The Four Color Media Monitor

On the eve of the new Superman movie starring David Corenswet, filmmaker James Gunn was interviewed by the UK Times (via Breitbart), and much like earlier, he still alludes to his political positions in a way that's little more than a turnoff:

One way to do that is with a ten-minute scene that just features Clark and Lois talking about geopolitics and whether Superman should have stopped a war. It’s exactly how to make a superhero movie to engage adults. “It is definitely the most unusual thing that we put in the movie,” Gunn says. This is a Superman film for the age of endless discourse, with the difference being that the people — Clark and Lois — who disagree with each other here are willing to discuss and even, perhaps, learn.

“Yes, it’s about politics,” Gunn says. “But on another level it’s about morality. Do you never kill no matter what — which is what Superman believes — or do you have some balance, as Lois believes? It’s really about their relationship and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can tear two people apart.

[...] So yes, some fans will simply like the film for the huge fights, the sidekicks and Superdog. Plus, the humour, so often missing from Superman films — this Superman is playful: he enjoys his job. Yet the film is coming out during a summer of protests in the US about President Trump’s plans for, and rhetoric about, immigrants, which is jolting given that Superman makes clear that he is a refugee from another place who came to the US.

And before you say, “Superman has gone woke!” this is all in Superman’s lengthy history. Superman was written by men from immigrant families and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees once released a book in Italy titled Superman Was a Refugee Too. Less than ten years ago DC Comics backed World Refugee Day: “The Man of Steel’s story is the ultimate example of a refugee who makes his new home better.” In the edition of Action Comics No 987, Superman saves a group of undocumented workers from a violent racist.

Fascinatingly enough, that issue was written by an alleged "conservative", Dan Jurgens. But assuming he truly is, it just goes to show right-wingers can do bad things too, like act as apologists for bad ideologies and even criminals and terrorists who cross borders illegally, and, despite what's being told here, aren't "refugees". Something the article, despite any indication to the contrary, only confusingly brings up, and doesn't actually make clear distinctions about. It's not hard to guess the interviewer wants to base all this upon his own leftist politics to boot. Siegel and Shuster's families were either legal immigrants, or they were refugees from places like communist USSR. How come that isn't explored? It's shameful how they obscure how immigrants, legal or not, can do bad things, and then we're supposed to believe these "undocumented" workers shouldn't even have any kind of legal papers?!? It all goes to show how far morality's fallen, and how today's left-wing commentators refuse to recognize the distinctions between science fiction protagonists and real life antagonists. Also worth remembering is that in Superman's origin, Kal-El was but an infant when his spacecraft flew to earth and the USA, where he was found by the Kents in Smallville, who raised him to embrace positive values. The violent foreign felons are mainly adults, and badly educated/indoctrinated ones at that. Gunn continues the obfuscation of Superman's premise in the following:

“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” Gunn says. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” I ask if he has considered how differently the film might play in say, blue state New York — aka Metropolis — and Kansas, where Kent grew up? “Yes, it plays differently,” Gunn admits. “But it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”

Before we go on it should be said that Gunn has a history with Trump. In 2018, after Gunn’s public criticisms of the president, which included a sexually vulgar joke and comparisons with Hitler and Putin, the right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich pulled up social media jokes by Gunn about paedophilia and the Holocaust, which led to a social media campaign against him. Gunn apologised, but under pressure Disney, his employer at the time, fired him before further pressure led it to reinstate him — then he went off to join DC.

There is a scene in the new Superman with Luthor’s monkeys trolling away at screens. Was that, I ask Gunn, alluding to what happened to him? “I don’t think so,” he says, grinning. “It’s not really about me, but people in general driven by rage or the bots governments pay for that create all sorts of nonsense.

“This Superman does seem to come at a particular time when people are feeling a loss of hope in other people’s goodness,” Gunn adds. “I’m telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.”

He laughs. “And I include myself in this. It is ad infinitum, millions of people having tantrums online. How are we supposed to get anywhere as a culture? We don’t know what’s real, and that is a really difficult place for the human brain to be. If I could press a button to make the internet disappear I’d consider it. And, no, I don’t make films to change the world, but if a few people could be just a bit nicer after this it would make me happy.”

Well I'm sorry, but this does nothing to alleviate concerns the film's entertainment value will be damaged. This kind of idiocy is exactly what filmmakers need to avoid. Of course every fandom has bad apples in it who need to be condemned. Some of said apples likely aren't even fans to begin with. But these ideologues never make a clear case, let alone distinctions, and that's what could go wrong with this film. As could the following to boot:

He is incredulous about this, almost delirious, which feels like a decent time to raise a topic he might want to skirt away from: the fictional countries of Barovia and Jarhanpur in the film. Barovia, armed to the absolute teeth, ploughs into the rather unfortified Jarhanpur, which appears to be a Middle Eastern state. The Barovians seem to want to kill everyone in sight.

Which countries, I ask Gunn, does he think viewers will believe are being alluded to here? “Oh, I really don’t know,” he says, quickly. “But when I wrote this the Middle Eastern conflict wasn’t happening. So I tried to do little things to move it away from that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East. It’s an invasion by a much more powerful country run by a despot into a country that’s problematic in terms of its political history, but has totally no defence against the other country. It really is fictional.”

Be that as it may, it's sadly possible this is little more than an allusion to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while the former may not have been as dangerous as Iran was with their nuclear labs, and missiles they fired at Israel - exactly the reason why the IDF had to destroy much of their infrastructure in the past month - that doesn't mean even those specific autocracies are any more acceptable. Of course, depending how you view this, it's also possible Gunn wrote up a metaphor for Israel around the time of October 7, 2023, and his repellent jokes about the Holocaust certainly do nothing to alleviate the concern he could've written a very revolting metaphor here too, as bad as the Black Adam movie's was. Even if Gunn apologized for his social media postings, what he said is still very horrific, and one can argue whether it was a good idea for the interviewer to bring that up. Because what if such history does have a negative effect on the film's box office performance?

But, for all we know, the new Superman film might see a significant box office intake after all. That doesn't mean I want to finance it on my tab, and whatever its financial outlook, there's no telling if film buffs will be referencing it fondly in years to come. What is apparent for now is that more left-wing ideologues are hijacking the Man of Steel to serve their shoddy platforms, and tomorrow, they'll most likely be hijacking Starfire's premise in the New Teen Titans as well. All without even acknowledging the differences between fiction and reality, and why immigrants and refugees in reality aren't saints. This exploitation of the Man of Steel and other similar characters for justifying modern leftist politics has got to stop.

Labels: dc comics, Europe and Asia, history, islam and jihad, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, terrorism, violence