Superman: Kindness And Hope Have Always Been Punk Rock.

 

[Heavy spoilers for 2025’s Superman, seriously, everything will be on the table. Go watch this movie and come back to this.] With the current state of comic book movies, I imagine that average moviegoers have come to expect nothing more than a self-serving, spacefaring shenanigan-fest, an insufferable tapestry of bottom-barrel “comedy” tailored to appeal to younger audiences. I like these movies. I like superheroes. I’ll consistently give unwarranted grace to mediocre outings simply because I like seeing my childhood action figures come to life.

That said, with every passing year, these films seem to forget what it actually means to be a comic book movie; what it means to realize these characters.

In 2008, Marvel and Paramount released the now-paradigm-shifting Iron Man, a movie that, while not perfect, followed in the footsteps of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogies. These characters meant something. The stories they were used to tell were about something. And these characters should never be used shamelessly for brand equity without a critical understanding of what makes them who they are, and in many cases, who they've been for almost a century.

Iron Man, while slightly influenced by the late-2000s trend of “it’s gotta be gritty, cool, and Michael Bay-esque,” still tried to say something. At the very least, it offered a take on the American military-industrial complex and the morality of war-profiteering weapons contractors. It’s no surprise that it made a strong foundation for the cinematic universe built off its back. Again, not perfect, it could’ve been less afraid of its own messaging, but it carried weight, delivered through Robert Downey Jr., now synonymous with Tony Stark.

This brings us to Superman (2025).

Audiences are increasingly reluctant to engage with superhero media following the complete collapse of Zack Snyder’s ill-fated “DCEU” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe being on life support. I’m not a proponent of the “superhero fatigue” narrative, but I do think people are tired of mediocrity. They’re tired of movies that only seem to exist to sell action figures and shitty merch to toddlers.

It is in this distrust that Guardians of The Galaxy champion James Gunn would be tasked with delivering a brand-new DC Cinematic Universe (now the DCU). The first outing would be announced in December 2022, with Gunn himself handling a new iteration of DC’s tentpole character: Superman. After Snyder’s much grittier, self-serious interpretation, Gunn promised a more youthful and hopeful take, not unlike the beloved All-Star Superman comic. This Superman was entering a post-COVID industry, in the wake of a devalued Marvel Cinematic Universe, and during an era where streaming had fundamentally altered the relationship between movies and theaters. In short: it was always going to be an uphill battle, even for the Man of Steel.

Sandwiched between a predictably roaring Jurassic World entry and Marvel’s back-to-form Fantastic Four, Superman needed to follow the footsteps of Raimi’s Spider-Man, Nolan’s Batman, and Favreau’s Iron Man: be different, be new, and above all, be about something.

And when early screening reactions trickled out online, it became clear; Superman wasn’t just about something. It was about everything. [Final spoiler warning, seriously.]

Gunn would cut yet another rehash of the origin story and throw us right into the thick of it, a cool-toned, fast-paced romp with little to no context beyond a brief text-based introduction about the last 300 years of this world and its relationship with “metahumans”, that Superman is the strongest of them, and he’s just lost his first battle.

(I’m not going to spark-note the entire movie, this would quickly turn into a 20-page essay. If you’ve made it this far, I’m assuming you’ve seen it and know what I’m talking about.)

The movie opens with Superman losing a battle to a “hero” named The Hammer, from the fictional country of Bovaria. The Hammer resents Superman for inserting himself into a geopolitical conflict between Boravia and another fictional state, Jarhanpur. Superman claims he intervened because he “answers to himself,” and because “people were going to die.”

However, it’s soon revealed that The Hammer is actually Ultraman,  a clone of Superman created by his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor.

Luthor, played brilliantly by the ever-underrated Nicholas Hoult, is reimagined as a billionaire weapons contractor with global influence. He sees Superman as a symbol of mankind’s inherent fragility and inadequacy (but it's more so a projection of his fragile ego), and seeks to destroy him.

Boravia and Jahranpur’s “war” is a Luthor-manufactured distraction, using it to distract Superman while potentially securing his own financial interests. Jahranpur is described as “oil-rich territory,” but its population, which are described as terrorists by Boravian propagandists, keep it from being harvestable.

Ahead of the movie’s release, I had heard whispers of how blatantly anti-Zionist the film was. After 25 years of watching movies and constantly being told to scrounge around for feigned political subtext, I’ve never seen something this loud, this clear, or this well-aimed. There’s no mistaking it: Luthor’s support of Boravia and his perpetuation of a one-sided war against a defenseless Jahranpur for capitalist and geopolitical gain, is a megaphone call-out of Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza. There’s no “well, you know, history is complicated and this sort of shit happens all the time” No. Boravia is described as “America’s greatest ally.” This movie is about what it’s about, and it cannot and should not be sanitized to protect the feelings and consciences of Zionist propagandists. I mean shit, at one point the movie even states that Jahranpur should be split into a Boravia controlled half and a Luthor controlled half after the ethnic cleansing of the territory. Come on.

That geopolitical subtext is a major current, but the real beef of the movie lies in Superman’s struggle with his autonomy as a godlike being who answers only to his own moral compass. That’s terrifying in theory, but for all his power, Superman is globally admired for his heroism, a true symbol of hope. From Metropolis food vendors to Jahranpur children, he is hope.

The trust in Superman is shaken when Luthor uncovers a message from Superman’s biological parents, instructing him to dominate Earth. Superman had never heard this message before, but the damage had been done, and large swathes of the public had begun to turn against him. As a result, Superman surrenders himself in good faith to the U.S. government, only to be arrested and imprisoned by Luthor. Bruised, beaten, and for the first time in his life, unable to overcome the odds, Superman is imprisoned, and stored in a cage with Metamorpho, being manipulated by Luthor to manifest Kryptonite to keep Superman subdued. Luthor has orchestrated the perfect storm: Ultraman, mindless propaganda (which we will return to), and a geopolitical crisis in Jahranpur.

But Superman’s spirit doesn’t break. His message, his hope, inspires those around him: Lois Lane and the Daily Planet work on counter propaganda through real journalism by uncovering Luthor’s secrets and plans. Metamorpho feels sympathy for Superman and trusts him enough to release Superman from the Kryptonite affliction. The Justice Gang, including Guy Gardner’s chaotic Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific (who absolutely steals the show) do eventually take initiative to save the day, following Superman’s example.

As I said, Metamorpho does release Superman, who fights his way out of the prison that Luthor had him captive in, though not before suffering from Kryptonite poisoning. Following this, there’s a moment where Clark is taken home by Lois to recover. We meet Ma and Pa Kent, the two who raised Clark to put the man in Superman. Pa Kent sits with him and reminds him what it means to have compassion, to love, to make mistakes, and to try again. To be Human. Moments of personable, down-to-earth humanity are rarer than ever in modern superhero films, especially major Superman films of late; to say this was a refreshing return to form would be an understatement.

As Luthor expedites the invasion of Jahranpur and opens a black hole under Metropolis due to Superman's escape, he forces Superman into a lose-lose: save Jahranpur and let Metropolis fall, or vice versa. But Superman has never been alone. Inspired by his example, the Justice Gang intervenes in Jahranpur while Superman handles the black hole. Luthor tried to force him to fail, but hope doesn’t fail. It can’t fail.

I quite simply don’t think I’ve seen this before in a superhero movie. Sure, we’ve seen a superhero beat the odds through the “power of friendship” a hundred times, or miraculously Gary-Stu themselves into a total, unilateral victory, but I have never seen a movie where a Superhero’s own moral principles shine so bright so as to influence the heroes around them to act of their own volition. At no point does Clark instruct the Justice Gang to intervene, they just do, because that’s what Superman would do, it’s what any good person should do.

During Superman’s imprisonment, it is revealed that a lot of online anti-Superman propaganda is peddled by, no fucking shit, a massive organization of mind controlled monkeys. I literally cannot make this statement any more clear: have you been on Twitter in the last few years? Mind-controlled-monkeys are somehow the Occam's Razor of all the horrid shit that gets spewed on the daily.

All in all, I think we need a rundown of exactly how reflective of the modern day this movie really is. So here it is:

Superman: Hope, undocumented immigrant, an uncompromised moral compass
Superman’s intervention in Jahranpur: A Freedom Flotilla
Jahranpur: Gaza/Palestine
Boravia: Israel
Lex Luthor: Geopolitically involved billionaire with a serious inferiority complex (Elon)
The Pocket-Universe Prison Superman was held in: Concentration Camp
The Justice Gang’s intervention in Jahranpur: A promise of hope
Propaganda Monkeys: Twitter bots
The Daily Planet: Independent news outlets
Ultraman: A manufactured battering ram against inherent goodness that abuses the power of organized good morals and is used maliciously by its corporate overlords.

There are probably a few more parallels in there, I’ll have to look out for them when I go for round two next weekend, but I cannot stress enough, this is a shocking movie to have been about a marquee superhero and have a $200-300 million dollar budget from a major U.S. based megacompany in Warner Brothers. Ultimately, movies are movies, and there’s not much more it can do than be art representative of the time in which it was received, but if Superman has anything to say it’s this:

Whether it was Vietnam War protestors, the Stonewall uprising, the LA riots, or any other act of defiance against the establishment (peaceful or otherwise), whether it was the fall of Nazi Germany or a freedom flotilla sailing to break a siege on a strip of land just 4% the size of Yellowstone National Park, whether it was Talib Kweli calling out the Bush administration or the UK’s Bob Vylan demanding freedom for Palestine, or whether it was a lone reporter defying violent, destructive echo chamber statements made by legacy media: kindness and hope have always been punk rock.

Welcome back, Superman. I hope your message reaches far and wide for generations to come.