The new “Superman” film would’ve been great if I didn’t know just how ridiculously liberal Hollywood was. In fact, if I could suspend my knowledge of our current “everything in entertainment must be political” world, I would’ve really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, all of the “reading in between the lines” commentary in the plot of the film ruined the latest in the reboot of the DC Universe for me.
In writing this review, I thought back to a time when even I would look at all the comparisons I’m about to make and say to myself, “Oh, come on,” but it’s so glaringly obvious what James Gunn and company were trying to do here, it makes me roll my eyes even looking over my notes.
First of all, did you know that Superman was an alien? He is–and they let you know it A LOT–so much so that it’s as if the writers reach through the screen and hit you over the head with the concept that he’s an immigrant over and over … and over again.
The movie starts with not only the fact that he’s an alien–did I mention that?–but that he stopped Israel from wiping out Palestine–or as they’re called in this film, Boravia and Jarhanpur. The evil U.S. government is so upset that Superman would unilaterally decide to stop a war and save the pure and innocent Pales… I mean Jarhanpurians, that they’re quickly convinced by Lex Luthor and his band of bad guys to turn on Superman.
How, you might ask?
When Superman is beat up at the beginning of the film, he goes back to his Fortress of Solitude for healing that includes watching a loving message from his Kryptonian parents that tells him they’re sending him to earth to take care of the people. That message is broken–until Lex Luthor gets his sidekick to fix the rest. We then quickly learn that after they said he should take care of this planet, Superman’s parents instructed him to enslave the weak earthlings and have harems of women to repopulate the planet like an evil white colonizer.
Luthor then goes on what’s clearly a parody of Fox News to release this information to the world.
That was enough for the evil U.S. government, so it puts out a warrant out for Superman’s arrest and gives Lex Luthor permission to interrogate him in a “pocket dimension” by executing people (starting with a minority immigrant street vendor) who were nice to Superman in front of him while asking questions.
On the way to Superman’s cell, Luthor brags about another aspect of his nefarious plot and shows off his army of genetically altered monkeys who post about how terrible Superman is on social media all day. I’m not making this up.
That’s right, the evil, rich, tech genius who is working with the evil U.S. government to help Isra… I mean Boravia, also basically runs a massive social media company. It was at this point that I groaned and realized that they were trying to imply that Luthor was Elon Musk.
Anyway at the end, Israe… I mean Boravia (with a full military) finally starts to invade Jarhanpur, a country that is populated by innocent villagers who only have shovels and pitch forks to defend themselves. There’s one small child in the middle of the fight who holds up a homemade Superman flag and so the rest of the Justice Gang, but not Superman, come to save them.
Yes, there were other superheroes in this film, but they were forgettable and seemed shoehorned in to replicate the thrill of James Gunn’s successful “Guardians of the Galaxy” films. Witty banter guy, smart tech guy, strong woman, guy who changes shapes. Yawn.
In the end, the brilliant leftist media team of the Daily Planet crack the evil plot of Lex Luthor and bring him down. Because where would we be without our true heroes, the leftist media in print journalism. Also we learn that Superman is an immigrant we should all accept, because it turns out that he isn’t a colonizer who wants to have harems of women.
So, we shouldn’t deport him.
This movie is fun if for some reason you can get over every single intentional passive reference to current politics. But in reality, it’s just an empty shell of a superhero film wrapped around nonstop political messaging.