Superman and the Coddling of the American Moviegoer
Why show when you can tell?
[WARNING: This is a very short post, but I’ve managed to fit a ton of spoilers in. If you’re hell-bent on freshly experiencing every thrilling turn of the garbage that is Superman, you may want to skip this one.]
The new Superman has approximately three points to make:
Billionaires are bad.
You know the film thinks billionaires are bad because the villain is a billionaire, everybody is constantly suggesting that he’s doing bad things in order to make many billions of dollars, and the big twist is that no, actually, he’s not just out to make billions of dollars, he also wants to establish some sort of bizarre libertarian paradise where he can hang out with his other billionaire friends.
Ah, and in case that wasn’t enough, the closing action includes a news broadcast with a big chyron reading, essentially, “Billionaire Exposed Doing Nasty Billionaire Things; Is Punished.”
Immigration is good.
You know the film thinks immigration is good because all the bad guys keep calling Superman an “alien,” and eventually he gets fed up and makes some big speech about how he’s just as human as anyone, and we should all learn to love and accept each other’s flaws and differences.
Never mind that contrived plot point about how Superman actually was sent to Earth for evil and nefarious reasons—he’s got a cute face and seems real nice, so probably it’s fine, whatever!
Ah, and in case all that wasn’t enough, the director went on a media blitz to tell everyone, “My movie is about how immigration is good.”
War is bad.
You know the film thinks war is bad because it starts with Superman stopping a war from happening, and also ends with Superman stopping the same war from happening.
Toward the beginning, Lois Lane asks Superman something to the effect of “Are you sure that war is always bad and that your intervention is definitely a good idea?” Superman gets very offended by this and storms off. The question is never directly answered, but it turns out that this war in particular actually is very bad, and Superman was totally right to intervene; no moral complexity necessary whatsoever.1
In order to beat the viewer over the head with all three of these messages in just two hours, writer/director James Gunn decided it wouldn’t be necessary to develop any of his characters or plotlines at all.
“I don’t need to see baby Kal coming from Krypton in a little baby rocket,” he said in one interview. “Who cares?”
Well, you know, the viewing public might kinda care!
This isn’t a loving treatment of the IP at all—it’s an ugly exploitation of it. Gunn has an agenda, he has no qualms about making that agenda very obvious, and he doesn’t think he owes you any emotional stakes to support it.
Why does Superman love Lois Lane?
I dunno, he just kinda says it at one point! We don’t know how or why they started dating; all we see are deeply awkward conversations bookended by deeply unromantic kissing.
Why is there ever any chance that Superman might be in trouble?
Because some strange, unknown mineral-man had his strange, unknown baby kidnapped by Lex Luthor, and so he’s helping Luthor keep Superman imprisoned with kryptonite. We don’t know who this guy is, how he had a baby, why the baby is green and has a massive head, or why he thinks that helping notorious awful-guy Lex Luthor will be more to his advantage than helping notorious good-guy Superman.
How does Superman eventually get out of trouble?
Mineral-man sees Lex Luthor kill some other guy in cold blood, realizes, “hey, maybe Lex Luthor is a notorious awful-guy” and stops helping him. Superman then uses his superpowers to escape.
How is Lex Luthor finally brought to justice?
Investigative journalism!
Did any of the story have any stakes whatsoever?
Nope! Superman gets his life saved (repeatedly) by a flying dog, and then it turns out he was just babysitting the dog for his kooky cousin. She calls him a bitch, and the movie ends.
Some other concepts introduced without a hint of exposition include, in no particular order:
a pocket universe
an antiproton river (???)
the “Justice Gang”
a slow-moving, easily-reversible “universal rift”
an imperfect Superman-clone
some lady made of nanobots who can only be defeated with the power of friction
a really big dinosaur-alien-thing
Look, I don’t claim to know a lot about movie-making. And I think it’s fine for superhero movies to be crazy and fun.
But Superman is less fun than it is slop. It’s memeified, enshittified, internetified—everything’s got big eyes, a catchphrase, and a heartfelt speech to give about how Trump is bad. This film manages to serve up millenial snot and mass-market pablum at the same time.
Superman knows better than you, and it will tell you so, explicitly and unsubtly, over and over and over again.
Some leftist commentators have compared this war to the one waged by Israel in Gaza. I agree that the war depicted in Superman looks a lot like the progressive imagination of Israel’s war against Hamas:
Compare:
In NARROW defense of Gunn’s point… I’m fucking sick of the repeated origin stories. There are only so many ways Uncle Ben or the Waynes can be murdered.
(If you're reading this comment first, scroll down to the last one... these are posted in reverse order 💀)
You make some other claims and comments throughout this post, but frankly these were the only ones that felt worth responding to. The rest were sorely lacking in evidence, and many just feel (ironically) like sensationalist slop. Which is disappointing, because from what other posts of yours I've read, you seem to generally approach things with a lot more thought and nuance. It's unclear from this how big of a Superman fan you are. If you're a big fan, and you were seriously disappointed with this movie, I can understand having such an extreme reaction (trust me, I've been there). But if not... what are you doing, man?
I really enjoyed this movie. It may not seem that way, with all the criticisms I've conceded or leveled against it myself, but I genuinely think the good outweighs the bad, and despite its flaws, it remains a refreshing take on the character. I'm excited to see again tomorrow, and I'm excited for the future of DC (and superhero movies in general) in a way I haven't been in a long time. But I also don't blame you for not enjoying it, because yeah, it's far from perfect (and I don't know, maybe it's just not your kind of film). You're more than allowed to not like Superman, and you're more than allowed to criticize it. None of this is meant to be a personal attack, and I hope you don't take it that way. I just woke up to some bullshit this morning and I felt the need to call it out. Wish I had woken up earlier though lol so this didn't take up so much of my day.
—Owen Widdis