Superman May Be a Master Class in Metamodernism But I Have 1 Big Problem with It

My Low-effort Review of James Gunn's Superman

*Spoilers aplenty*

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Pleasantly Surprised

I was very cynical about James Gunn’s Superman. I thought it was going to be a CGI nightmare focusing in on one big stupid kaiju in some overly self-conscious attempt to save our sensibilities through ‘metamodernism’—whatever that is. I did not initially like the cast. I did not have high expectations. I am a big Superman dork and I was ready to be let down.

But Superman was great. If you like Superman, in any of his comics, Superman the Animated Series or other tv shows, or classic movies, etc., then you’ll probably like this movie. If you’re only a Synderverse enjoyer, you may not enjoy this one because it’s not very Syndery, but then again you might!

If you’re a film critic looking for the movie to intricately develop each character in universe and right there on the screen, instead of dropping you into a well-worn universe where characters and their origins are known and only peripherally alluded to—but where characters act the way DC fans expect them to act, then you probably won’t enjoy it. Erik Kain of Forbes did not enjoy it.

Metamodern??

I’m told that Gunn intentionally made a ‘metamodern’ film here. What’s that mean? I hesitate to define the word because if it is a genuine emerging cultural phenomenon, then we’re in the midst of it and it’s probably still taking shape, so any definition I give could end up wildly missing the mark.

But I hear Top Gun: Maverick was supposed to be a quintessential metamodern film as well. I guess it had a more modern feel with hope and clearer lines between good and evil while still giving a nod to the cynical-eyed viewers such that those with both sensibilities could enjoy it—like Tom Cruise being read the riot act by the daughter of a woman he rekindled an affair with. There’s still the modern mores but told through the mouth of a daughter to a potential father figure—a subversion of roles. I don’t know, modernism and especially postmoderism are tricky terms, they’re probably polysemous or vague and are rarely well-defined when in view. And I won’t be changing that here.

Metamodernism, I guess, is supposed to be a sort of fusion between modernist grand-total-narrativizing/sentiments and postmodern “I see through everything” cynicism. To me that means each ‘metamodern’ story is going to look different based on the pieces of modernism and postmodernism they’re choosing to blend together and transcend—which could likewise make it a hard term to define.

Anyways, Gunn is said to have created a metamodern Superman—which probably means he’ll have the hokier aspects of the modern Superman but as passed through the hands of the postmodern cynics, or at least with an eye to those who sneer or cringe at happy endings and the good prospering—something like optimism slightly tempered by pessimism?

I do think that’s what we got with Gunn’s Superman. We got to see Superman save animals again—when’s the last time that’s happened? He saves a dog and a squirrel, from a giant kaiju—which was a serious threat but thankfully wasn’t the big bad of the movie. The dog he saved also takes a big of a lump from the tree Superman blew him into, which would never happen in a straight forward modern movie, but he also wasn’t ripped in half around the trunk of the tree like a postmodern movie would have depicted. Hence metamodern (?).

We also saw folks evacuating with their pets, like an old woman with her yellow-bellied slider (It was just a quick frame but I think that’s the kind of pet turtle she had (I like turtles leave me alone)). Right afterward we heard a reporter at the Daily Planet trying to comfort his cat on the phone. It was probably poking fun a little bit but it was also kind of sweet and very human. Saving animals is back. Additionally the animals will also save us back—good work, Krypto—but again Krypto did it like a poorly trained dog, which is hilarious but also more realistic unless you go full cartoon. So we got a little more realistic hokey going on.

But not all kaiju attacks are created equal. We saw Clark shrug off another Starro/Staryu-esque kaiju attack in the background as he tells Lois how concerned he is for the recently kidnapped Krypto—no worries on the star kaiju, the Justice “Gang” had it covered, Justice Gang being another postmoderny dig at the hokey Justice League; Friends, Society, etc., of the modern days.

There was cynicism but it was tempered by optimism. There were real stakes but those stakes were definitely not as real as the postmoderny stakes we’re used to by now. There were certainly deaths, but we didn’t see too many of them—even the expendable foot-soldiers, the Raptors, don’t seem to die after getting blasted by Superman’s heat vision from point blank.

There was a return to really beautiful art deco interiors without overdosing on too much retro-futurism like I’m expecting with Fantastic Four. The robot supermen in the Fortress of Solitude were retrofuturistic and looked like K-2SO from Rogue One but were more unintentionally snarky, which was a welcome change of pace—I did love their constant correction informing Clark that they are not conscious or sentient or anything like that all while Gunn was trying to humanize them in the viewers mind.

There were hokey maxims like “your choices make you who you are” but they were told by an unlovely Pa Kent, a realistic Pa Kent—I hated that in the trailers but loved it on the screen. I think the realistic Ma and Pa Kent really worked.

Gunn’s Machine

I really enjoyed how Gunn deployed what C.S. Lewis calls “the machine” and what I like to call “the SF machine” for clarity (that’s Science Fiction for double clarity). Lewis says that in good SF, indeed in his favorite sub-species of SF,

…the pseudo-scientific apparatus is to be taken simply as a ‘machine’ in the sense which that word bore for the Neo-Classical critics. The most superficial appearance of plausibility—the merest sop to our critical intellect—will do. I am inclined to think that frankly supernatural methods are best. I took a hero once to Mars in a space-ship, but when I knew better I had angels convey him to Venus.[3]

Gunn played the pseudo-scientific apparatus, the SF machine, well because he played it like the comics and cartoons do. Here’s a device, a concept, a superpower, a realm, a super-powered dog!—whatever, here it is, here’s just the most superficial appearance of plausibility so you can suspend disbelief and so we can get on with the rest of our story. How does that one kaiju grow? Who cares? Everyone knows kaijus grow, make it grow off camera and give us a line in a news report telling us it was bigger than when we first saw it but not to it’s full bulk yet. Now let’s go save that terrier from under it massive foot! This is how the best of the comics do it, it’s soft SF, and it’s a great use of the SF machine—at least according to C.S. Lewis. Gunn did it will every SF machine in the movie and some will want more hard SF details on how the machine works but I tend to side with C.S. Lewis on this.

Techbro Critique?

The casting turned out to be great. I’m still not positive about Lois yet though. David Corenswet is kind of a facedancer if I’m being honest here. That dude shape-shifts and doesn’t look the same to me in any two frames. Sometimes he really looks like Henry Cavil and that’s a great thing, other times he looks like a whole different actor—maybe that’s just me. He was a great Clark Kent.

I usually don’t care for Edi Gathegi at all but I loved him as Mr. Terrific—a character I don’t even like. So that was a really pleasant surprise.

I was most disappointed with the casting of Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor when I first got wind of the movie. I don’t think they’ve ever cast Lex right in a movie before and that’s probably because I’m an STAS kid and he’s my gold standard Lex. But Hoult did a great job. Erik Kain said he didn’t find Lex’s motives to be believable at all and he was just a mustache twirler—as a literal mustache twirler myself, I don’t mind that all too much. But I think Kain misses the metamodern motif—which I guess I’m bought in on now. Lex doesn’t need some ultra believable motif—he’s a super genius megalomaniac, his ego and his misplaced sense of “duty to the human race” in general—never duty to individual humans—is what drives him and what actually makes him more believable. Real supervillains are childish psychopaths with really obvious and ridiculous motives. Evil is simple. Lex being jealous of Superman is accurate to the lore and I think Hoult played it well.

Additionally, I loved the algorithmization of superman’s fight techniques. That was a great update. Of course Lex would study superman and figure out how he fights. I’ve always thought this was a plot hole in Superman stories. He’s just a guy with super powers but he doesn’t know how to fight necessarily. When General Zod comes—a trained warrior—and he has the same powers as Superman but with superior training, tactics, and experience, Zod should wreck superman. Technique is deadly.

There’s also a quick little critique of billionaire tech bros through a critique of Lex. Lex wants to be a king of his own kingdom and he’ll do whatever it takes to get there. He’s threatened by anyone who could even potentially stop him and he’s willing to risk destroying the entire world for his vainglory.

The message is simple: the techbros want to be kings and they have a warped sense of what’s good for the human race—which might end up killing us all. It’s not subtle and that’s good. If they try to destroy the world in their vainglory, they should be mauled by an adorable dog.

My Quibbles

First, I did not like Supergirl. I think they miscalibrated the metamodern mechanism with her—too much cynicism in the potion. She loves Clark or at least she is supposed to! Whatever that was in the movie was not cute at all. Yuck.

Secondly, and perhaps more substantively, James Gunn ought not have changed the origin story of Superman. This was another miscalibration. This motif passed through the hands of the postmoderns but was far too shaped by them. I understand the metamodern move is to take on the cynicism by changing Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van from wholesome do-gooders to conquerers so that you can double down on Ma and Pa Kent, but it’s not good. This world is really, really dark. Clark needs all the optimism he can get and he used to get it from two sets of wholesome and righteous parents. Now it’s not just down to one set, but he has a negative set offsetting the other set. I understand it but it’s just not good, it is too cynical.

Additionally, it seems like theft.

Dragon Ball Z

Akira Toriyama improved on the Superman story by creating Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Superman had a few origin stories over the years but they amalgamized into one about an infant named Kalel being sent to earth from his dying planet of Krypton by his parents so that he might live a good life and become a protector, embodying the virtues of the best of the Kryptonian people, on earth. It’s probably an American idealization of Hercules and it’s great.

Or it was great for it’s time, but that story grew stale.

Toriyama came along and said, “Hey, I’m going to make my Kalel—Kakarot—a member of a violent conquering race called the Saiyans. He’ll be sent to earth to soften the planet and dominate the earthlings but he’ll get amnesia and be raised by them and become one of them and they’ll call him Goku just as Kalel was renamed Clark by his adoptive parents. But Toriyama’s story is more cynical and better. Goku is one of the evil conquerors by blood but he sides with the humans after being raised by them. When he fights the Saiyans there’s more “betrayal of one’s race” going on than when Kalel fights General Zod or some other rouge Kryptonian. Clark is following his father’s—both fathers’—moral teachings when he goes against his kinsman. Goku is rebelling against his own race and their entire culture when he seeks to stop them from conquering earth. It’s a similar story but the Dragon Ball World’s story is slightly better, even if it does owe to Superman’s.

Invincible

The same goes for the Invincible World. Robert Kirkman et al., gave us the Viltrumites. A race of supermen and superwomen soldiers —super-spartans basically—who seek to conquer every planet there is. They do it for their own good reasons, they want to end disease and wars and raise the undeveloped up to the glory of the Viltrumite empire’s. But they are ruthless and vicious in their methods.

Mark Grayson’s father, Nolan Grayson, is Omniman. Everyone thinks he’s a superman analog but he’s on mission for the Viltrumites to soften earth and make it ready to be conquered. Mark knows his dad is an alien from the planet Viltrum but he doesn’t know anything about the conquering plans. Because Mark is raised on earth with a human mom, Mark ends up siding with earth against his own father and the rest of the Viltrumite empire when they try to take over. It’s a wonderful story of hope and forgiveness and redemption and it’s a great twist on the Superman and even the Dragon Ball Z stories.

Instead of having a good origin, and instead of having a malicious origin, Mark has a mixed origin, being half human himself, and it’s his dad who has the malicious mission. Who should he choose? His mom and his home world, or his father, his own personal hero, and his ancestral home world’s ‘noble’ cause?

It’s a better story than Superman’s but it too is a response to Superman’s.

Superman gave us the story of a boy sent by very good and moral alien parents to earth to live and serve as protector of human beings. Dragon Ball Z, Invincible, Iron Giant, and others (Avatar? (not the last airbender)) took that story and responded to it, making it better. The senders of the child—or Iron Giant killer monster—were conquerers and intended harm for the human race but it backfires, their boy goes native, and eventually defeats them.

It’s too much for Gunn to see this response and then weave it back into the Superman lore. You’re taking the response to Superman and appropriating it for Superman. We already have those more cynical takes on the Superman story and they’ve been done way better. I could be wrong here but it doesn’t feel right taking what’s been built on the foundation and twisting it back into the foundation.

So, there’s my quibble. And there’s my low-effort review of James Gunn’s Superman.

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