Of course, as Gunn also points out, it’s also about a guy wearing spandex and fighting crime alongside his dog—there’s a sense of humor to the proceedings. But he acknowledges that “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.” The movie may “play differently” in parts of the country with different beliefs (Gunn recalls set photos of Corenswet meeting children in costume getting a reaction that “Superman is a pussy now”), “But it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”
Superman has always been political; when the first trailer debuted, Gunn explained to iO9 in 2024 that the battered and bloodied hero “is our country.” Famous comic book fan Kevin Smith had a similar read. “[There’s] this theory that I didn’t come up with, it’s been around forever, where whether Batman or Superman is ascendant and dominant in the culture has everything to do with where we are as a country. So, when times are good for Americans and prosperous, oddly enough, Batman is the dominant character because Batman is a dark fantasy about everything going wrong. … And then the flip theory of that is Superman is ascendant whenever the country is doing poorly or it needs help, and that’s when that character plays strongest,” Smith opined to Deadline last month. “So, it would feel like based on that, like Superman, the stage is set for that movie to make so much fucking money. People wanna hope right now. People just want to believe in a fucking thing, man.”
But long before Gunn came along, Superman was a reflection of his political times. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who were the children of Jewish immigrants raised in Cleveland, Ohio. “What led me into creating Superman in the early Thirties? Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany, I had the great urge to help the downtrodden masses, somehow,” Siegel once said (via The Times Of London). “Superman was the answer.”
Modern-day Superman has modern-day concerns, like getting involved in conflict in the Middle East. Gunn says he wrote the script before the October 7 attack in Israel, “So I tried to do little things to move it away from that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East. It’s an invasion by a much more powerful country run by a despot into a country that’s problematic in terms of its political history, but has totally no defence against the other country. It really is fictional.” Superman will also combat Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) minions trolling online (representing “people in general driven by rage or the bots governments pay for that create all sorts of nonsense”). “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,” the filmmaker says. “And I include myself in this. It is ad infinitum, millions of people having tantrums online. How are we supposed to get anywhere as a culture? We don’t know what’s real, and that is a really difficult place for the human brain to be. If I could press a button to make the internet disappear I’d consider it. And, no, I don’t make films to change the world, but if a few people could be just a bit nicer after this it would make me happy.”
