James Gunn’s Superman is the first film released under his direction as the head of DC Studios. His mandate is to revitalize DC’s line of superhero movies by moving away from the dark and gloomy feel of their films over the last twenty years. DC probably hoped that Gunn, who directed the cherry froth Guardian of the Galaxy films for Marvel, would bring that touch to Superman and their other characters.

In his Superman film, Gunn wastes no time getting to the story. Whereas previous film versions took significant time to tell his origins, in Superman he appears just over a minute into the film with the back story already told in short narrative captions.Footnote ¹ It took the best part of 50 minutes for Superman to appear in the suit in two earlier incarnations of Superman in film, Superman and Man of Steel. Footnote ² After almost ninety years since his first appearance, Gunn knows that the audience for this film will be all too familiar with the character and so he can strip out narrative bloat. In doing so, he follows the lead of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s comic book retelling in their 12-issue All-Star Superman. Footnote ³ In this comic, Superman’s origins are told on a single page of four panels and just seven words. Indeed, Gunn’s Superman is already in a relationship with Lois Lane, who knows his dual identity as Clark Kent.

Gunn is working bigger themes than establishing Superman as a character. Therefore, the film’s plot matters little except as a device to drive those themes. Lex Luthor, in this incarnation an Elon Musk-like figure, loathes Superman because he craves the adulation the latter receives. Luthor believes that, as an alien, Superman is unworthy of human respect. Luthor discovers that far from sending their son to Earth for the benefit of humans, Superman’s parents imagined him ruling the world and taking many wives to recreate the Kryptonian race and publicizes this information. Confronted with his parents’ hitherto unknown dictum, Superman suffers a personality crisis. Duly reassured by his Kansas adoptive parents that it is the actions and choices he makes that define him, Superman regains his composure and exposes Luthor’s corrupt traitorous dealings with another nation. The point here is that Superman chooses to be human and chooses the values that his parents instilled in Clark Kent. Gunn rams this point home by having his Superman fight for “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way.”

Gunn draws on the work of numerous versions of Superman to craft a cinematic version that hews closely to creator Jerry Siegel’s naive New Deal liberalism while speaking to the need of the moment. In his first appearance in 1938, Superman raced to save a wrongly convicted man from being executed. Although possessing the power to intervene directly at the prison, Superman operated within the law, convincing a state Governor to stay the execution while getting off a few wisecracks.Footnote ⁴ Gunn’s appeal to “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way” replicates the ideologically slippery “American way” that Superman fought for after Pearl Harbor. In her book on the American way, Wendy Wall shows that the use of the term in the 1930s cut across the political spectrum and that its meaning was so unclear that Harpers ran a contest trying to clarify the matter. By World War II, the American way was understood as a national consensus. Tension existed between consensus as a broad civility, with accompanying limits to debate and change, or consensus resting on equality as a structural underpinning and so requiring action to achieve that state.Footnote ⁵ Such tensions were somewhat abated by the promise of postwar prosperity for all. Nonetheless, the American way remained a vague concept full of ambiguity, and this was part of its appeal. The American way was also not a set of values but a process in which everyone theoretically had the same opportunities for success.

The American way and the consensus and civility of World War II were for Americans, and not even all of them, as Japanese Americans who were rounded up and put in concentration camps could attest. Civility is, of course, a political stance and one that can readily be used to dismiss criticism, as it was during the American war in Vietnam.Footnote ⁶ Flawed as it was, the American way and the promise of prosperity were often aspirational for those previously excluded by race, class, or even nationality. Opening paths to prosperity has great appeal and extends beyond America’s borders. Superman films have mostly generated as much, or more, revenue outside of America than within, with international receipts amounting to Superman 55.2%, Superman II 50%, Superman IV 48.2%, Superman Returns 48.8%, Man of Steel 56.6%, and Batman vs Superman 62.2%.Footnote ⁷ Only Superman III failed to perform equally well internationally, generating only 25.3% of receipts.Footnote ⁸ Exchanging the American way for “truth, justice, and all that stuff” in Superman Returns, for “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow” in DC comics from 2021, and now for “the human way” does little to separate the concept from the WWII meaning of the American way. Rather, it sidesteps the question of whether civility is a unique American value and suggests it is a shared human concern.

Gunn has Superman find “himself in a world that views … truth, justice and the human way … as old-fashioned.”Footnote ⁹ These old-fashioned values have been part of Superman from the beginning. In a 1939 retelling of Superman’s origins, Siegel wrote that “the love and guidance of his kindly foster-parents was to become an important factor in the shaping of the boy’s future.” His father tells the young Clark that he must hide his great strength, or people will fear him. But his mother adds, “when the proper time comes, you must use it to assist humanity.”Footnote ¹⁰ As the audience for comic books grew older in the 1970s, writers visited the theme of Superman’s relationship to humanity more often.

Gunn’s film calls on two major subthemes of these stories: whether Superman’s presence limits human choice and whether or not Superman is human. In a 1972 story, writer Elliot Maggin had Superman become more reflective about his actions and their impact on humanity.Footnote ¹¹ Thereafter, other writers worked the issue of Superman’s impact on humanity, much as Gunn does, by having Superman intervene to stop a war.Footnote ¹² Writers also had Superman question his identity as a means of establishing his human nature. Was he Superman or Clark Kent? In the late 1970s, Superman decides he is both Clark and Superman.Footnote ¹³ In the mid-1980s, in the first major reboot of the comic book character, writer/artist John Byrne had him decide that America made him who he is.Footnote ¹⁴ Again and again, Superman behaves in human ways just as he did in the 1978 film when he reverses the course of history, against the explicit instructions of his Krypton father, to save Lane because he loves her.Footnote ¹⁵ Gunn’s film drives home the point that Superman chooses to be human.

Criticism of Superman has focused on Superman’s immigrant status and the replacement of the American way with the human way.Footnote ¹⁶ In an interview with The Times of London, reported in Variety, Gunn stated that Superman was “the story of America” and Superman representative of immigrants “that came from other places and populated the country.”Footnote ¹⁷ Variety reported on July 8, 2025, that Gunn’s comment

According to Google Trends, however, interest in such outrage was limited to two days—July 8 and July 11—and disappeared thereafter.

As for the American way, the White House infamously photoshopped Donald Trump’s face onto Warner’s poster for the film and captioned it: “THE SYMBOL OF HOPE/TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY/SUPERMAN TRUMP,” which implicitly critiqued the absence of the term.Footnote ¹⁹ But again, the reaction seems not to have been as great or as widespread as reported in the press, with Google Trends showing interest in the topic confined to three days, July 11, August 28, and September 2, 2025. Throughout this period, however, according to Google Trends, there was a generalized interest in the topic of the American way.

Superman as an immigrant and the absence of the American way received some attention in the comments section of two New York Post articles on the film. Some novel interpretations included that Superman was an alien, not an immigrant, and one reader suggested that since he fell from the sky, no borders were crossed, so he wasn’t an immigrant. Other comments addressed the absence of the American way, suggesting that the readers would not pay to see a film that did not pay that notion due deference. None of the comments explained just what the American way might be, as if this should be self-evident. But a “backlash” that attracts only 250 comments or so in a major conservative outlet seems a rather minor contretemps.Footnote ²⁰

The tepid brouhaha surrounding the film suggests that conservatives misjudged the furor they might create. Gunn’s Superman performed well in the domestic American market, outgrossing Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman. But internationally, the latter two films far outperformed Superman. In particular, the Chinese receipts were Man of Steel ($63.5 million), Batman vs Superman ($96 million), and Gunn’s Superman ($9 million). These figures suggest that the Chinese, in one way or another, recognized Superman as American, and as a consequence, given current geopolitical tension, the audience for the film has been curtailed.Footnote ²¹

Gunn’s spin is that we must invest hope in humanity, and the capacity for empathy and kindness, in the face of soulless, amoral power. In August 1982, Lyle Watson wrote to the editor in Superman #374, stressing,

If Gunn’s appeal to this sentiment seems radical, then that says something of the Trumpian moment. The film, however, is hardly a radical statement. In the end, Truth, Justice, and the American Way hold sway, since Luthor is exposed and imprisoned, and a return to civility is promised as part of the film’s cathartic denouement.