For the longest time, modern superhero movies distilled the comic book source material to make them more relatable to mass audiences. Removing the absurdities and comical elements to the point that a majority of comic book movies were distilled to their most muted and lifeless state. Director James Gunn rejects all that to for a new, Silver Age-inspired era of superhero movies in Superman.
Superman has always been at his best when he feels like a childhood hero and less like a demigod. It’s this embrace of comic book absurdity and naivete that sets Gunn’s take on the beloved American superhero apart from recent iterations of the Man of Steel. While director Zack Snyder’s Superman from 2013 brooded under the weight of his godhood, Gunn’s soars through one that’s proudly, almost defiantly, ridiculous. A towering kaiju rampaging through Metropolis, casual chatter about pocket universes, and the presence of superpowered cartoonish metahumans: all of it harks back to the Silver Age of comics, a time most filmmakers have carefully sidestepped for fear its sheer weirdness might alienate most audiences.
Gunn doesn’t give us a Superman that is infallible. Instead, we get a Superman that is ridiculously human. He is naive in his superhuman-ness, a freshly minted hero that has yet to realize that the world isn’t divided into a binary Good and Bad. But it’s this hope that makes Superman so lovable. Against all odds, we want to see this tenderhearted hero win. He is tireless in his effort to always do the right thing.
What’s more, this version of Superman, played by the ever-charming and boyscout-esque David Corenswet, doesn’t take himself too seriously. When he’s in Clark Kent mode, he spends some of his downtime thinking up new soundbites in case Superman ever gets caught on a livestream and resembles a disgruntled dog owner, forced to take care of a destructive, easily distracted canine.
Despite the awe and joy of seeing this bright new version of Superman, its issues still hit home, perhaps now more than ever. The director-writer didn’t have to try too hard to politicize Superman; all he had to do was do a little doom scrolling. The hero takes on his arch nemesis Lex Luthor, a bald, vest-wearing amalgamation of Elon Musk, American President Donald Trump, and a plethora of ill-tempered billionaires out to spend their brains and bank accounts on dreams of world domination.
It’s not surprising that specific audiences — far-right MAGA circles and anti-immigrant pundits — have picked up on this thread, and they’ve had a lot to say about Gunn turning Superman into some kind of “woke” manifesto. But Gunn hasn’t shied away from pushing back. After all, longtime comic book fans know that Superman has always been a symbol of the outsider, a character created by the sons of Jewish immigrants, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. Gunn has publicly defended the blockbuster’s themes of immigration and acceptance, but he has also stressed that, at its core, Superman is about what it means to continue to be good in a world that makes little room for it. “This is a movie about kindness,” Gunn told Rolling Stone Philippines. “It’s about kindness in a world that is bereft of kindness… our own world.”
And doesn’t this pure, unadulterated altruism directly link back to the joy of the Silver Age of comics? As Grant Morrison, the seminal comic book writer behind All Star Superman, once said in an interview with Comic Book Resources: “[The Silver Age] was a time when superhero characters were probably at their best and at their most appropriate to the culture… the stories were better, they were more universal.” Gunn taps into that spirit and gives us a Superman that is unquestionably timeless.
