In 1978, Superman: The Movie made us believe a man can fly. Nearly half a century later, James Gunn’s Superman movie wants us to believe we can soar. The 1978 film directed by Richard Donner and starring Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel released at a time when the American Way was in turmoil following the 1970s recession, stagflation, oil and energy crises, and geopolitical tensions. And then, on December 15, 1978 — the very day that the Last Son of Krypton’s true birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio, became the first major U.S. city to fall into default since the Great Depression — Superman flew into theaters.
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“There’s some similarities between the original Superman and this Superman,” Gunn said on Grave Conversations, the “podcasket” YouTube series hosted by The Suicide Squad actor David Dastmalchian. “The world was going through an upheaval in the early ’70s, and Superman was a return to this bright hope and cheerfulness amidst all of that. I don’t think that’s any different than today.”
Like Reeve’s Superman, who smiled and called himself “a friend” after rescuing Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, Gunn has described his Superman (played by David Corenswet) as an unabashedly kind hero and “the embodiment of Truth, Justice, and the Human Way.”
“Sometimes people think that Superman is Pollyanna or old-fashioned, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, he is. And that’s okay,’” Gunn continued. “He’s just this basically good guy that believes in those old-fashioned values of love and saving human lives, and being good to each other, being kind, being polite. All of those things are made fun of today, just as they were sort of in the ’70s. And yet, that’s what he stands for. So in a way, he’s edgy because he does go against the grain.”
“I think ‘loving’ and ‘good’ is better than ‘hope,’ because hope is a certain thing about the future,” he added. “There’s hopefulness there, for sure, but I really think it’s much more about Superman being kind and that being okay. Because a lot of people aren’t.”
Asked what he hopes audiences take away from Superman, Gunn answered, “You know that feeling, and I’m sure people out there know, that magical feeling you feel when you get out of a good movie. That high that you feel, and you love the person you’re next to a little bit more than how much you loved them when you walked into it. Whether it’s your buddy or your mom, or wife, or husband, or kid. So that’s what I want. I want people to walk out feeling like that.”
According to the earliest reactions to Gunn’s Superman, you’ll believe you can fly.
DC Studios’ Superman — starring David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, with Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, María Gabriela de Faría as Angela Spica/the Engineer, Wendell Pierce as The Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White, Neva Howell as Ma Kent, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Pa Kent, Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord, and Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr. — opens only in theaters July 11.
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