Superman Steel-Mans the Superhero Movie
Fermenting heat pervaded the afternoon I stepped into a theater to watch Superman. Not the hottest I’ve experienced, but Seattle apartments (mine included) tend to lack air conditioning, so the cold, dark room served as the balm I longed for. To my surprise, I also realized that James Gunn’s Superman proves to be a refreshing experience: a superhero film that’s once more engaged with reality in interesting ways. That’s not to say it’s grounded or gritty—indeed, Gunn’s film leans into the silliness of the scenario—but it’s not trying to set itself in a vacuum (or pocket universe), far removed from any real world concerns. It’s a (frosty) breath of fresh air.
What does it mean for Superman to be invested in the real world? The film opens with our hero (David Corenswet) nursing his wounds from a battle with “the Hammer of Boravia,” the fighting machine of a clearly Eastern Eurasian nation that’s ruled by an aging despot and that refuses to be shy about its intent to invade a nearby sovereign nation. It’s a precarious business getting involved in global geopolitics, even if you’re a superhero, and Superman’s excursion leaves him not merely battered, but also burned by public opinion.
The physical and social injuries play right into the hands of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, who’s on a tear right now and seemingly enjoying it). Luthor has always been a rich corporate type, but Hoult’s rendition plays neatly as a tech billionaire who’s in bed with the military industrial complex, scheming for government contracts, obsessed with public image (diagnosis: terminally online), and fueled by an envy that’s both petulant and virulent. His company, meanwhile, is simultaneously satisfying its political deals and Luthor’s spite by becoming the vehicle for outsourcing prisoner detainment—whether those prisoners are rebels, ex-girlfriends, or the otherwise unwanted.
None of it is subtle. But it’d be far less engaging—and far less fun—if it was. Superman’s best quality is how real it feels. There was a time when superhero movies were involved in real-world considerations. The original X-Men films surveyed a political landscape bent on othering various demographics, making it openly readable for critiques of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and more. The Dark Knight made space to wonder at the morality and efficacy of Patriot Act-era surveillance and the urge toward vigilantism. While messy in weaving in the aesthetics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, The Dark Knight Rises queried the effects of Batman’s previous methods.
Superhero movies used to be invested in the real world. That doesn’t mean they all had to be grounded. (Snyder’s reworkings showed that gritty doesn’t necessarily correlate with real or interesting.) But the predominance of the MCU over the previous decades has untethered this genre from reality. That’s part of the draw: it’s hard to make multiple billions in gross if you include anything that may alienate any potential ticket buyer. The endgame was always money, real-world commentary be damned. As Marvel leaned further into multiverses and lore for its biggest budget products, the films only became more disconnected.
Superman crashes into this flattened cinematic landscape, leaving a veritable crater. It’s nice to know that movies can seek to entertain us and make us ponder how far we want tech billionaires’ influence to invade our national policy. Outsourcing the imprisonment of anyone to foreign lands—universal rifts included—should be seen as a condemnable step toward unabashed evil. Movies don’t have to be set within the real world (or real cities), but they should at least be in reference to the real world. They should care about it. Is that so much to ask?
All of this has probably made Superman sound pretty grim, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Superman has a silly surface, even if its plot is substantial. Typically, Gunn heightens the silliness where it’s most apt: Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern may be heroic, but he’s equally self absorbed; Krypto, the super dog, has behavioral issues; hypno-glasses gets a passing reference. But some of the silliness is out of place. The most exaggerated Southern accent is chosen for Clark’s adoptive parents, lest you forget they’re simple folk. Most worrisome, Gunn’s violent flippancy clouds a hero who’s committed to non-lethal means. When Luthor kills a man, it clarifies the character as evil and foolish; but when one of Superman’s allies happily does so—what do we make of that? Superman’s ethics aren’t realized unless the entire movie commits to them.
While the film helps revitalize a tired, alienated (no pun intended) genre, it persists in familiar stumbles. There’s still too much interdimensional neon. While some action scenes are grounded by real sets, others wander into unearthly territory (landscaped and populated by CGI renderings). We enter a pocket universe. It is like many of the other transdimensional spaces witnessed in other movies. It is dark, black if not grey, save the abundance of multicolored neon. I’m beginning to consider this the aesthetics of nothingness—it is not otherworldly but unworldly—a vision of mere distraction.
Still, Superman has real moments, and that’s a far cry from most recent films within the genre. It’s structured by solid performances (I haven’t mentioned Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen yet, but he’s the movie’s MVP, hilarious and committed) and probing concerns, and it employs fan service without being enslaved to lore. There have been other good superhero movies recently—the Spider-Verse films, Matt Reeves’ The Batman—but the forgettable have continued to dominate. The genre will have to reinvent itself or suffer the slow death of diminishing returns. Maybe it’s fitting that Superman embodies resurrection, reviving its subject by returning to what worked two decades ago: grounded themes diluted with fantastic spectacle. This is what the genre accomplishes at its best, acknowledging its existence as a form of commercial entertainment while still contributing to social conversation, being about something real, despite aliens and heat rays and snarky quips. I’m not sure if I’m a grump or too easily pleased, but—despite its flaws—James Gunn’s Superman is a welcome return to form.
