In James Gunn’s Superman film, a cynical Lois Lane says to Superman, “You think everything and everyone is beautiful.” Then Superman says, “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.”
Superman was talking to Lois Lane, but James Gunn was talking to the audience. That was his message to the Left and the Right, but it probably moved faster than a speeding bullet over most people’s heads.
What sets James Gunn’s Superman apart from other Superman or superhero films is that it doesn’t ask: “What if superheroes existed in our world?” Instead, it asks: What if comic books came to life? The film doesn’t bring Superman into our world; it takes us into his.
More than halfway into the movie, I noticed that I hadn’t stopped smiling since the beginning. It’s the kind of Superman movie I’ve wanted to see since I was a kid.
Like every James Gunn film, it’s well-directed. The cinematography is understated but engaging. David Corenwet is fantastic as Superman. He is the most relatable and interesting Superman yet. Nicholas Hoult is the best Lex Luthor so far. He is cold, calculating, yet unhinged when he needs to be. Rachel Brosnahan is also great as Lois Lane. Her interview with Superman at the beginning of the film is one of my favourite scenes. But the scene with Pa Kent and Clark Kent is probably my favourite.
Except for maybe one supporting villain, every character is great. However, I think the movie would have been even better if it had more dramatic moments and slightly less comedy. At times, comedic moments disrupted good drama. Also, I expected more meaningful scenes with Krypto. The film was surprisingly short. It’s just 2 hours long, which is much shorter than most blockbuster films. Some additional scenes could have provided further development for supporting characters.
But those are minor complaints. Overall, it’s a great movie with a compelling message.
However, this week, some people on the Right said they would boycott the movie because it’s supposedly woke. They claim that James Gunn said in an interview that the film has a political message about immigration. Every conservative outlet shared the story and denounced James Gunn for making a Superman movie about politics and immigration.
Except, James Gunn didn’t say anything close to that.
What he said is that there is a political disagreement between Clark Kent and Lois Lane at the beginning of the movie. That disagreement had nothing to do with real-world politics. Then, later in the interview, he mentioned that Superman is an immigrant.
He didn’t say the movie is about immigration. He also didn’t suggest the film would highlight Superman as an immigrant. He mentioned that Superman, the character, is an immigrant.
There is nothing woke, controversial, or untruthful about what he said. Stating that Superman is an immigrant isn’t a woke attack on Trump’s immigration policy. Superman’s creators were Jewish immigrants who created a story about an alien immigrant who became an American hero. Christopher Reeve, Zack Snyder, and the TV show Smallville made similar assertions about Superman being an immigrant. Does that mean the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Smallville, and Man of Steel are woke?
These critics on the Right mirrored the Left’s woke tactics, rushing to judgment based on misinformation without investigating for themselves.
They didn’t realize it, but they were doing precisely what the movie warns about.
To understand that, you need to understand James Gunn’s history with cancel culture on both the Right and the Left.
James Gunn was once a vocal Leftist on social media. He used to attack people on the Right like Ben Shapiro and Donald Trump. In 2018, he suggested that people on the Right, like Ben Shapiro, are racists and traitors. He also said things like, “I think even Ben Shapiro’s mother should unfollow him.”
In reaction to these kinds of attacks, some people on the Right found crude jokes that he had made years before about pedophilia and the Holocaust, and they demanded his cancellation. Disney subsequently fired him.
James Gunn has said that it was the darkest period of his life. He thought he had lost his career.
Disney rehired him the following year, and he is currently the co-CEO of DC Studios.
However, that ordeal had a major impact on him. It changed how he thinks about cancel culture and online mobs.
I think this is why he strongly defended his friend Chris Pratt in 2022 when woke people tried to cancel him because of his profession of faith and apparent Right-leaning political views. They started a social media campaign asking James Gunn to replace Pratt with a different actor in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. But he refused. He said, “Chris Pratt would never be replaced as Star-Lord but, if he ever was, we would all be going with him.”
That is probably the basis for why James Gunn and his co-CEO of DC Studios, Peter Safran, have described the Superman movie as “kindness in a world where kindness is old-fashioned.”
Superman echoes that theme when he says believing that everyone and everything is beautiful is maybe the real punk rock. In the film, it’s a reference to Superman’s resolve to value every life, even the lives of creatures who make his life more difficult. But more than that, I think it’s James Gunn’s message to the audience about cynicism and cancel culture.
In other words, cynicism isn’t punk rock—it’s mainstream. It’s what too many people on the Left and the Right are doing. They are not edgy or rebelling against the culture. They are just following he herd.
Therefore, resisting the temptation to immediately denounce someone or something, without all the facts, is maybe the real act of rebellion today.
In that way, James Gunn’s Superman is probably the least woke superhero or blockbuster film in years. It doesn’t promote leftist views.
Since it’s faithful to the Superman story, it’s subtly pro-life, pro-adoption, pro-fathers, pro-family.
But by the end of the movie, one thing the Left and the Right can agree on is that this is just a good and entertaining movie.