maybe I’ll feel differently later with further reflection) that this might be the greatest superhero movie I’ve ever seen. And I am not an MCU hater who thinks that all superhero movies are tired and stale.
But I do mean it when I say Superman is the movie America needs right now, especially with everything going on in the world.
Let’s talk about why.
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!
Unfortunately, this movie has become a flashpoint in the so-called “Culture War”.
If you don’t know what that is, bless your ignorance that I’m going to shatter. Loosely put, it’s a non-physical war of ideologies and values waged through culture, including popular media.
You’ve seen the Culture War in action. Every time you hear some anti-woke grifter call a movie “woke” unironically. Every time some Nazi from Moms For Liberty goes in front of a school board to cry about schools acknowledging the existence of people that wouldn’t fit in at their local Klan rallies. Every time some loser goes into hysterics decrying trans women in the women’s sports they absolutely do not watch or care about. It’s when a former-president-turned-presidential-candidate-now-current-president screams incoherently on the debate stage about how black people are running around eating the dogs and cats.
To be fair, superheroes have been a flashpoint in this whole “Culture War” for forever, and all superhero movies get the attention of the chuds at some point. The Rippaverse comic book universe was built entirely on this.
Fox News felt the need to weigh in, calling it “Superwoke” while so many of these negative crybabies took it to task for being “pro-kindness”. One of their pundits joked that Superman’s cape said “MS-13” on the back. I won’t even dignify them with a link to their video. Have a link to my book, The Adventures of BLUE EAGLE, Vol. 1, instead.
I will say, though, that that segment is what made me immediately text my friends and make plans to see it.
But there is one thing that the naysayers are right about. This movie is “political”.
If you haven’t seen it, you still might have heard people talk about how it’s about Israel-Gaza, mass deportations, and CECOT (the El Salvador torture prison). You might have heard grumblings that it is “anti-ICE” and “pro-immigration”.
Yes. Without getting into spoilers, yes. It absolutely is about those things. Not even subtly about those things.
According to James Gunn, the movie is an immigrant story about kindness To quote him:
“I mean, Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost….This Superman does seem to come at a particular time when people are feeling a loss of hope in other people’s goodness. I’m telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.”
Yes, every single word of this is accurate. The movie is absolutely an immigrant story and a story about human kindness in a world where being unkind is considered “cool”, “edgy”, and “free thinking”.
And it is just the story that we need right now.
The state of the world right now is horrible. I mean, it’s a bit of a truism that the state of the world is always horrible, but I don’t just mean our current policies or the existence of foreign conflicts. I mean our national character as Americans.
I’ve complained before about how people who supported gutting USAID aren’t allowed to be Spider-Man fans because they go against the character’s central tenet that with great power comes great responsibility, but since then, I’ve only seen things get worse.
Too many people minimize, deflect, or outright even cheer on the arrests by ICE of 6 year olds with leukemia and 10 year olds with cancer, and the intentional denial of medical care to these children.
I’ve seen people justify and deflect blame for college students arrested simply for criticizing Israel in their school newspaper.
I’ve seen the argument that undocumented immigrants don’t deserve and don’t have the rights to basic due process become widespread.
There is a large, growing movement of people–including in our own government–that believes empathy is a sin.
Again, I’m not talking about the policies currently put in place. I’m talking about their popularity among ordinary people.
Kindness is considered uncool. The hallmarks of an indoctrinated sheep. We’ve been hearing that for over a decade with things like GamerGate and ComicsGate, but it’s crazier than ever now.
And James Gunn’s Superman is a big middle finger to all of that.
In a way, it’s edgier than all the edgy 90s comics you’ve ever read.
“Kara, I already asked him where the dog is.”
Disguised as a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper
Speaking of things in this country that are cursed, journalism!
It’s a shame that you’re far better informed watching online video game streamers like “Destiny” or “Vaush”, or podcasters like David Pakman, than you are from reading the actual news.
What’s worse, people don’t even get their news from actual news outlets anymore. It’s all social media postings and propaganda outlets that get sued for defamation after spreading lies about a presidential election.
Even crazier is that about 20% of Americans get their news from “news influencers” on social media, with the majority of the influencers being right-leaning men. And most of them are just outright liars and idiots. I can personally attest to one story from a certain Sieg Hieling billionaire being just a flat-out lie because it’s about the area where I live.
All of this feeds into a cycle where Americans don’t trust journalists anymore. Sure, a lot of that is due to cries of “FAKE NEWS”, but it also seems like good, honest journalism is a thing of the past in favor of softball questions and regurgitating what’s said at press conferences.
So I was pleasantly surprised to see the characters engage in real journalism throughout this movie.
Which shouldn’t be too surprising. Clark Kent and Lois Lane work for the Daily Planet. They do in the general Superman mythos, and they do in this movie.
And, without giving too much away, good journalism is just as integral to saving the day in this film as super strong punches are.
The world of the Superman movie is like our own in that there are competing forces eager to sway the opinions of a gullible public. Oligarchs with no moral center tell people to reject what they see with their own eyes, and people comply.
But just like Superman is kind in a world where kindness is uncool and out of style, the film shows what good, honest journalism can do in a world where lies spread faster than truth.
Look! Up in the Sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s [insert ethnonational background here]!
That’s what so many people in the last decade believe makes you you.
People have been retreating into their races and ethnicities seemingly more than ever as of late.
This isn’t new. “Chinatown” exists in almost every major American city. There’s Jewish neighborhoods and black neighborhoods and Russian neighborhoods and everything. In-goup bias is a thing, and people gravitate towards those who look similar to them and have similar cultures and backgrounds.
But, more than ever, it seems like sowing division along these lines is becoming normalized.
“Race realism” and “identitarianism” started to become “respectable” ideologies around 2015-2016, and those words are pretty much synonyms for “racism for people who don’t understand science” and “racism for people who can’t find a good burger joint”. They are all about preserving some nebulous concept of ethnic identity that only losers have more than a passing emotional investment in.
People’s ties to ethnic identity are too strong nowadays, and the near-identical movements that they spawn are all dangerous and destructive. White nationalism, black separatism, Zionism, Jihadism, all of it.
And we create policies based on separating these ethnicities from each other. From the racial segregation of the post-Civil War era to the mass deportations of today, it seems like far too many people with far too much power place far too much value in a person’s aesthetic ethnic identity.
But Superman is an immigrant story. Both this movie, and the character in general. Superman was created by Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms in Russia, and the comics, TV shows, and movies have always reflected that immigrant perspective since the very beginning of the franchise.
In every incarnation of Superman, it is sometimes implied and sometimes outright stated that what makes him so great isn’t his Kryptonian powers, but his good morals and commitment to using his gifts for help people. His strength isn’t his superstrength, but it’s him trying to do his best just like every other person on Earth.
And he got that all from Earth, not Krypton. Everything important he learned about being who he is, he learned from Jonathan and Martha Kent, not Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van.
None of that is new for Superman stories, and it’s not like saying it outright is a bold new storytelling tactic for the franchise. But in a real world where it seems more than ever, right here in America, we determine who belongs here and who doesn’t by ethnicity, it seems like a reminder that our choices and actions are more important than our heritage is sorely needed.
This looks like a job for SUPERMAN!
Superheroes are the modern American mythos. They are what the epics of Homer were to Ancient Greece.
And Superman is the top superhero of them all.
We’ve lost a lot of what is supposed to make America America in the last decade (ignoring the fact that we haven’t always lived up to the promise of America). People seem more and more to be rejecting the very principles that ostensibly make this country so great.
Superman is a stark reminder to us what Truth, Justice, the American Way, and a Better Tomorrow all look like.
In a world where being a good person is “the real punk rock”, this movie shows us how cool being a kind, trusting person can be.
I’ll be honest. Superman defending a refugee child is way cooler than Batman standing on a dark rooftop brooding. I still like Batman, though.
Like Superman himself, this movie is not afraid to loudly take the morally right side of a conflict, no matter how much unpopularity or blowback it might face. It touches on a number of real life issues that are fraught with disagreement and opinions on both sides, but it doesn’t tiptoe around anything. It says what it has to say on these issues boldly and proudly.
In a way, James Gunn’s Superman is just like the Superman of the Golden Age that unambiguously stood up for the working man against corrupt prison wardens and greedy employers.
Both of them don’t mince words and don’t hide their positions on the issues.
Both of them stand for what’s right.
That’s why James Gunn’s Superman was the movie I needed.
That’s why James Gunn’s Superman is the movie America needs right now.
For exciting superhero fiction written by me, be sure to check out the BLUE EAGLE Universe!