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A new Superman has landed in the theatres. Directed by James Gunn, this chapter restarts the narrative of the Man of Steel, after Zack Snyder‘s DC opus, and portrays the superhero as a mythic migrant for our times.
Film Criticism in the Age of Digital Noise
With this new release, one of the most urgent questions for anyone engaging with criticism—whether writing or reading it—comes sharply into focus once again.
In our era of digital cacophony and tribalized bubbles, the concept of film criticism has become a battleground of biased cheerleading. Social media, structured around likes rather than literacy, has flattened critique into binary applause or obstruction — Team Snyder vs. Team Gunn idiocy — rather than any serious reckoning with form, meaning, or myth. What should be analyzed has become monetized confusion. The only winners are social media influencers: PR agents dressed as experts, paid to amplify whoever writes the check, in a cannibalistic race for clicks.
Gunn’s Superman: Not a Comparison, but a Conversation
Nowhere is this more evident than in the reaction to James Gunn’s Superman. This is an American contemporary summer cinecomic blockbuster, not a Scandinavian unscripted arthouse extravaganza at the Venice Film Festival. Still, most commentary seems focused on comparing it to Zack Snyder’s mythological rendering of Big Blue in Man of Steel (2013), as if there is any point in doing so or in trying to set a canonical standard.
To compare Gunn’s film with Snyder’s misses the point entirely. These are not competing entries in a franchise. They are parallel, Western responses to the same question: What does it mean to be powerful or powerless in a broken world?
Two Supermen: Snyder’s Titan and Gunn’s Refugee
Snyder’s melancholic colossus—an epic and visionary crucible of guilt and cosmic ruin—stands at one end of the Superman spectrum. Gunn’s version inhabits another: a playful, sometimes ragged coming-of-age ballad of an all-powerful migrant discovering his purpose, and then choosing a different path, in a world torn by injustice.
Snyder’s Superman was shaped in Greek marble—burdened by fate, solemn in silhouette, an alien haunted by greatness. Gunn’s is different: no longer a granite-jawed mythic titan but a refugee Christ-figure, whose origins draw on biblical traditions: stranded in space and adopted by strangers, like Moses, and then revealed at thirty, like Christ, fully aware of his mission at thirty-three—not before realizing how his adoptive parents are far better than his biological ones. And yet, this alien superhero has the humanity to admit: “I do a lot of dumb stuff.”
The Role of the Critic | Between Form and Meaning
Vanity should never prompt a critic to inflate their ego by forcing a preconceived notion of what Superman, or anything else, should be. Instead, they should rely on in-depth knowledge to provide readers with interpretive tools they lack, enabling them to form their judgments and turn opinions into a structured understanding.
True critics describe forms without moralizing them; they set the interpretative perimeter and map the shift in tone and purpose. A viewer might prefer Snyder’s darker Olympian vision, and they certainly have that right. But a critic has no right to diminish Gunn or Snyder simply because it doesn’t match their preferences.
Superman as Archetype | Rewriting the Canon
Superman is not a fixed ideal but an archetype—like Batman, Hamlet, or Odysseus—shaped by the hands that mold him. Great directors don’t dwell within the canon; they redefine its boundaries. Whether solemn or playful, heroic or tragic, each new version reveals something essential about the culture that gave rise to it.
If Snyder presented us with a demigod in mourning, Gunn offers a migrant still learning how to stand. His version is highly political. Since his 1938 origins, Superman has served as a symbol of societal anxieties and aspirations. Gunn emphasizes the character’s roots as an alien refugee, mirroring today’s global displacement.
Fictional Wars and Real Politics
The fictional conflicts of Jarhanpur and Boravia—thinly veiled allegories for Gaza, Ukraine, and other crises—have already been labeled “woke” by conservative outlets, turning commentary into culture-war issues.
Lex Luthor’s propaganda reflects the megalomania and vicious manipulations of Musk, Zuckerberg, and similar billionaire peers, who act exclusively in their interest and have caused incalculable and lasting damage to freedom, human rights, and democracy for decades to come.
Beyond the American perspective, Gunn explores other issues: the European refugee crisis, the post-9/11 surveillance state, and the social-media fragmentation that leaves isolated youths desperate for agency.
A Refugee God for the Present Age
This Superman doesn’t just rescue cats from trees. He faces atrocity. What Gunn captures is the loneliness that comes with inherited responsibility. His Superman isn’t just a migrant; he’s a refugee—a survivor. The last of his kind.
In this reading, by making Superman thirty-three, he could just as easily be the last refugee left standing—an idea alluded to with near-messianic overtones, both redemptive and political. Even Jesus, after all, was a superpowered Palestinian-Jew who spoke Aramaic and stood alone against the Roman Empire.
Comic Roots and Intertextual Tonality
These ancient and contemporary references are woven into a rich tapestry of comic-book lineage. The zany banter and modest scope owe much to Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’s irresistible Justice League International (late 1980s), where heroes bickered like roommates even as they faced cosmic threats.
The philosophical weight of Kingdom Come (Mark Waid & Alex Ross, 1996) seeps into moments of moral reckoning; the warmth and existential luster of Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman (2005) glimmers in Kal-El’s godlike benevolence, tinged with wry humor. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s For All Seasons (1998) lends its small-town Kansas nostalgia; Mark Millar’s Red Son (2003) reminds us that Superman’s moral compass reorients entirely under different geographies.
Gunn draws from these sources to craft a Superman who is both playful and profound, embracing youthful clumsiness as part of his heroism.
Style, Scope, and the Limits of Spectacle
The tonal shifts—cosmic peril undercut by sitcom—may seem like shortcuts, but they are much better balanced than in Suicide Squad. Overall, this isn’t an esoteric puzzle like Solaris, it won’t revolutionize the genre like The Matrix, Blade Runner, or take risks like Akira or Ghost in the Shell. It’s a movie where a Green Lantern with a bowl of carrot hair on his head crushes tanks by evoking giant green middle fingers from the ground.
That’s the playful spirit of this Justice League.
Besides these fun and lighthearted gimmicks, this Superman, unfortunately, dares more thematically than visually. The use of cloning, pocket universes, black holes, and giant fractures in the ground feels like a solution that has already been seen too many times and is perceived more as lazy than classic. While Metamorpho is close to the comic book character and organic to the story, the Engineer, borrowed by Wildstorm’s extraordinary Authority, is a pale adversary and feels underused, compared with what that character can do.
Visually, technically, and choreographically, there isn’t anything beyond what Gunn has already done in other movies, which is a lost opportunity, considering the $225 million budget and that this is the reboot of an entire cinematic universe.
Vulnerability and the Politics of Empathy
David Corenswet may not yet show the iconic gravitas of Cavill or Reeve, but what he does have is vulnerability. One of the most memorable scenes in the entire film is a conversation between Clark and Lois, which showcases empathy, compassion, and kindness.
Two people in a room trying to communicate, understand each other, and solve problems through dialogue. In the new, authoritarian regime, these qualities might appear as signs of weakness. Look into Clark’s eyes and see the question most of us are too numb to voice. This Superman isn’t perfect. Neither are we. And perhaps that’s the point. A young god who fumbles may not provide comfort, but at least he tries to bring some justice and humanity back into this world.
That’s the opposite of what can be said for the real powers shaping our world today.
