A summer blockbuster about an undocumented alien with unyielding socialist values who continuously bails out a country clearly undeserving of him. Is it any wonder that James Gunn’s Superman movie, released today, is reflexively triggering fascists to demand people claw out their corneas rather than be subjected to its “woke proselytizing?”
Even before its release, the outrage coming from the conservative content mill branded the film a beta male cuckfest, wishing it the ultimate cinematic kiss of death: that it bombed harder than Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White (ouch). And for what? Simply because Gunn, the film’s director and screenwriter, had the gall to emphasize Superman’s ties to the immigrant experience in America. After all, he did migrate from another planet with dubious legality.
He then had the sheer audacity to suggest that the character’s ultimate trait isn’t his ability to fly, bench-press skyscrapers, or shoot laser beams from his eyes, but this ultra rare thing called human kindness. And for that, sight unseen, there exists a manufactured campaign working overtime to discourage anyone from seeing the latest iteration of society’s most recognizable superhero.
After seeing the movie, I’ll admit it, if I were them, I’d do the same damn thing. Because the most consequential battle of our time isn’t being fought with bullets or ballots, but through narrative: who gets to shape it, who gets erased from it, and what values it enshrines. It’s a fight to define what constitutes strength and justice, what gets labeled as truth. And most crucially, who gets to be recognized as fully human, fully American, and fully worthy of concern.
In a time when the right openly applauds mass cruelty and cheers people being rounded up like cattle in Los Angeles parks, while its religious arm dares to somehow preach with a straight face that empathy is actually toxic, Superman might be the closest thing a commercial, mass marketed, big-budget Hollywood film will come to challenging the creeping fascistic world view taking hold in our society.
Of course, it is not revolutionary. But in a cultural moment where authoritarian ideology is sliding into the mainstream and weaponized to justify displacement, surveillance, and state-sanctioned violence, a story that dares to center decency, dignity, and radical care for strangers begins to feel almost subversive. When the dominant narrative tells us to harden our hearts, even a commercial myth about an immigrant who uses his power to protect the vulnerable can feel like a social gesture toward a strength rooted not in control or conquest, but in the quiet insistence that love, justice, and solidarity still have a place in public life.
Superman, created in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two children of Jewish immigrants, was at the time a deliberate response to a climate of rising xenophobia and fascism. Through him, Siegel and Shuster aimed to show that immigrants weren’t a threat. They were people who shared the same moral aspirations as their new neighbors (wishful thinking, even then), and who could help shape a richer, more creative, more just society.
Superman was a symbol of America’s potential: a nation that doesn’t merely tolerate uniqueness, but thrives because of it. His mission, which actor David Corenswet, who portrays him in the film, recently described as standing for “truth, justice, and all the other good stuff.”
There’s plenty of the latter throughout the film. It’s fun, delightfully weird, and values-affirming (if your values are humanitarian). And although Gunn has claimed his film is apolitical, mainly to avoid harming its commercial viability (he is trying to build a cinematic universe, after all), at its core, the film stands in direct opposition to the politics of despair and resignation. It rejects the idea that cruelty is inevitable or that hope is naive.
Thankfully foregoing Superman’s origin story (dude’s been around for nine decades, you should know by now: home planet blew up, sent to Earth, raised by Kansas farmer, got it), the movie is refreshing for a comic book film in that you don’t need to have sat through 20 hours of preexisting IP in order to understand it.
The film kicks off with the bruised and battered Superman being saved by super dog Krypto (who should be charged for scene-stealing grand larceny throughout the film). From there, the film leans into some familiar but modernized character motifs. There’s Lois Lane, played with sharp wit by Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, who passes the Bechdel Test and brings a refreshing shift in focus. Her relationship with Clark Kent is present, but it’s maybe her third priority. Her real drive is clear: She’s determined to be the best reporter at the struggling Daily Planet, and if the super-fling fizzles out? So be it. She’s got bigger stories to chase.
Then there’s Superman’s perennial nemesis, Lex Luthor, played gamely by Nicholas Hoult. He portrays Luthor like he’s spliced together the ruthlessness of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel into a menacing, smarmy, calculating villain. The result is a Luthor who feels tragic, but never once sympathetic, a rare feat.
It’s Luthor who sets the central conflict in motion: A poor, under-resourced nation of mostly brown people is threatened with mass slaughter by a hyper-militarized, aggressive country fully backed and blessed by the United States government. Subtle, right?
When Superman chooses to protect the weaker nation from annihilation, he immediately becomes a target of the US itself, which promptly outsources his takedown to, you guessed it, Luthor. Again, very subtle.
The movie ultimately works because, unlike others behind recent big-screen attempts (yes, we’re looking at you, Zack Snyder), Gunn actually understands who Superman is. He’s not a god. He’s not an Ayn Rand–inspired stoic individualist. And he’s certainly not a Messianic savior figure (an ironic interpretation, given the character’s Jewish origins). In contrast to Snyder’s grim and brooding interpretations in Man of Steel (2013) and Dawn of Justice (2016), this version of Superman offers something both rare and urgent: a vision of benefic masculinity.
He is a narrative counterweight, a reminder that power, at its best, exists to serve, not to be served. He could rule the world if he wanted to. But he chooses to protect it.
Because, as his creators intended from the very beginning, he embodies something profoundly countercultural: a misfit, an outsider, a do-gooder who’s a little corny, a little naive, and still utterly committed to doing the right thing, even in a world that grows more cynical, and less appreciative of his presence, by the day.
In that way, Superman may be the most human superhero ever created. And in Corenswet’s portrayal—grounded, vulnerable, and deeply principled—we finally see that full humanity come alive. It’s fitting, and long overdue, that the first Jewish actor to play this deeply Jewish-coded character does so with a sincerity that honors both the myth and the men who created it.
The weight of that milestone didn’t fully hit me until about 30 minutes into the film, when my rowmate at the screening began to cry. After the credits rolled, I asked her why. Through tears, she explained the Jewish concept of tikkun olam: the call to repair the world through acts of kindness and justice.
Part of her emotion was sparked by seeing a Jewish actor finally portray a character born from the imaginations of two Jewish children of immigrants. Much like I felt when Black Panther was first released, she felt a deep emotional resonance in seeing her identity reflected with care and dignity. But what moved her most was the story itself: a hero, created by those who knew exile and otherness, using his power to protect vulnerable, besieged people.
If you gave James Gunn a dose of truth serum, he might admit that the endangered nation under siege in the film was clearly a stand-in for Gaza. For her, it wasn’t just a superhero fantasy—it was a moral call, a plea for more Jews, and for everyone, to raise their voices for the people being slaughtered there. A reminder that our identities, our histories, and our stories should compel us toward ethical action. Toward aiding those in danger. Toward building a more just world.
Full confession: Superman has always been my favorite superhero. He has been since I was 8 years old, sitting cross-legged by the fireplace while my father, exhausted from working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads and pay my school tuition, read Superman comics to me. It was his way of expressing love, through stories of a man who could fly, yet chose to walk alongside us.
Those moments were moral instructions on power and responsibility. My father, a Black man navigating a world that often refused to see his full humanity, used Superman to teach me that strength isn’t about domination; it’s about restraint, empathy, and service.
Through those stories, he showed me that privilege, whether inherited, earned, or stumbled into, is never neutral. It demands something of us. Our measure is not by what we possess, but by what we choose to do with it.
It’s why this latest Superman film, entertaining as it is, is the most vital and resonant version we’ve ever seen on screen. More than just a blockbuster, it offers a desperately needed counter-narrative to the dystopian propaganda that saturates our culture today. Whether it’s streaming from YouTubers or broadcast from the White House, we’re being told, over and over, to look away.
Look away from the terror inflicted on immigrants.
Look away from the erasure of trans lives.
Look away from the legislation that grinds the poor further into poverty.
Look away from the murdered children of Gaza.
This is propaganda designed to demoralize. A narrative architecture built to dull our senses, normalize violence, and convince us that compassion is weakness and justice is impossible. It tells us that resistance is futile, that cruelty is common sense, and that apathy is the only way to survive. It asks us to bow our heads in resignation, to stop believing in the possibility of change, and ultimately, to give up on one another.
But this film insists on something else. It reminds us that power, when guided by love, is liberating. It centers care as strength, hope as practice, and solidarity as our only way forward. It’s not just a story about a man who can fly. It’s a reminder of what we are capable of when we choose to show up with courage, again and again, even when the world tells us not to bother.
Unbow your head and, as the film’s tagline says: Look up.
