Superman: controversy and faith

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 15, 2025

I liked the new Superman movie. It’s not perfect but it’s very good. And the pre-opening controversy about the film being Woke was silly.

Free eBook:

Free eBook: Ecclesiastical Minefield

As recounted by Variety:

“I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” James Gunn [DC Studios co-CEO and Superman director] said. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

The quote enflamed backlash from commentators online and drew the attention of conservative media outlets like Fox News, which deemed “Superman” “Superwoke.” Network anchor Kellyanne Conway said of the film, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us.” Jesse Watters added, “You know what it says on his cape? MS13.”

This was a controversy DC Studios didn’t need. The “Snyderverse”—the previous DC movies of the last 12 years—were a bust, losing an entire generation of movie-going superhero fans to the superior Marvel movies. Gunn’s Superman was supposed to be the reboot that would get the franchise back on track and be to DC what 2008’s Iron Man was to Marvel—the cornerstone around which all the “world-building” for future films could occur. Political controversies that depress ticket sales don’t help that strategy.

Which may be why some big names associated with DC were so defensive about the whole thing. See, for instance, the Facebook posts by Mark Waid. They needn’t have worried. Superman generated $122 million domestically in its opening weekend, $217 million when you include global ticket sales.

The reason, again, is that the movie is good. And that the controversy was silly. Gunn—and Waid—are right. Superman’s immigrant origins are part of the story and part of what makes him American. Conservative media overreacted. But so did guys like Waid. “Waid has been a longtime critic of right-wing fandom and has frequently drawn the ire of ‘Comicsgate,’ a self-identified movement of fans outraged at diversity, social justice and other progressive themes in popular culture,” says Forbes Magazine.

There are probably not a lot of Trump-voting Mark Waid fans out there, but I count myself as one. Because Mark Waid is the best comics writer in the business, his politics do not bother me in the least. (And they rarely bleed over into his writing.) The Comicsgate crowd would do well to narrow down their critique of the industry’s leftward drift instead of making generalized complaints about Wokeness. And if they did, guys like Waid would do well to give that critique a more sympathetic ear.

When liberal defenders of today’s comic book superheroes say the comics have always been Woke, what they really mean is that the comics have always been liberal. But Woke is a whole different level. Green Arrow in the 1970s complaining about rich fat cats taking advantage of the poor is one thing. Superman’s son in the 2020s kissing his boyfriend is another thing entirely. So is the distancing of characters like Superman from their own history of American patriotism. Fans are not wrong to react against those two things. Keep all the other things that have annoyed Comicsgate—the greater ethnic diversity and so forth—and just drop those two items, the LGBT storylines and the embarrassment over being American, and much of the rightwing backlash in comics fandom would disappear.

Gunn’s Superman succeeds, in part, because it does that. It’s also just a fun movie. People who complain that it’s Guardians of the Galaxy with Superman are missing it. That’s exactly what Gunn was hired to do. That’s what fans like me wanted from him. Zack Snyder, the director of the previous DC movies, was attempting something epic. But if you were a fan of his efforts, you were a Snyder fan, not a DC fan. I’m a DC fan. The Snydervere actors were perfectly cast, but those were not the characters I grew up with. Not the way Snyder wrote them. Gunn’s Superman are the characters I grew up with—and the ones I wanted to see on the big screen.

One curious thing in the movie is the absence of the Christological overtones in Superman that we have seen in previous Superman movies. Marlon Brando’s Jor-El in the original 1978 film addressing Superman as “my only son” whom he is sending to humanity; Brandon Routh’s Superman falling cruciform back to Earth in 2006’s “Superman Returns,” Henry Cavill’s explicit portrayal of Superman as a sacrificial lamb offered up to save humanity in 2013’s Man of Steel. Unlike Marvel’s Daredevil, there is no DC character whose Catholicism is front and center. But as the Associated Press recently noted, faith and morality are part of Superman’s DNA.

I’m glad Gunn has brought the fun back to Superman and to DC. And the morality. I hope he’ll bring back the faith too.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

There are no comments yet for this item.