“Superman” offers an optimistic, hopeful, kind take on the cape-wearing Kryptonian. It’s exactly what audiences want and need, says Northeastern’s Steve Granelli.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a new Superman movie.
After almost a decade away, the legendary superhero returns to the big screen with cape, trunks, perfectly coiffed hair and one good boy in tow for “Superman.” For Warner Bros. cinematic treatment of DC, it’s a fresh start with a new creative maestro and director (James Gunn) and new actors.
However, this iteration of Superman, who it bears reminding was created in 1938, is also as classic as it comes. He’s still an alien sent to Earth. He’s still flying through the sky and shooting lasers out of his eyes. He’s still a beacon of hope.
If so much about the character is the same, why do we need another Superman movie? The character might not have changed all that much, but our world has and it makes the character more relevant than ever, says Steve Granelli, an associate teaching professor of communications studies at Northeastern University who studies pop culture and fandom.
Historically, the knock against Superman has been his “inimitable good,” Granelli says. In 2025, when people are less and less hopeful about the future, that’s a feature, not a bug.
“We’re talking about how this character of Superman fits into our cultural surroundings now, when I would argue, there is more of a craving for a ‘just strictly good’ character without ulterior motives, without a darker backstory,” Granelli says. “I think that it’s more intriguing to see how this character fits in at a time when we are probably more desirous for a character that pure than we have been in the past.”
Superman doesn’t have the trauma of Batman or Spider-Man. He has his own internal struggle –– how to balance his own needs and wants against the needs and safety of everyone else in the world. But Gunn’s version of the character, like so many others, also has a core struggle that’s become even more relatable. He’s just trying to be good in a world that is full of tragedy, cruelty and division.
“What happens when we’re taking this real, genuine character with this patina of overall goodness and indestructibility and … putting him in a corrupted environment?” Granelli says.By Gunn’s own admission, the character’s very backstory in the comics also speaks to a moment when intense political polarization and President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration are hitting a fever pitch.
“[Superman] is an alien,” Granelli says. “He is coming here to a broken place and he’s going to make things better in the face of the structures that aren’t going to make it better. Structures and power and money are going to actively impede the only force for good because there is no good to be found in this place.”
Superman’s straightforward goodness is simple but, in 2025, it’s also the thing that makes him both a role model and a mirror. Like Superman himself, the movie is a reminder that being kind doesn’t need to be an act of bravery –– it can be the standard, Granelli says.
The movie also arrives at an interesting time for superhero stories on the big and small screen. The previous iteration of Superman, helmed by Zach Snyder, is largely remembered for being quite grim. Meanwhile, Marvel heroes have become burdened by the psychological and cinematic baggage of almost two decades of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Granelli says. More cynical depictions of superheroes in “Watchmen” and “The Boys” have also put holes in the very idea of Superman.
But Granelli says that contrast could be a boon for the movie, which contains the kind of colors and goofiness of its comic book source material that superhero movies shed in their bid for mainstream success. More importantly, it’s a boon for audiences who Gunn himself says are craving a more hopeful vision of the future.
“People are looking for heroes right now,” Gunn told the press in February. “They are looking for values of goodness, looking for people who are good and decent human beings. And Superman is that.”
It’s a different kind of superhero story in the modern era –– a pure force for good –– but also as classic as it gets. That’s Superman.
“If we never have to question the goodness of Superman because of how he’s being presented, that’s going to be an easy story for us to latch onto and not one we’ve seen enough of in the past 15 years.”