Today, Explained - Super mad about Superman

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a bunch of pundits acting like Superman was ever anything but an immigrant and a humanitarian. This episode was produced by Rebeca Ibarra, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. A Dairy Queen ad promoting the Superman movie. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The number one movie in the country is Superman. It might be the number one movie in the world. Are you being serious right now? Yeah. But not everybody is loving it. Recently you've come under a lot of fire for what somebody- It's a lot of fire. It's a lot.

Kellyanne Conway is mad about it. The guy who stars as Superman had the audacity to say instead of fighting for truth, liberty, and great values in America, he refused to say the last part. Ben Shapiro is mad about it? 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? Even TV Superman Dean Cain is concerned. Look, don't try and make it all woke and crazy.

What, if anything, is woke and crazy about the new Superman movie coming up on Dean Cain Explained? Support for this program comes from FM. Established nearly two centuries ago, FM is a leading mutual insurance company whose capital, scientific research capability and engineering expertise are solely dedicated to property risk management and the resilience of property loss is preventable, work with FM to better understand the hazards that can impact their business continuity to make cost-effective risk management decisions combining property loss prevention with insurance protection. At FM, we see what others don't, so we can help protect your business in ways others can't.

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It's a plane! Today Explained, Sean Romsfrom. I'm here with Siddanth Adlakka, who's a film critic who recently wrote about the new Superman movie for vulture. Siddanth, I went and saw the Superman movie last night and it was a totally nice summer blockbuster about doing the right thing and caring about other people and it's going to heal our country, right? Obviously, there's nothing controversial about it whatsoever and we can all just take a breather and relax and move on. Oh, perfect.

I don't know what we're even going to talk about then. What should we talk about? Great. Thank you for having me. I'll see you folks next time. No, as with everything nowadays, it has become a flashpoint in a nonsensical, divisive culture war. And if I'm not mistaken, the series of events that led to what we're going to talk about is the director of Superman, James Gunn, simply stating, you know, yeah, Superman is an immigrant,

which is a thing we've known since like 1938. You said it's an immigrant story. It's a political movie. MAGA today is going nuts. What do you have to say to MAGA? I don't have anything. I think this movie's for everybody. I don't have anything to say to anybody.

Like I'm not here to judge people, you know? You know, I think this is you know um you know I think this is a movie about kindness and I think that's something everyone can relate to. If you're even remotely familiar with Superman none of that should be surprising to you. Dude's an alien right? He's an alien he was born on Krypton which is very very very far away very far away from the US border. Like even farther than Venezuela? Slightly farther than Venezuela. I'd have to check my maps. But regardless of that, I think, speaking of it in this technical way,

it's sort of seeding ground to the ridiculousness of the conversation in the first place, because in response to James Gunn saying, you know, he's an immigrant, which is to say Superman, not James Gunn. In response to James Gunn saying that Superman is an immigrant, you know, he's an immigrant, which is to say Superman, not James Gunn. In response to James Gunn saying that Superman is an immigrant, you had all these right-wing talking heads and not just like podcasters, you have people on Fox News bringing up how this movie was going to be, you know, politically divisive and shoving this, that and the other down our throats. Hollywood just needs to figure out that people don't want woke movies or woke directors. They just want entertainment. We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured

to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us. So he's now trying to make the case effectively that Superman is kind of an illegal immigrant. You know what it says on his cape? MS-13. Wow. And it just speaks to how charged even a phrase like immigrant has become. Do any of these pundits making noise on Fox News or various podcasts have specific gripes with this movie or is it just all, oh, he likes immigrants? I think a lot of them just haven't seen it. But a lot of what we do see in the movie does speak to our current political moment in more interesting ways. Like, you know, the idea of dropping people into legal limbo and stripping them of their rights. So there's a scene where

Superman is captured by Lex Luthor and his cronies and there's a brief exchange about how due process and the expectation of basic civil rights does not apply to him because he is an alien. You know, used in the very literal way of him being not from Earth but also at the same time in this charged metaphorical sense in that you know he is an alien immigrant and and then he is subsequently placed in this sort of interdimensional prison where not only there are literal aliens being held but also political opponents of Lex Luthor So there is a lot in there that is distinctly political and I think you know you know, ironically, that's not what the right wing seems to be glomming onto.

They're just mad about a statement a guy made in an interview. Yeah. And some of what people are upset at is the perception that the film has an anti-Israel or pro-Palestine bend, and I think it can certainly be read that way, some subplots of it. I don't think the film has a distinct or coherent ideology when it comes to actual concrete real world geopolitical events. But at the same time, Superman is a f's, you know, it's Superman is a fable for children and it's going to break down anything complex into something simple.

And if the simplest version of that idea is, hey, the big militaristic country is bullying the small defenseless country, and that's wrong and you should help people. And if you're offended by the simplest version of that idea that a five-year-old can understand, that's more of a personal problem. Soterios Has anyone involved with this movie come out and talked about the intention of the politics of this movie? I guess we can't say this movie is apolitical because it does feel like it is trying to say something.

I think that thing is don't kill people be nice, but I can't be sure. Yeah, I believe James Gunn has said in an interview that when he was writing the geopolitical aspect of this movie the conflict in Gaza was not on his mind. But I think regardless of the intent, what seems to be a much more interesting conversation is the fact that so many people are reading into it a parallel to Israel and Palestine. Without a doubt, that is genuinely the most pro-Palestine I have seen a mainstream film

ever be. Oh, that was good. Superhuman truly was for the people. Even if James Gunn came out and swore on his mother's life that this was not an analog to Israel-Palestine, they're just, it's lying. And I think that speaks to the way this particular issue has taken over our mainstream consciousness. A few years ago, if they'd seen this exact movie, they may not have had that same reaction. Whereas now, that's one of the first things people think

about. And I don't think the film has a coherent ideology around Zionism or something like that. I think it's just, you know, big militaristic bully takes on small weak country. People might be going to see a movie like this to sort of forget for maybe two hours about Israel and Gaza and Russia and Ukraine and I don't know, the President of the United States, whatever it might be. Is the fact that this movie might not be a complete escape from those news stories, those crises deterring people from seeing it? I can't speak to what any one individual might feel about why they might or might not want to see this movie, but at the same time, Superman is a character

that's been around almost a century, and he has such a distinct place in American pop culture that I have to question, you know, unless you're completely unfamiliar with the character, you've never heard of him, what are you expecting from a Superman movie? A character whose motto for the longest time has been truth, justice, and the American way.

You know, he comes saddled with political baggage whether you like it or not. So there is going to be escapism, but only to a degree because the reason a character like Superman exists is to, you know, whether it's for adults or for children, to confront questions about doing what is ostensibly right. That's the function of Superman, you know, as a character. His function is to, I suppose, simplify moral questions we might think of as too complex to address in a single sentence. You know, this even comes up early on in the movie.

Recently, you've come under a lot of fire for what somebody... It's a lot of fire. It's a lot. Where Lois Lane is talking about the political complexities of the conflict between the fictional countries, Boravia and Jaranpur. Today, the Secretary of Defense said

he was gonna look into your actions. That's funny. My actions? And Superman's whole outlook on it is, no, I have to save people. I have to, you know, do the right thing and protect people. That's all that matters. I stopped a war. And whether he's talking about a complex conflict in the Middle East or he's talking about saving a cat from a tree, it is going to make you think about talking about saving a cat from a tree, it is going to make you think about the way you approach the world. So I don't think it's as simple as, you know, a movie entirely removing

you from reality versus confronting it. I think it's, you know, it's a Superman movie at the end of the day, and it will have a certain relationship to reality. reality. Sedant Adhaka has written a few pieces about Superman for Vulture, but the one most germane to our conversation today is titled Superman Was Always an Immigrant. Since it seems like people need a reminder of who this character has always been, we're going to ask the person a lot of Superman super fans say wrote the best Superman comic ever when we return on Today Explained. Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies. They say it's

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Easy, miss. I've got you. You've got me! Who's got you? Today it's plain. I can't believe it. Grant Morrison grew up on the West Coast of Scotland right next to an American nuclear base. My parents were anti-nuclear activists. My father was a World War II soldier who became a peacenik. So my big fear in the world was the atom bomb and I kind of associated it with the Americans,

but the Americans also brought the comics. Comic books changed Grant's life. The whole idea for me was that the atom bomb terrified me. Then I discovered Superman and I suddenly realized Superman's a better idea than the atom bomb. The atom bomb and Superman both started out as ideas and I like this one better. And although I knew no real Superman was coming to save me from an actual atom bomb, that would metaphorically really solved a lot of problems for my head when I was a little kid. So those are the primal roots for me

and they're quite deep. So yeah, getting a chance to do that character, sitting here overlooking that same stretch of water, you know, where we did the protest and it associates with my father and with the bomb and so many things in comic books as well. To write All Star Superman kind of defy the forces of entropy because I feel that if anything survives in my career, it will be that one book. All Star Superman is widely regarded by the Superman heads out there as the GOAT,

the greatest Superman comic series ever written, ever in like almost 90 years of Superman. We asked Grant who the Superman was that he created in that series. I think while we went for an older Superman, our basic idea was that what if Superman was dying? And he had a year to live. And basically it's a part of Lex Luthor's scheme. They send Superman to the sun and the solar radiation overcharges Superman's cells.

So they begin to decay and die. So it's basically Superman's dying of cancer. No one can repair the sun but me, Lois. I'm turning into pure energy. And the idea of what would this man do in the last 12 months of his life to leave the earth a better place than he found it. Were you surprised to find out that James Gunn wanted to relaunch this character and relaunch an entire cinematic universe as they come to call it now

with your story about a dying Superman. Yeah, well, I mean, I think what James didn't necessarily take the dying part of it, because I've seen the movie now and obviously went in a very different direction. His is a younger Superman, but I think he certainly took the character as we decided to refine it.

And he saw something in that that he could work with. The idea of, you know, instead of Superman having flaws, let's present a fictional character who doesn't have our flaws. You know, he has problems of his own. He still can't get the girl. He still works for a boss in an office. But he's Superman, you know, he's a kind of everyman whose life happens at a much higher scale than us.

So I think James Gunn took that notion of Superman, you know, he's very much us, but played on a larger, more operatic stage. He's got an unruly dog. Crypto! But his unruly dog can lazer his own dinner and cook a steak. His unruly dog can fly through buildings, but he's still dealing with an unruly dog. For me what I loved about that is rather than previous attempts where people have said what would Superman be like if he was in the real world which to me is an absurd question, he'll never be in the real world. The only existence Superman has in the real world is as a comic book or a movie character and that's where he's most useful and most functional as far as I'm concerned.

So again, I think James took that notion of let's not ask ourselves the ridiculous question, what would it be like if Superman was real? Because the answer to that is usually, he would be super corrupt. And you get things like the character Homelander from the Boys TV show, who's a kind of evil Superman who's representative of all the worst elements of America. You people should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am because you need me. But we thought that the original Superman is the best and most useful. He's a fictional character. He's a metaphor. he's an allegory, he stands for everything that is good in us.

It sounds like there have been at least some iterations of this character throughout his nearly century of existence, from your dying version to this ideal version to this all-powerful version. But I believe Superman even started as a bit of a tough guy, like a head basher and I think maybe even a left wing revolutionary. Can you tell us about the non-cryptonian origins of this character, like how he came to be on Earth? Well, he arrived in Cleveland, Ohio. He was created by two teenagers, Jerry Siegel and

Joe Schuster, who'd met at school. And Jerry was the writer and Joe was the artist. And they wanted to work for newspapers. Newspaper syndication was the kind of place to go for cartoons back then. And they were working on this notion called the Superman. The original version was an evil bald guy who eventually became Lex Luthor in the Superman story. But after a few tries, they hit on this fabulous notion of let's give him a wrestling costume with a cape so that we can track his movement across the panels

and make him very colorful so that he's memorable. Ken steps into the storeroom, closes the door behind him and in a few brief seconds has made the transformation from the mild-mannered, bespectacled reporter to the red-caped blue-costumed figure of Superman. And then the greatest addition to the design was to put his monogram on his chest so that the character's entire identity is summed up in this really very simple advertising motif that people can remember and people can also wear and partake in that sense of being Superman. So yeah, it was created by two young kids who were the sons of immigrants, European immigrants,

Jewish boys, and this was their vision of the Superman. "...who can bend steel in his bare hands, raise he was here to help people, he'd come from a distant world but he saw the only use for power and strength was to help the downtrodden and help the oppressed. So yeah as you see those early issues of action comics depict a Superman who's very much as an outlaw you know he just goes after corrupt union bosses, he goes after corrupt union bosses he goes after mine owners he goes after politicians who are you know corrupt so he's that person and he's very he's quite scary you know he's what I always say is Superman later was seen as a kind

of messianic figure of hope which I don't really like because I think what he is he's a fighter he he's a scrapper, he gets into fights on behalf of the little guy and he gets bloodied up and he gets up again and he shoots him with a tank shell he gets up again and that's the character that he was. And so as you see through the years that that changed quite radically. You know, the socialist figure of the early years hit 1942 and suddenly it was war and Superman became incredibly patriotic. And that's where the truth, justice and the American way thing first appears. Anyone who tries to tell you that a man can't be a good American because he's a Catholic

or a Jew or Protestant or whatever, you can be pretty sure he's a rotten American himself. Not only a rotten American but a rotten human being then in the 50s Superman changes again completely you're dealing with guys coming home from the war and dealing with domestication and living in suburbia so Superman becomes a family drama like I say but on a titanic scale he has you know friends from the future who visit and cause trouble. He has a cousin who survived Krypton. He has a dog. He has a monkey. He has all of this stuff. And they added a lot of Lois. So Superman then to me was probably at his peak, but he was representative of

masculinity post-war, trying to adjust to a world of relatives and being not necessarily married. But very much those stories were obsessed with the relationship stuff with Lois you know so it was that in the 60s he becomes Cosmic Seeker in the 60s again he almost goes back to his roots and we have stories where he's fighting for Native American land rights and he's up against polluters and very much back to the activist Superman and so it goes in the 80s he's a yuppie in the 90s they kill him in order to make it interesting. And so it goes in the 80s. They say, yuppie, in the 90s they kill him in order to make it interesting and then bring it back very much as a soap opera set around the daily planet. And into the 2000s you get the work that I did. It's funny to hear you, you know,

lay out this history in which Superman at one point is something of a socialist warrior because all of these pundits who are mad about James Gunn saying that Superman's an immigrant, if they really knew the history here, there's so much more they could be mad about. Absolutely, as you say, if anyone unbothered to look at the history of Superman, they'd see that he was always an immigrant created by immigrants. He represented that experience. But he was assimilated. I mean, the whole thing was he was an American. He'd been raised by American parents.

A baby? It's alive. How could it be? That was very important as well. And I think the combination of these two qualities is what maybe drives people mad because they want it to be either one thing or another. But Superman's trying to embody everyone. The thing that we talk about the first half of the show is that, you know, depending on... how tuned into the news you are, you can see a lot of what's going on in the world today in this movie.

But of course, this movie wasn't made this week. It was made, you know, a year ago. The meetings about this movie probably started five years ago. Do you think there's something about like the nature of Superman that that makes him timeless? Oh, I definitely believe that. I mean, as I've said many times, I mean, we're talking about the history of Superman, which goes back to 1938. Superman has outlived his creators. He's also outlived the people who took over from his creators and the next generation of the people who took over from his creators. As I often say, Superman is more real

than I am. He's more real than most of us, he will outlive us all and he'll still have meaning to people in the future and because he looks like nothing else people have even forgotten that that was based on early 20th century circus strongman and wrestling outfits. People have forgotten that so now it's the template for the superhero this ideal of the superhero and he's got because he was the first he got the best name the most primal name so I absolutely think Superman will persist like Sherlock Holmes and characters like that, way beyond even the next few generations.

As long as the world stays together and there's such a thing as culture, I think there'll still be a Superman that is recognizable to us. Grant Morrison writes comic books from the most excellent order of the British Empire. All-star Superman is the place to start. Laura Bullard ordered it today. She fact-checked today's show. Amina Al-Sadi edited.

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