With Superman, James Gunn projects America's favourite superhero as an outcast, but that's not his sharpest comment on the country's politics

Indian Express

5 days ago

James Gunn has made a career out of telling the outcast's story. From his early films that went under the radar — the 2006 sci-fi horror comedy Slither and his 2010 maiden superhero movie Super — to his much-celebrated Marvel franchise Guardians of the Galaxy and DC debut The Suicide Squad, Gunn has even infiltrated the saturated superhero universes with oddball energy and subversive quirks.
Who else could take America's favourite superhero and turn him into an outcast, an outsider, an 'immigrant,' as he put it. In fact, the first time Superman is addressed in Gunn's iteration, he's referred to as an 'alien.' Identity crisis is not new to Superman's conflicts. Even in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel (2013), Superman grappled with the idea of being an outsider, but that jostling is more internalized than external.
In fact, it gets to the external in Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), when even the Caped Crusader turns on his future Justice League teammate and levels allegations of conspiracy against America on him. During the interval block, when Superman is on trial, and a suicide bomber destroys the court building in order to frame him, the lone survivor in him knows he'll be blamed for the explosion.
But unlike Snyder, Gunn enjoys the unique position of straddling both DCEU and MCU. He took his signature lightness of touch, that made Guardians of the Galaxy so watchable, and showered it all over The Suicide Squad, making it stand out as a far cry from David Ayer's gruesome 2016 version. Sure, Snyder's gritty treatment made the internet demand his cut of Justice League (2021), but one shouldn't forget that the Guardians of the Galaxy cast also lobbied for Gunn to be reinstated as the threequel director even after he'd joined the rival gang in DC.
Also, unlike Snyder, Gunn is able to focus more on the external than the internal because he's able to make his characters self-aware, unassuming, and not as holier than thou that they're often perceived to be. What jarred so much in a Snyder film — that Martha twist in Batman v Superman — could very well land in a Gunn world, with two more punches rolled in along with it for good effect.
Gunn stamps his trademark creative motifs all over Superman — an exaggerated villain in Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor, a furry companion to the protagonist in Krypto, and allegiance with fellow anomalous superheroes in Justice Gang. Hawkeye, Green Lantern, and Metamorpho's warring of words with Superman make them a team trying to reconcile their eccentricities in order to meet the higher purpose of saving the day. It's no Guardians of the Galaxy, but the departure from a cohesive unit like Avengers or Justice League underlines the theme Gunn is trying to spotlight through his iteration.
Gunn reflects an America where the big tech chief shapes and controls the narrative because he owns everything from the mainstream media, social media to search engine algorithms. Gunn's Elon Musk-like Luthor is dating a dumb-as-a-doorbell Instagram influencer. But again, in a James Gunn world, no outcast is disregarded as a tokenistic presence. The very influencer, who's considered merely a flowerpot in a room full of technologically proficient, advanced individuals, in fact turns out to be their Kryptonite.
Even the one she's in cahoots with — a reporter who often goes unnoticed in the newsroom thanks to his everyman-ness — ends up using that very anonymity to gain an edge over America's gravest internal threat. Every life — a woman in a car, a girl crossing the road, and a dog barking at a life-sized monster — is accounted for. Superman spends most of his time and energy saving each and every one of them, instead of flagging the American stripes at the cost of civilian or individual casualties.
That's why when Superman's past and origin are used as tools for his character assassination, his adoptive parents remind him of his strongest superpower — his choices. Even if his biological parents from Krypton sent him off to Earth to lord over the gullible and the less mighty, he chooses otherwise. It's only when he comes to terms with the fact that he's as human as the Earthlings — because he wrestles with self-doubt like the rest of them — that he makes Luthor confess to his real motive. Luthor wants to eliminate Superman because as a proud innovator, he wants to prove brain's supremacy over brawn.
But what good is a brain if it wants to dumb the other brains down? What good is an insider if he betrays his nation for power? Similarly, what good is a peace-keeping nation if it engages in war to chase that idea of peace? Gunn invokes America's political irony in Superman, but he reserved his sharpest commentary for another character — Peacemaker.
John Cena's anti-superhero was introduced in The Suicide Squad as a part of the squad who turns on his teammates on the order of US government stooge Viola Davis' orders. He claims his goal is to achieve peace at any cost, which involves even murdering people left, right, and centre. Like Superman, an outsider who makes America his own, Peacemaker is an insider who infests on his own country, both wearing irony as a cape.
Peacemaker grabbed eyeballs for his evil turn in The Suicide Squad, but Gunn, having felt he gave the character a short strife, revives him in a spin-off show on HBO. The length of the format allowed Peacemaker to be presented as a full-blown, well-rounded character. Luthor, or even Superman, couldn't enjoy that because of Gunn's attempt to pack a host of themes and characters into two hours.
In Peacemaker, Cena's character has a dad who looks and behaves like Uncle Sam and a bestie in Eagly, a bald eagle who's seen resting on Uncle Sam's arm in pop culture. His central conflict is to not get bogged down by Uncle Sam's pointy finger, but let the eagle guide his allegiance to a nation. An eagle preys, sure, but it also flies. It doesn't let its vision be confined to a country.
Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker is the son of a white supremacist who injects his son's blood with racial lordship. Right from childhood, he's shamed for crying like a girl and banished for even harbouring an interest in rap and rock & roll, gifts of the Blacks to the land of America. Smith is hardened to an extent that he doesn't even realize when he accidentally punches his brother to death in a casual, childhood brawl.
But because his father blames him for his brother's death, Smith's gnawing guilt sabotages his latent will to do better. He doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and engage in war in the name of his nation. All he wants is peace — but the years of conditioning compels him to resort to violence as the path to peace. He becomes a vulture circling his past, even when he wants to chase the dove of peace.
While internally, he needs to save America from ingrained white supremacy, externally also, he has to save the world from a rather absurd threat — butterflies taking over human bodies and serving as the hosts in order to bring a new world order. Transformation is in the DNA of a butterfly, so when one of them convinces Peacemaker to join forces because he also desires a better planet, he shakes off the toxic temptation to control and thwarts the threat. His internal journey meets his external — Chris Smith becomes one with Peacemaker, one who wants peace for all, and not peace for the immediate at the cost of war for the other.
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This journey felt far too rushed in Superman. The external also weighed heavy on the internal, as is the case with many of these superhero tentpoles. Gunn managed to paint Superman as the ultimate outsider, but his protagonist was too busy saving the world to go on through that internal metamorphosis without spelling it out in dialogues like he does in his final battle scene against Luthor. He announces himself as a human, but the fact is no human proclaims he's one. He just makes peace with the fact that he's no peacemaker; he's just a man battling demons within to choose peace, every day.