'Superman' returns to his goofy roots

The knock on Superman (the character) has long been that he's boring as a superhero, bland as an idea, and stodgy and out of place with current climate of society in general and pop culture in specific. As the first superhero (as we know them), Siegel and Shuster pretty much dumped every idea they could think of into one guy, so whatever superpower you can think up, Superman probably has it (or had it at one time or another).

In a modern context, as comic books and comic book movies and everything else led into embracing the anti-hero (or from the 1990s on, made all the "cool" comic book characters edgelords or brutal vigilantes), it became important for Superman to remain as the one intractable bastion of goodness, decency and civility. "Truth, justice, and the American way" was never really what Superman was about, but the shorthand of the idea of Superman became a useful tool and/or foil for comic book and movie writers. They could have the "interesting" characters get down in the mud and have moral ambiguity all they wanted if at the end of the day (or maybe in the middle of the story), you had the paragon of Superman appear to give context for what the ideal of "good" is, and how far away from it the other characters (or the situation) is. Most of the time, this resulted in people saying "I'll never measure up to him, because he's the best of us." A portion of those stories included Superman saying, "Hey, I struggle, too." But most of the time, that rang hollow.

This current idea of what or who Superman (Kal-El, Clark Kent, whatever you want to call him) is has led to a lot of boring stories as we slide further away from the inception of Superman and are heading into the third or fourth decade of Superman largely existing in people's (and more importantly, creators') minds as a meme of decency. You have creators like Zack Snyder who find Superman fascinating as a concept, only to get hip deep into some stories and have them realize they didn't understand what made him so interesting after all, so they just veer off and tell other stories they'd rather investigate instead, and Superman just gets pulled along for the ride.

But long, longtime readers of Superman know that there were a solid couple of decades in there during Superman's formative years where he and his group of friends were just drenched in nonstop weirdo shit. During the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, Superman, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (and others) were constantly involved in the most baffling stories ever, mostly because no one took comic books all that seriously until at least the 1980s, including the people who made them. Superman got fat. Jimmy Olsen married a monkey. Superman developed a power where he could shoot tiny versions of himself out of his hands. There were infinite stories of other Supermans on other world and in other dimensions. Lois Lane became black in a science experiment. And of course, there were the super-pets: Krypto the Superdog. Streaky the Supercat. Beppo, the Kryptonian monkey. And Comet, Superman's horse. Superman stories were spectacularly weird, and Superman didn't take himself seriously, because he knew at any moment his best friend was likely to sprout quills or turn into a genie or a werewolf or something.

It's been interesting to watch James Gunn's ascent from Troma Guy to the assumed Savior of Comic Book movies. After spending time as a writer for hire on some successful and cult-favorite movies (the Dawn of the Dead remake and live-action Scooby-Doo films), he made a pair of nasty little films in the 2000s called Slither and Super, snark-filled splatter-fests spending time with his twin interests of horror and superheroes. It's especially striking to see the contrast between Super and his follow-up, the universally beloved Guardians of the Galaxy just four years later. Super is a cynical and nihilistic look at superheroes through the most myopic lens of the 1990s/2000s comic book descent into edgelord grossout bleakness at all costs. The rises of Vertigo and Image and the extreme success of shlock merchant writers like Garth Ennis and Mark Millar resulted in creators thinking the only way to make comic books "cool" was to slather them in a thick layer of shit, grime and other bodily fluids and make nothing but bad things happen to the people in them.

The influence of Joss Whedon on pop culture around the same time tells the other big part of this story, as Gunn's output was similarly drenched in snark and cynicism. But somehow, with Guardians (and its two follow-ups, and then The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker), Gunn's stock in trade shifted from bleak quasi-comedy about bad things happening to bad people to genuine affection in sarcastic comedy about flawed people figuring out how to find their own self-worth. Yes, Gunn still infused his work with gross-out humor and irreverence (especially in the case of the Peacemaker series), but it was in moderation, and it was coming from a different angle. With Ennis and the schlock merchants, the point was "how do I put a story around this disgusting idea I have" or "how can I shoehorn this fucked-up thing into a story." With Gunn, it became more about the story and the character, and if he found he had a funny gag, that's all it was: a gag. He let the comedy or the weirdness be incidental to the point of the thing, which was generally about people learning how to be okay with their own situation or their own trauma.

Although I'm not sure that makes Gunn the perfect person to "save" the DCU in general, it probably makes him close to the perfect person to try yet another relaunch of Superman in movie form in the year 2025. Superman, starring the phenomenal David Corenswet in the title role, fully embraces everything goofy and weird about the history of Superman for arguably the first time on film. (The only things that get as close are Richard Donner's original Superman film and 1984's Supergirl, which does not include Superman.) Superman cracks jokes, gets baffled by a lot of strangeness, and at one point is trying to hold an alien baby aloft as he's trapped in a negative-particle waterfall rushing into a black hole. Krypto is there, of course, and Gunn hits a masterstroke by making the mutt totally unruly. (I should mention before I forget that the 2022's animated DC League of Superpets movie, starring Dwayne Johnson as Superman's dog and Kevin Hart as Batman's dog, is extremely good.) In typical James Gunn fashion, he finds a way to surround Superman with a support group of C-tier superheroes who aren't affiliated directly with Kal-El but exist in his orbit: Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and the surprise breakout of the movie, Mister Terrific, played by Edi Gathegi. They help add to the comic relief and – in a great inversion of how DC comic books have been going for so long – serve as a juxtaposition to Superman, rather than him serving as contextual shorthand for "more interesting" characters.

A lot will be made (and has already been made) of the political allegories throughout Gunn's Superman. There's a Gaza conflict in miniature driving a portion of the story. Fox News is bent out of shape about Superman describing himself as an illegal alien, and his status as a non-human (and non-American) being the thing that runs him afoul of the government in the movie. (Never mind that being an immigrant has always been a central tenant of the Superman mythos, what with him being the creation of two children of Jewish immigrants.) And the most poignant bit of political commentary (in my opinion) is the reframing of Lex Luthor as, essentially, Elon Musk. Rather than Luthor as a person driven by his hatred of Superman, this new version (played with delightful ham by Nicholas Hoult, the greatest actor of his generation) is a genius (this is actually in contract to Musk, who is anything but) whose achievements have attracted a diehard cult of sycophants who will do anything for him, simply because he is successful and they desire nothing more than to be around that success and attempt to please him, even if most of the time they're reduced to groveling so as not to face his ire. Luthor isn't driven by his hatred of Superman, but has been driven to hate him over the course of the previous three years ... simply because people love Superman effortlessly, but nothing Luthor does can convince people to love him without reservation. Sounds pretty familiar!

I have seen people say Gunn's political commentary is perfect and sublime, while comparing it unfavorably to the political commentary in Captain America: Brave New World. I disagree with both parts of that: Gunn's commentary is definitely not perfect, and is muddled at times, and I have also been on record as finding CA: BNW's commentary surprisingly poignant, if at times unintentionally so.

I've also seen many, many people saying that Gunn has saved and refreshed all superhero movies with this one, and while I totally understand that most people have superhero movie fatigue and have had it for years now, we just had a superhero movie nearly as good with Thunderbolts*, and Gunn's tremendous MCU swan song Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is ONLY TWO YEARS OLD. I loved Superman and found it thrilling, but I honestly don't really know what the difference is beyond it starring Superman rather than other, less iconic superheroes. People complain about the films getting bogged down with continuity, but Superman begins with a big lore dump and introduces no fewer than seven superpowered characters the audience hasn't seen before. I loved Superman, but I genuinely don't see why it's being viewed as SO drastically different from the others in the same space, other than it being a bit more whimsical (but no more whimsical than any of Gunn's other three GOTG movies, or his Suicide Squad movie). But I pretty much love all superhero movies, so I guess this isn't my problem to figure out!

(One last shout-out to the Superman runner that Jimmy Olsen – played by Skyler "Gideon Gemstone" Gisondo – is the most sexually desirable human to ever walk the planet. You may notice that I haven't given much lip service to Rachel Brosnahan's Lois Lane, but that's because other than saying how "punk rock" she is, she isn't given a lot of time to develop beyond being the hard-nosed reporter foil to Clark's eternal optimist. She's fine, but from Margot Kidder (other than in the first Donner film) down to Amy Adams, Lois continues to be someone who's in these movies because she's supposed to be.)

And even though I'm pretty much over dogs in general, Krypto is, indeed, very cute.