Superman Proves We Don't Need Evil Supermen To Make The Man Of Steel Interesting

There’s this pervasive idea that Superman is ‘boring’ because he’s too powerful for any villain to be a threat, and possesses a heart of gold so pure he can’t possibly have any internal conflict. He’s🍒 the perfect Boy Scout, an infallible and unshakeable hero. We all like a bit of tension in our drama, so yeah, that sounds dull. But it’s a complete myth.

I can’t put my finger on where it all began exactly, but in the ‘00s, earnest adaptations were slowly fading out of vogue. The grittier, more realistic superheroes in black leather started to take hold, and the i🐟dea of hope in blue-and-red spandex suddenly felt corny. Superman wasn’t ‘bori💎ng’ so much as he was embarrassing—the face of superheroes just isn’t cool enough. So, we spent two decades deconstructing the myth behind the man to try and make him interesting again.

Zack Snyder lifted liberally from The Dark Knight to chisel the Man of Steel into an edgier, more brooding hero, even forcing his hand and having him kill his first supervillain. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Injustice came out the same year, and imagined 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a Clark Kent pushed to breaking point, twisted into an authoritarian butcher. Homelander, Omni-Man, Sentry, and many more ‘evil Supermen’ took hold at the꧒ turn of the century, burying theꦫ character under a mountain of introspective what-ifs? Even James Gunn got in on the action with Brightburn.

Minor spoilers for Superman (2025).

This Is The First True Superman Movie In Generations

Clark Kent and Lois Lane in Superman.

It’s no surprise that my generation has no idea who Superman really is. We didn’t grow up with Christopher Reeve; we grew up with Henry Cavill and Injustice (Bran♍don Routh unfortunately flew under the radar). Brooding, brutal, and edgy characters who solved every problem with a stern look and a few punches. The classic ‘it’🍷s a bird, it’s a plane’ Clark Kent of old may as well have been a walking PSA better left in the 20th century, stuck trying to rip off his clothes in a phone box—the Superman of today was cool and stoic.

My Aꦬdventures With Superman and Superman & Lois were a beacon of hope, but a blockbuster like this will leave a far bigger cultural footprint.

You can trace that same li🌸ne with so many superheroes in the 21st century, from X-Men and Fantastic Four to the MCU and even Wanted, which dropped the supes altogether! Green Arrow, meanwhile, dropped the ‘Green’ and turned him into a weird mix of Batman and Punisher, murdering fat cats and villains on rooftops while growling that they ‘failed his city’.

The idea of what a superhero should be radically shifted as studios desperately tried to ground them in more serious action flicks, and comment sections today are still filled with people decrying that Superman should🐎 be everything he’s not because they don’t know any better. Jaded creatives, embarrassed by superheroes, completely altered our perception.

James Gunn Is Making Hope Cool Again

Superman looking defeated a a crowd heckles him in the background.

Thankfully, James Gunn, with a tentpole Summer blockbuster 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:pioneering a new cinematic universe, helmed by the most recognꦺisable superhero in the world, has made the biggest step yet in undoing that damage.

Iಞn the DCU’s debut movie, Lex Luthor is almost a stand-in for those who peddle the idea of Superman being a boring character. Lex is enraged by Superman’s mere existence because he sees him as an alien who flew down to Earth as a perfectly formed, unerring hero with no flaws, handed everything on a Kryptonian platter. When the two come to a head in the final moments of the film, Superman tears through this assumption in a heartfelt declaration of his humanity.

“I love, I get scared, I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human and that’s my greatest strength.” It’s everything that makes Superman beautiful: even faced with insurmountable odds and hardships, he chooses to be kind.

Krypto in Superman.

Saving children, catching fa✱lling buildings, being unable to 𓆉stand by during the most inhumane conflicts, and even stopping to get a squirrel out of danger; that’s who he is. Someone who could by all rights dominate and rule the world, like we see in Injustice, and as his parents demand he does in this film, but his humanity — flaws and all — push him to be better.

When the world turns against him, he breaks down. When Lex steals Krypto away, he loses his temper. When people die, it crushes him. When Lois Lane pushes him too far, he storms out. There’🃏s tension, drama, conflict, and growth, and you can have all of those things without sacrificing the hope that makes him who he is. That’s why Superman resonated nearly 100 years ago, and it’s why he resonates today.

We lost sight of that for the better part of two decades. Superman was corny, so we stripped away the hope and everything that made Clark Kent who he is, depriving an entire generation of the uplifting message at the core of his character. But James Gunn’s new movie has embraced everything about the character, cheesiness and all, showing that, Kryptonian or no, he is human, and he's far from boring. Like Clark said, maybe kindness is the new punk rock.