Superwoke

[This blog contains minor spoilers for James Gunn’s Superman.]

So last week, I joined a couple of friends to see the new Superman movie. This should have been a break from the relentless torrent of stress and misery that comes with being a liberal who has worked as a DEI practitioner for over two decades in 2025 America.

But today, not even a superhero movie is free from politicization, and paying for a ticket to see Superman on the big screen was yet another act of resistance. Because in the weeks leading up to its premiere, James Gunn (who directed the film) described it to an English newspaper as “the story of America – an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.”

At a time when the right-wing would have us believe that all immigrants (but especially the brown ones) are gang members, drug dealers, and violent criminals, framing the hero of an adventure story as an immigrant can only be construed as woke, liberal hogwash.

Never mind that Superman has always been an extra-terrestrial who came to Earth as a baby and was raised in the American heartland. Never mind that this has been a non-controversy for almost ninety years. Never mind that every single white citizen born in the United States, without exception, is descended from someone who either immigrated to or colonized the USA. Every. Single. One.

I was prepared to believe that conservatives were trying to make something out of nothing, probably to distract from bigger, more important matters. I was happy if my ticket sent a message that Americans actually love immigrants (and perhaps it worked – Superman earned a respectable $177 million in its first week), but once I settled into my seat, I was expecting a fairly tried-and-true story of good triumphing over evil.

I was delighted to have been proven wrong. Even I, a tried-and-true liberal who wears “woke” like a badge of honor whenever it’s hurled my way, thought the movie was really progressive, maybe even a little preachy. And I loved it.

The immigrant storyline isn’t glossed over in this version. In fact, [spoiler alert] one of the major plot points of the film was that Superman’s parents, Jor-El and Lara, are actually sort of awful people. I’d usually seen them portrayed as worried parents who send their child to Earth only to save his life. In this version, his parents choose Earth specifically because they know how incredibly powerful he’ll be under our yellow sun. This will not only ensure he safety, but also – they hope – will put him in a position to rule over everyone else. Not to immigrate, but to colonize. When Clark/Kal-El/Superman realizes this, he’s crestfallen, and it takes a heart-to-heart with his adoptive father to remind him that he has choice and agency, and can simply choose to be a good person.

In the end, Superman chooses American values over Kryptonian ones. He is at once an immigrant and fully American. He is from somewhere else but wants nothing more than to belong and contribute. No wonder the folks who are celebrating the creation of a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades were appalled.

If that’s not enough, the film’s primary antagonists are Lex Luthor, a sociopathic tech-bro billionaire who deposits his ex-girlfriends in an extremely offshore gulag, and the President of the fictional Boravia, a politician with really bad hair and all the classic signs of malignant narcissism. It isn’t exactly subtle.

But I have to say that my favorite part of “Superwoke Superman” [another spoiler alert] was the depiction of Lex Luthor’s girlfriend, Eve Teschmacher. In the first half of the movie, she’s only seen in the background, relentlessly taking selfies while cities literally burn down in the background. Her huge vacuous smile suggests that she enjoys her status as a billionaire’s paramour. But halfway through the film, we learn that Eve is at least smart enough to know she’s in danger. The fact that all of Lex’s prior mistresses have been disappeared is not lost upon her. To save herself (and also because she has a bit of a crush), she enlists the help of Daily Planet reporter Jimmy Olsen and sends him all the selfies she’s taken at LuthorCorp. Big smiles, perfect hair, and peace signs abound. At first, Jimmy is flummoxed – but it’s Lois Lane (who likely knows a thing or two about being a woman in a man’s world) who teaches Jimmy to look beyond the obvious to see what Eve was really doing. In the background of nearly every image is incriminating evidence of Lex’s evil plans to bwa-ha-ha-ha-take-over-the-world.

Eve is a hero who used the patriarchy to her advantage. So long as she was behaving like an inconsequential flibbertigibbet, she was practically invisible – and was slowly collecting enough receipts to bring down one of the world’s most powerful men. And what’s doubly delicious about all of this is that we – the audience – underestimated her just as much as everyone in the movie. James Gunn made each of us complicit. For those of us who were paying attention, it was a humbling lesson in the power of the patriarchy.

If you have a desire to resist but also need a moment or two of joy in your life, buy a ticket to see Superman before it leaves your local theatre. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, there’s a really cute dog. Did I not mention the dog?