7/17/25

Bleep blorp, my friends. Bleep blorp. [Shout out to my droid subscribers, you know what I’m talkin’ about!]

Feels like it’s a good time for a round up! What’s going on out there?

SUPERMAN!

The new Superman movie is out! I saw it, maybe you saw it, according to the trades almost eight million people saw it last weekend. Fun! Big punches! Big monsters! Big questions on the way home from the theater about how I suddenly want David Corenswet to fly me around in his super-arms!

I’ve always loved Superman, because I have many things in common with him.

• I am from Kansas.

• I was adopted.

• I moved to the biggest city in the country.

• I believe in complicated situations you do the right thing.

• I have big chunky glasses.

But in many, possibly more important ways, I am totally unlike Superman.

• I do not have a cool strong alter-ego.

• The bumbling, sigh-inducing nerd part of me is all there is.

• It is not socially acceptable for me to wear my underwear outside my pants.

I’m not going to review the new Superman movie other than to say (a) it’s good and (b) I think you’ll enjoy it if you go. But among the many narratives flying around for the movie was something I think only managed to get a toe into the public discussion: that Superman was “woke” and conservatives were mad.

Yes… some unidentified number of Internet People and Internet People Who Somehow Got Real World Jobs attacked the new Superman movie last weekend as too “woke¹ .” But it made a lot of money, sold almost 8 million tickets opening weekend, and is getting great reviews, so reality doesn’t quite agree.

The main sticking point seems to be that Superman is, to quote James Gunn, “an immigrant.” The TV hosts your parents listen to even though they “didn’t vote for any of this” think it’s insane to say Superman is an immigrant story. And I think we can all appreciate skipping to the point here: they think that because Superman is white, and immigrants are not.

That’s kind of it. No real magic to dig into here. Sorry to disappoint you if you thought there was a grand thesis coming, but these people are not that complex.

The actual distinctive thing about the new Superman [spoiler-free] is that Superman is good. Morally. Ethically. Philosophically. He is a Good Guy doing Good Things because they’re Good and Good is better than Bad. Somehow that’s become incredibly rare in superhero movies (due in no small part to the version of James Gunn that existed before this one) and it’s refreshing. It’s possible that living in These Times means people want to see something aspirational VS gritty - we got enough gritty beaming through our phones all day.

WHAT ELSE?! Let’s run through some other news…

RESCISSIONS, RESCISSIONS…  

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