Director James Gunn Sparks Controversy with Superman Immigrant Comments

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's another Superman movie, the latest in a long line of cinematic attempts to translate comicdom's most iconic hero into popcorn fodder for the summer masses. But where Superman once stood as the embodiment of "truth, justice and the American way," director James Gunn's latest interpretation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's 1938 genre-defining creation has now rankled ultra-nationalist conservatives.

The filmmaker stressed the character's canonical origins and intrinsic character traits in an interview last week with The Times. "Superman is the story of America," Gunn 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."

Why have Gunn's comments piqued the right's ire, and what if any impact will it have on the movie's opening weekend? Opinions vary.

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'Try not hating the American people'

Gunn's description of Superman as an immigrant is a "terrible analogy," said Greg Gutfeld on Fox News' "The Five." With Superman, "they are sending your best. That's not escalator material," he said, referencing President Donald Trump's 2015 comments disparaging Mexican migrants. "You know what it says on his cape?" cohost Jesse Watters said. "MS-13."

Gunn's "woke" Superman reboot is part of the "radical anti-Americanism infecting Hollywood, the media and even the next possible mayor of NYC," conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said on his eponymous YouTube show. Star David Corenswet's statements stressing the character's commitments to "truth, justice and all that good stuff" is proof of a malicious industry-wide refusal to acknowledge that the "American way is good," according to Shapiro. Superman is ultimately an "immigrant who assimilates to American values," Shapiro allowed, contrasting the fictional character with what he claimed is New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's "deep hatred" for America.

"These millionaires" behind the new superhero film "could try not hating the American people who they are hoping will pay hard-earned money to see their crappy movies!" self-described "lefty-MAGA" columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon said on X. "The reason Hollywood can't get Superman right," said right-wing commentator Stephen L. Miller on that same platform, "is Superman is about what's good about America and Hollywood hates America." Miller also took offense to Gunn's description of Superman as an immigrant. "He is an orphan," he said in a separate post, calling it a "very basic concept."

The problem with Gunn's comments, said conservative broadcaster Clay Travis on his "OutKick" podcast, is that they do a disservice to the film itself and everyone else who worked on it for whom the director has an obligation to promote the movie as widely as possible. "I'm not gonna go watch it," Travis said, allowing that he would have if not for having "seen that quote."

A movie 'about kindness' that 'everyone can relate to'

That Superman "is now, and has always been, by definition, an immigrant refugee" is unsurprising to those "with even the most basic knowledge" of the character's canonical biography, said Rolling Stone. "That's exactly what the movie is about," actor Sean Gunn, the brother of director James, said at the film's premiere. "We love our immigrants." Those in this country who don't support immigrants are "not American," he added. The movie is fundamentally "about kindness," the director said to Variety, which is "something everyone can relate to."

Although the character was "created by liberals" and even considered an "unruly 'violent socialist' in his earliest appearances," Superman is ultimately an expression of a "simplistic American ideal that at its core is conservative, if not inherently nativist," said PJ Grisar at The Forward. Clark Kent being found and raised by farmers in Smallville, Kansas, "to Siegel and Shuster, was America." These small-c conservative roots explain the "knee-jerk revulsion" many on the right are now experiencing from the movie's ostensible "embrace of a progressive message."

Rather than immigration, Gunn's film is about assimilation, said Sonny Bunch at The Bulwark. The movie tells the story of a man "raised to do the right thing and act decently" thanks to his upbringing by a "nice married couple from Kansas." It's Superman's "belief in his own righteousness," then, that eventually "turns him into the world's policeman."

"If that ain't American Greatness," Bunch said, "well, what is?"