Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane . . . no, it’s another round of America’s most exhausting spectator sport: the astroturfed cultural scuffle.
From listening to Clay Travis howl about James Gunn’s new Superman, you’d think Warner Bros. had just remade Myra Breckinridge, but in tights (yikes!). In a flourish that may have sent half of Floridians clutching their Life Alert buttons, Jesse Watters assured viewers that the Man of Steel now sports “MS-13” on his cape. Meanwhile, aboard the clown car formerly known as Twitter, some guy named Ben Owen — whoever that is — went viral claiming Superman’s iconic motto was swapped out in the movie for “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way.”
Of course, none of this is true, and all of it is exhausting. Not because there aren’t cultural battles worth waging, but because it’s cheap clickbait masquerading as vigilance. It’s the handiwork of a Grift-Industrial Complex more interested in keeping Americans perpetually aggrieved than in conserving anything except their own paychecks. As Don Corleone once said, how a man makes his living is his own business, but this hustle is draining more than Grandpa’s Social Security checks. It’s bleeding conservatives’ capacity to engage with art, distracting us from genuine cultural ills, and training younger generations to believe that conservatism is just another word for screaming into the void.
It also makes the right look unhinged by association. As millions of Americans will learn this weekend, the politics of Gunn’s Superman sit squarely in the mushy middle. As Ben Shapiro rightly points out, Superman was conceived — and evolved — as an avatar of classical liberal American ideals. Think Atticus Finch in a cape. Here, though, he’s more of an idealistic Peace Corps alum. Kind? Absolutely. But that’s only part of the character’s ethos. Superman should also be wise, guiding humanity toward something higher.
If you can look past those philosophical stumbles, the movie’s a romp. Like Robert Altman’s Popeye, it’s comic-book chaos brought to life: frenetic, gaudy, overstuffed, but fueled by affection for its hero. To make the point crystal clear that this is not Richard Donner’s more traditionally cinematic 1978 classic, AMC teamed up with DC Comics to dispatch braces-clad teens to thrust comic books at you as they scan your ticket.
The story kicks off three weeks after Superman (played with heartwarming sincerity by David Corenswet) stops an invasion of the fictional Jarhanpur by the equally fictitious nation of Boravia. We find him battered, dragged across a frozen wasteland by Krypto the Superdog — in a clever sequence where Gunn signals he’s bypassing the typical Krypton-origin prologue.
From there, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, oily as a tech-bro defense contractor) schemes to turn public opinion against Superman — a wry echo of how the clickbait commentariat spins narratives online for profit. The plot barrels through pocket dimensions, kaiju monsters, and black holes threatening to swallow Metropolis. It’s loud, frenetic, and plays like a Red Bull–fueled Comic-Con panel, but it’s undeniably fun.
Ironically, for a movie bursting with characters who can fly, Superman soars highest in its most grounded moments. Like Clark cooking dinner for Lois (Rachel Brosnahan, radiating screwball charm). Their chemistry fizzes like champagne in crystal. Or take a hushed scene back home in Smallville where Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince) gently tells his adopted son, “Your choices, your actions. That’s what makes you who you are.” The film could have used more of these small, intimate moments amid all the cosmic chaos.
As for the movie’s supposed “wokeness”? There isn’t any. One key plot point makes that charge especially ridiculous: Superman must choose between protecting Metropolis or intervening again in Jarhanpur. He chooses America, dispatching the Justice Gang — led by Green Lantern — to handle things abroad.
So how did a candy-colored spectacle become what a Fox News chyron dubbed “SuperWoke”? Much of the blame falls on Variety, which repackaged Gunn’s fairly tame comments to the Times of London into red meat for a predominantly left-leaning moviegoing crowd. In that interview, the Guardians of the Galaxy director noted that Superman is “an immigrant that came from other places” and that the character’s story has always been political — in the moral, not partisan or electoral sense of the word — because it grapples with enduring human questions.
Of course, Travis et al. couldn’t help themselves. Not only did they swallow the tabloid bait whole, they pushed the absurdity to a new level by insisting movies should never be political — an especially asinine take in the context of a superhero who has spent decades punching Nazis, tackling corporate greed, and pushing nuclear disarmament.
The notion that movies were ever a shining realm of apolitical bliss is pure nonsense to anyone whose cinematic diet includes more than memes. Some of the greatest films ever made wear their politics openly. Maybe Travis is the sort of guy who thinks All the President’s Men is just a movie about parking garages — but, dear readers, we know better.
Serious cultural analysis is a slow burn, and it’s far more profitable to keep audiences perpetually agitated. Still, that doesn’t elevate conservatism; it dumbs it down. This is the same reflex that sparked a meltdown over Barbie while ignoring Poor Things, the 2023 Oscar winner that suggests women’s tabula rasa is prostitution. It’s petty, unserious, and foolish.
There’s an election next year, and people often vote against whichever side annoys them most. Outrage peddlers insisting a beloved superhero has morphed into a campus radical may not decide the outcome, but they’re certainly not helping.
If someone tells you Superman is “woke,” do yourself a favor: mute, unfollow, change the channel, and skip the promo code. Life’s too short for their nonsense, especially when there’s a fun, big-hearted movie waiting for you and your family this summer.