Red flags are flying around the latest “Superman” remake after the creator of the DC Studios film described the action hero from the planet Krypton as an immigrant.
Director and screenwriter James Gunn raised alarm about the movie’s ideological bent by saying the story is “about politics” and framing the Man of Steel as an “immigrant,” instead of an alien from another planet, ahead of the $225 million film’s Friday release.
“I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” Mr. Gunn told the Times of London in a July 4 interview. “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.”
His brother Sean Gunn, who plays the villain Maxwell Lord in the movie, defended the director after a Variety reporter told him at the Los Angeles premiere Monday that “MAGA is already upset that he’s called Superman an immigrant.”
“My reaction to that is that, it is exactly what the movie is about, I think,” Sean Gunn said. “We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants, and if you don’t like that, then you’re not American.”
He added: “People who say no to immigrants are against the American way, they’re against what the American dream is all about.”
Neither of the brothers distinguished between legal and illegal immigrants, although the ongoing debate over President Trump’s deportation policies centers on the millions of undocumented immigrants who poured over the southern border during the Biden administration.
“[Sean] Gunn and the reporter are doing what the Left always does,” Hollywood in Toto critic Christian Toto said in a post. “They pretend there’s no difference between legal and illegal immigration. They also ignore the fact that an American can’t just waltz into most countries and immediately gain the rights and privileges afforded to that land’s citizenry.”
He added that Sean Gunn could have walked back his brother’s “late-minute attempt to politicize the film,” but instead fanned the flames.
“He might have restated his brother’s comments or simply reframed that messaging in a more welcoming manner,” Mr. Toto said. “Instead, he doubled down. We’ll see how well that plays out starting July 11.”
The comments exacerbated concerns that arose after the actor playing Superman, David Corenswet, repeated the hero’s mantra as “truth, justice and all those things” instead of “truth, justice and the American way” during an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro concluded: “He doesn’t want to say ’the American way.’”
“The reality that Hollywood is so far to the left that they cannot take a core piece of Americana and just say it’s about America — this has been a problem since basically after the original Christopher Reeve series,” Mr. Shapiro said on his podcast. “Every single iteration made since then has avoided ’truth, justice and the American way’ because they just refuse to acknowledge the American way is good.”
The first of four movies in the “Superman” series starring Reeve premiered in 1978.
Whether the immigration theme actually makes an appearance in the movie remains to be seen, but the pre-release messaging has fallen flat with conservatives.
The Babylon Bee lampooned the effort to cast Superman, who was raised as Clark Kent on a Kansas farm after his spaceship crashed to Earth, as a typical immigrant.
“James Gunn Releases Film About the Importance of Accepting Morally Upstanding, White Immigrants Who Speak Perfect English,” said the Bee.
The hosts of Fox News Channel’s “The Five” ran with the immigration comparison in a Monday segment that featured the chyron “Superwoke: Iconic Movie Hero to Embrace Pro-Immigrant Themes.”
“We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us,” said co-host Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House official.
Cracked conservative co-host Jesse Watters: “You know what it says on his cape? MS-13.”
The left-wing outlet Media Matters for America accused the show of launching an “unhinged attack on Superman’s message of kindness towards immigrants.”
James Gunn wrote and directed the first two “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, but Disney fired him from the third movie in 2018 after the emergence of years-old tweets joking about rape and pedophilia.
In 2017, he tweeted a profane joke about Mr. Trump. He later posted a tweet comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the Times of London interview, Mr. Gunn discussed a scene in which Clark Kent and Lois Lane discuss whether Superman should have stopped a war.
“Yes, it’s about politics,” said Mr. Gunn. “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?”
He was asked if he had considered whether the film would be received differently in blue-state New York City versus red-state Kansas.
“Yes, it plays differently,” he replied. “But it’s about human kindness, and obviously there will be jerks out there who are not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”
So far, the film is playing well with critics and audiences in early release. The movie has notched an 85% critics’ rating and 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
