'Superman' Lives in the World
Metamodern metahumans
I suppose we start with this: Superman is, primarily, an announcement. That announcement is metamodernism — not romanticizing, not deconstructing, but unearthing new ways forward using the power of curiosity.
Typically, that means approaching the world with philosophical angles and combinations that you wouldn’t before, likely because it was inconceivable to tamper with what was always accepted/never questioned, or because the world and the way we moved through it felt equally pointless.
Superman falls victim to neither of these dogmas, because it refuses to even recognize them as such. Romanticism? Deconstruction? These are means, not ends — the end has to come from what you believe in, otherwise you’ll never belong to yourself.
As such, Superman forgoes both the traditional benchmark of the straight narrative and the nihilism that so often masquerades as subversion, and instead centres its storytelling on a nuclear-grade awareness around A.) It being a film in this specific real-world context, and B.) What a film like that — particularly a superhero/comic book one, and especially a Superman one — ought to do.
Superman’s priorities lie not with immersive, diegetic drama, but with transparently standing for what it believes in.
Comic books, long having Trojan-horsed as lowbrow media, have been doing this forever.
As of August 2025 in the world that Superman — as in, the physical film that gets shipped off to multiplexes — exists in, we are:
Simultaneously in the middle and on the precipice of multiple, extremely volatile geopolitical upheavals
Having our lives and futures tampered with/cratered by neurotic oligarchs, fascists, and AI-first tech bros
Generally at risk of losing most if not all sense of truth, identity, community, and self-actualization at the corrosive behest of isolation and division
You might even say that the world we live in has an overstuffed plot.
Got it? Okay, now let’s crunch some data:
Superman goes and stops a war between Boravia and Jarhanpur without thinking about the geopolitical consequences, justifying it due to the lives saved. We agree with this justification; the geopolitics are not what makes this spiky.
It only becomes spiky when we realize that, even though Superman thinks with his heart, his heart is not his own. Indeed, this particular sense of duty is derived from what he believes his parents wanted him to do, rather than what he himself believes in. This, regardless of how much overlap those two things may or may not have.
In other words, Superman does not belong to himself at the beginning of the film. His truth, identity, and actualization are entirely dependent on a heritage that he has romanticized(!), and because of this, he becomes spiritually crippled when the idea he has about his heritage (i.e. his parents’ perceived wishes) is deconstructed.
His arc, then, is centred around claiming his bleeding heart for himself, at which point his heart will truly be his to give to the world’s collective healing efforts.
This arc is reflected in his relationship with Lois, who naturally questions (deconstructs) all the things that Superman doesn’t think to. It’s here that the geopolitical complexities of his Boravia-Jarhanpur intervention become important — the way Lois solves problems involves a dimension of action that Superman does not employ, and in fact defensively rejects, per the scene where Lois interviews Clark as Superman.
The health/state of Lois and Clark’s relationship, then, is representative of Clark’s ability to accept the role that colder pragmatism has in doing good in this world. The world needs Superman’s heart and humanity, but the world needs other things, too.1 Lex Luthor, after all, is ultimately brought down by Lois, Jimmy, and the Daily Planet — Clark’s humanistic optimism that he shouts at Lex proves completely ineffective.
And, of course, Lois is who Clark literally gives his heart to, at which point he can symbolically give it to the world’s aforementioned collective healing efforts.
Importantly, however, the film remains adamant about the necessity of Superman’s heart and humanity, and it expresses this via the Justice Gang.
When they team up with Superman to fight the kaiju, the Justice Gang focuses on restraining and killing the kaiju, while Superman focuses on saving lives from collateral damage, all while trying to scheme up a more humane way of dispatching it.
Seeing the kaiju as a baby, together with the Justice Gang’s stomach-churning approach to hurting it (going for the eyes), is Superman’s way of evoking a smattering of sympathy for it, which helps us understand the contrast between Superman and the Justice Gang.
After the kaiju dies, the Justice Gang goes to collect praise from the public and endorse their corporate sponsor Maxwell Lord, while Superman plays with the children and checks again to make sure everybody is okay. Meanwhile, the very first line of dialogue we hear out of any member of the Justice Gang is Guy Gardner’s detached, mechanical “Clear the area!”
The arc of the Justice Gang, then, involves learning how to redefine themselves — as superheroes — with a more human, elemental goodness as opposed to being a flashy arm of corporate militarization. If Superman needs to embrace what Lois stands for, then the Justice Gang needs to embrace what Superman stands for.
Mister Terrific is the first to break off, though it’s under the guise of wanting to piss off Guy, since he’s “not into people’s emotions.” Stage one: Denial.
Guy and Hawkgirl follow suit when they witness the Jarhanpurian children raising the Superman flag and desperately chanting for his help against the Boravian military, inspiring them and a newly-recruited Metamorpho to intercept the invasion.
It’s in this moment that all the superheroes in this film become heroes as people with tools, rather than heroes as institutions. Heroes born of community and a more anarchical, metamodern, cooperative dedication to human life, instead of a corporate amalgam that has enough money to render their efforts “valid.” The institution of Maxwell Lord has been deconstructed to make room for the hearts of these heroes — hearts empowered by Superman.
Moreover, Metamorpho’s recruitment by Guy marks the beginning of the Justice Gang’s irrevocable break from corporatism, as Metamorpho doesn’t wear one of Maxwell Lord’s samey uniforms.
Most interesting to the cocktail of Superman’s arc and the film’s story, however, is Krypto.
Think about it like this: Krypto is the only superhero in this movie that thinks with his heart more than Superman. If Superman rejects pragmatism, Krypto does not even comprehend it, playfully clobbering and liberally pulverizing on a full-hearted, instinctual whim, often to the ire and irritation of Superman. Krypto is at once Superman’s most indispensable lifeline and the most reliable source of his aggravation.
Kind of like how, at first, Superman is the world’s (and, by extension, Lois’) most indispensable lifeline and the most reliable source of its aggravation.
You see? Krypto is Superman’s humbling mirror, whose unfiltered heart may help Superman understand why filters — which Lois champions and Superman rolls his eyes at — might be more important than he realizes.
Consider how Krypto recklessly lays the smackdown on Lex Luthor near the end of the film, and Superman urges him to stop. It’s because Superman understands that his tools — while valuable — are not the X-factor in Lex’s thwarting; that’s the job of Lois and the Daily Planet.
Now, Lex Luthor.
Lex Luthor is the same as Superman in the sense that neither of them belong to themselves. But where Superman learns how to belong to himself so that he can more fully give his heart, Lex reactively spews/engineers hatred, trying to bring Superman — and the world, more broadly — down to his own level of emptiness. He can block his own lack of significance from his mind if there’s no significant things or people (i.e. Superman) to compare himself to.
Lex is walking, talking, postmodern cynicism.
There’s two aspects to Lex — insofar as his narrative purpose goes — that I consider a cut above the rest.2 The first is his line about engineering the Boravia-Jarhanpur conflict solely so that he could take down Superman.
I’m entirely confident that we’re meant to read this as a complete lie, or at least as a gross enough exaggeration that we can effectively understand it as a lie. Between profiting off the weapons trade with Boravia and striking a deal to turn half of Jarhanpur into Luthoria, there’s no way that Lex’s primary motive was to deal a social death blow to Superman. A motive, perhaps, but not the primary one.
Tell me this doesn’t sound likely: Lex, on the edge of defeat following the Justice Gang’s foiling of the second Boravian invasion, channels a Musk/Altman neuroticism to venomously claim that everything he’s done so far was to make good on his hatred for Superman, in an attempt to convince everyone — himself included — that everything is going to plan. Moreover, given Lex’s lack of empathy and the fact that his ego cannot handle any scrutinization, Lex probably also assumes that spotlighting his hatred for and vendetta against Superman will get under Superman’s skin.
Superman, of course, is unaffected, because he and Lex aren’t the same by this point; Superman’s heart now belongs to himself. Moments later, Lex’s unscrupulous doings are revealed to the world by the Daily Planet, everyone starts lighting him up, and he begins to cry.
Recall the beginning of the film, how Superman was emotionally vulnerable/reactive to the criticisms posed by Lois during the interview. Lex’s tears are no different.
The second aspect is actually a whole other character that I consider an extension of Lex — Ultraman.
If we understand Lex as a composite of the world’s contemporary poisons — that is, a rich, warmongering antihumanist straight out of Silicon Valley who disregards the environmental impact of hosting a pocket dimension — then it’s only a hop, skip, and jump before we understand that Ultraman is, functionally, Lex’s custom AI model.
The immediate parables are obvious: Lex shouts number-letter prompts so as to power Ultraman’s fight moves against Superman, resulting in each matchup coming down to Ultraman’s sleek-but-uninspired martial arts implementation versus Superman’s imperfect scrappiness powered by human instinct — despondent ChatGPT efficiency versus pure, pulsing, athletic determination.
Choreographically speaking, it’s not an easy contrast to spot, but it’s there. A better version of Superman would have prioritized framing this contrast during the fight scenes, I think.
I will also concede, however, that the dimensions of Ultraman as an AI are plentiful enough that Gunn could probably afford to muddle the fighting style differences so as to indulge in blockbuster spectacle. Not a decision I personally agree with, but then, I have the luxury of not needing to consider the utility of mass audience appeal.
The most important dimension of Ultraman as an AI, however, is revealed when Krypto comes to assist Superman against Ultraman, knocking Ultraman off of Superman before chomping the cameras that Lex uses to view the battlefield and prompt Ultraman.
By this point, Superman’s heart now belongs to him, and so he’s truly empowered to unleash his heart (i.e. calling upon the categorically unfiltered Krypto) against the soulless machine of Ultraman in full demonstration of the power of being human.
Moreover, when Krypto begins eliminating the cameras, Ultraman/Lex has no precedent for adapting to this, and Lex is left uselessly flinging commands as his machines fall apart.
That’s the thing about AI — it cannot dream beyond the confines of its coding, just as Lex cannot function outside of his narcissism. They can both only react and consume, existing not to live, nor to feel, but to simply finish existing.
The metamodern sheen that Superman champions, on the other hand, is built upon dreaming of a better tomorrow — not just reaching said tomorrow, but the collaborative identifying of it; the very act of living together on this planet. Individuals bringing their perspectives and talents to the table in pursuit of a world that doesn’t treat romanticism and deconstructionism as ideals, but as tools with which we can pursue something new — a “something new” that lives in each of us, and that we rely on each other to unearth.
If the Daily Planet is the modernist, romanticized institution (truth)…
If Lois Lane is the deconstructor…
If the Justice Gang ought to be deconstructed (not by Lois; just in general) to make way for something new…
And if Lex is reactive, postmodern cynicism…
…then Superman is the metamodern lighthouse that learns to coalesce everything in service of the most humanistic outcome.
Think about it: Ultimately, the world is saved not because of the lone willpower of Superman’s heart, but because of his newfound ability to own his truth as his truth to provide, understanding that it’s not the one and only truth of the world that he (and others) fights for.
And indeed, his community — each of them rocking their own strengths, weaknesses, angles, and values — rallies to protect Jarhanpur (the Justice Gang) and expose Lex (the Daily Planet), and at the center of it all is Superman. Superman, who channels his humanistic tenacity to overcome Lex’s antihumanist gauntlet, from the pocket dimension prison to the Ultraman AI.
The question that remains: What does this world look like? Rick Flag Sr. and General Mori reluctantly muse on a future where metahumans call the shots, acting as they please with little regard to government oversight — Hawkgirl, for instance, straight up murders the Boravian president during the Justice Gang’s defense of Jarhanpur.3 Is this the world we want?
To that I would say: How would metahumans making the rules without any oversight be any different from the current people who make the rules without any oversight? In what way is this a more dangerous precedent than the one that already exists?
The power that each individual metahuman has belongs completely to them, and can be fully wielded with respect to what they believe in, while the power of people like Lex and Ghurkos is decentralized and dependent upon an unfeeling system that necessarily feeds upon the livelihood and freedom of human beings for the sake of profit and control. Even if Lex and/or Ghurkos had a change of heart, there’s still a whole, corrupt machine they’d have to answer to — their power is not theirs, but the machine’s.
In other words, metahuman power is much more real and independent than entirely contrived political power, and while you couldn’t call a “metatocracy” any more or less corruptable than the current system (because supervillains), its correction would simply depend on the actionable goodwill of people like Superman, Metamorpho, Mister Terrific, and other superheroes with humanistic principles, as opposed to a trail of paperwork that mysteriously vanishes on Pam Bondi’s desk.
And yes, when I say “metahumans,” I also mean you, me, and every human on the side of humans. “Meta,” by the way, is lifted straight from the Greek word meta, meaning “with, across, or after.”
Metahumans. How about that?
Pedestaling Superman would be romanticism.
“The rest,” in this case, would be the Lex’s blacksite detention facility in the pocket dimension, and his legion of keyboard monkeys. Superman, remember, lives in the world.
Doubtless that this action will form the basis for a show or film about Hawkgirl. In the comics, Kendra — a Hispanic-American woman — is tormented by the memory of her parents’ murder by a corrupt police officer. One can easily presume that her murder of the heinously corrupt Ghurkos was driven in part by that wound, assuming that part of her story is carried over into Gunn’s canon.
Insightful analysis of the themes in the film. "In what way is this a more dangerous precedent than the one that already exists?" and the subsequent question hit hard. Never thought of it that way but couldn't agree more. Also "nihilism that so often masquerades as subversion" is exactly how I felt about Man of Steel which is why the new Superman movie was a much-needed breath of fresh air
Hm, good points. This at least stands up Superman's heart as more than matter of course.