Success can place a big target on your back, and the strangest character is getting negative attention as James Gunn‘s “Superman” movie, which has earned $416.2 million at the global box office, and the co-head of DC Studios is reminding the public/media that his movie is ultimately a story about kindness.
Gunn was speaking with Entertainment Weekly in a new interview, where he directly asked about the discourse on the film, such as right-wing media clutching their culture war pearls, saying “Superman” is “too woke,” and using the cringeworthy nickname “Superwoke.”
“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. I think people took something I said…The guy for the London newspaper [Jonathan Dean of The Times]. 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.”
Gunn continued, “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. 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. 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.”
Most of us grown-ass adults living in reality understand the term “woke” (originally used as a way to indicate that someone is aware of various injustices) has been rebranded by conservatives to be applied to nearly anything they oppose, which conveniently includes any inclusion of minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and women in entertainment. When simple kindness, inclusion, and empathy are being seen as weakness, that clearly is an indicator that these aren’t, in reality, good-faith opinions but are obvious hate-mongering sentiments in disguise.
Thankfully, Gunn is in a comfortable position at DC Studios and Warner Bros., where his successes will likely overshadow all these brain-rot distractions. It also doesn’t hurt that “Superman” is on track to do decent enough box office numbers, even in a crowded summer movie season. It also feels like some of these misguided opinions on “Superman” are from people who don’t even know the character or are being willfully ignorant of his origins.
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