‘Superman’ Director James Gunn Responds To Charges His Movie Is ‘Superwoke’: “I Am Curious As To What In The Movie Is Considered Woke”
This may be a mild spoiler, but there is a moment in Superman when Clark (David Corenswet) reacts to some of the online venom against him. Lois (Rachel Brosnahan) brings up terms including “Supersh*t,” and Clark is triggered by that one in particular. This is all manufactured dissent concocted by Lex Luthor and his crack team of monkeys (yes, that rumor was real).
However, actual terms are being thrown around about James Gunn’s Superman. Among them is “Superwoke,” which may not irritate Gunn as severely as “Supersh*t” does Clark in the film, but he is addressing the controversy.
It all started when Gunn began pushing the film as an immigrant story. The fact that there is a conflict between neighboring countries might not help the optics either. Still, Gunn doesn’t see what the big deal is. “I’ve heard people say it was woke, and then I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not. I am curious as to what in the movie is considered woke,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“I think people took something I said…The guy for the London newspaper [Jonathan Dean of The Times],” he added (via Movie Web). “Originally, he said that [Superman comic creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants, and they wrote Superman as an immigrant story. And I said, yeah, it’s a story about an immigrant, but mostly it’s a story to me about kindness, which it is. That’s the center of the movie for me.”
Gunn feels kindness is a real American value that’s missing nowadays. “That’s the thing we can all act upon, is kindness. And so what does that lead to? Well, does that lead to the way you vote? Sure. Does that lead to everything? Yeah. Does it lead to how many people are dying from road rage? Yes,” he continued.
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“All those things are affected if people just start to value kindness. I mean, people did value kindness in the past. That was an American value, was kindness, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to be that way to me anymore. So that was always the center of the movie for me, and it wasn’t about anything other than that,” Gunn said.
Fox News is cited as the source of the “Superwoke,” or not “Superwoke,” debate, but former Man of Steel and outspoken conservative Dean Cain added his two cents, focusing on the immigrant angle. “I think bringing Superman into it, I think that was a mistake by James to say it was an immigrant thing. And I think it’s gonna hurt the numbers on the movie,” Cain said to TMZ.
“I was excited for the film. I’m excited to see what it is because James Gunn seems to have a sense of humor, and the last iterations of Superman didn’t have much humor, and I love the humor in Superman,” he added. “So I’m rooting for it to be a success, but I don’t like that last political comment.”
