Superman: Embracing the American way
James Gunn’s Superman marks a fantastic start to the latest relaunch of DC Comics’ superhero movies. The film captures the essence of Superman—it’s optimistic, colorful, unabashedly corny, and dripping with love for its titular hero, played with charming sincerity by David Corenswet.
Sadly, the film has become the latest front in the ongoing circus that is the American culture wars. Influencers on the left have taken it as gospel that the backdrop of the film—an invasion by the fictional country of Boravia against the equally fictional Jarhanpur that Superman attempts to stop—is a thinly veiled allegory for the Gaza War, with the militarily superior U.S. ally Boravia cast as Israel and the Jarhanpurians as Palestinians. Rightist critics, meanwhile, have accused the film of being “superwoke” after milquetoast comments by Gunn that Superman is an immigrant were taken out of context.
In reality, the film’s script was written months before the October 7 attacks, and Gunn has publicly refuted claims that the Boravian invasion was inspired by the Israel-Palestine conflict. If anything, the conflict bears a far-stronger resemblance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Boravia’s president (played by Zlatko Burić) is strikingly reminiscent of Vladimir Putin—he claims, in a thick Slavic accent from a dime-store Kremlin, that his invasion is justified because he wants to liberate his weaker neighbor from a tyrannical government.
As for Superman’s status as an immigrant, this is not only true (his origins as a literal alien from the destroyed planet Krypton have been a part of comic book lore since his first appearance in 1938), but it also provides a vehicle for the new movie to deliver a rousing defense of classically liberal, American values, particularly an emphasis on freedom, personal responsibility, and a rejection of the race essentialism that has plagued American politics in recent years.
At the beginning of the film, it’s clear that Superman connects strongly to his Kryptonian heritage. As he recovers in his Fortress of Solitude from injuries sustained in battle, he listens to a garbled, incomplete message from his Kryptonian birth parents telling him that they love him and want him to “live out Krypton’s truth.” In a later conversation with his girlfriend, Lois Lane (played to perfection by Rachel Brosnahan), Superman assumes that this means they wanted him to be a good man and serve humanity as he laments the loss of “[his] history.”
The film’s primary villain, Lex Luthor (played by Nicholas Hoult), also sees Superman primarily as a representative of his race. Luthor’s declaration that “[Superman’s] not a man; he’s an ‘it,’” while attacking the Fortress with his goons, sums up his view of Superman—as an alien invader, a representative of Kryptonians first and foremost instead of an individual. He alludes to this throughout the film by mocking Superman about his race, often snidely referring to Superman as a “Martian” or “dopey Venusian” or simply as an “alien.”
Luthor attacks the Fortress to find a way to destroy Superman, and at first, it appears he may have succeeded. He successfully recovers the scrambled portions of the message from Superman’s birth parents and shows the full message to the world in an effort to turn them against the Man of Steel. The heretofore lost section reveals [spoilers ahead] that Superman’s birth parents did not send him to Earth to serve the people—they sent him to subjugate them. They tell him to “rule without mercy,” kill those who stand in his way, and keep a harem of women to repopulate the Earth with the Kryptonian race.
Superman, who earlier in the film went out of his way to save civilians (and even a squirrel) from danger, is devastated by the revelation. He initially assumes that the message is a trick by Luthor but is quickly forced to confront the truth—that his birth parents were not who he thought they were. The revelation shakes Superman to the core of his self-image and his identity. Reflecting on the full message, he says, sadly, “I’m not who I thought I was.”
It’s left to Superman’s real father, the Kansas farmer who adopted and raised him, to set him straight. Jonathan Kent tells Superman that his identity is about much more than his genes and his parentage. Tearing up, he tells his son, “Your choices. Your actions. That’s what makes you who you are.”
Filled with renewed purpose, Superman embraces his father’s words and goes on to stop Luthor from destroying the city of Metropolis. In his final confrontation with Luthor, he fully embraces choice and personal responsibility as the central pillars of who he is. He tells Luthor, “I am as human as anyone. I love. I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human. And that’s my greatest strength.”
That attitude is what makes Superman not just a hero, but a quintessential American hero. Here, we don’t inherit our identity—we earn it. In this country, you’re not defined by where you’re from or what’s in your blood, but by the choices you make when it matters. You fall. You get up. You take responsibility. You try again. That’s the deal. And it’s why Superman fits here better than anywhere else. He’s not perfect. He’s not a god. He’s a guy trying to do the right thing in a messy world—and that’s what being American really means.