Superman Was Never Yours, Bro

You can practically hear the fragile masculinity creaking under the weight of that cape.

James Gunn dropped a Superman who smiles, who cares, who has emotions… and the broflakes lost their damn minds.

They're calling him soft. Woke. Immature. Unheroic.

Which is rich coming from folks who think compassion is a character flaw and emotional availability is some kind of Kryptonite.

But let me tell you something they clearly didn’t read in their comic book long boxes between rewatching 300 and Googling “what’s a pronoun”:

The Superman they’re mad about is the Superman we were given at the beginning.

That’s right. James Gunn didn’t rewrite Superman. He remembered him.

The Original Man of Tomorrow Had a Whole Lot of Today in Him

Back in 1938, when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster dreamed up Superman, they didn’t set out to create a god in tights. They gave us a scrappy immigrant kid from another planet, raised by working-class folks who taught him that real strength is measured in kindness and not how many buildings you punch through or how few feelings you express.

(And as a side note: based on Moses, NOT Jesus).

That Superman was a labor activist in a cape. He took on slumlords, domestic abusers, arms dealers, and corrupt politicians. He fought for the oppressed and stood in the gap between the vulnerable and the powerful.

You know, actual evil.

He wasn’t above crying.
He wasn’t above cracking a smile.
He wasn’t afraid of feelings.
He was the antidote to fascism in a world teetering on the edge of war.

And he sure as hell wasn’t some hypermasculine, brooding power-fantasy who needed to “dominate” the bad guys to prove his worth.

The Boy Scout Was a Revolutionary

Some of these review-bombing superfans are acting like Gunn's Superman is some liberal fever dream.

“He’s too emotional.”
“He’s too soft.”
“He’s an immigrant!”

Yeah. No kidding. He always was.

You can practically feel their discomfort with a version of masculinity that makes room for mercy.

That doesn’t swing first.
That might hug a stranger.
That might stand in solidarity rather than puffing out his chest.

But you know what that discomfort is?
That’s toxic masculinity.
That’s patriarchy choking on its own cape.

A God Made Flesh? Or a Man Made Just?

What makes this Superman so offensive to these critics isn’t that he’s “different,” it’s that he dares to be true to the original vision. And that vision wasn’t built on brute strength or brooding angst.

It was built on justice.
On care.
On empathy.
On hope.

In fact, you know what the original Superman did more often than he punched?

He helped.

He helped people. Regular people. Poor people. Oppressed people. People who didn’t look or talk or live like the folks in power.

And when Gunn leans into that (when he dares to show Clark Kent as a man of feeling, of tenderness, of moral clarity) it threatens everything the toxic masculine fantasy has built up around itself.

Because it turns out: you can save the world without being a stone-cold bastard about it.

Batman's Not the Blueprint, Y’all

A lot of this nonsense backlash is because certain fans confused Superman with Batman somewhere along the line.

They want dark and brooding.
They want trauma-as-power.
They want emotionally unavailable men with big toys and no accountability.

But here’s the rub: Superman isn’t Batman. Never was.

He doesn’t hide in shadows.
He doesn’t seethe.
He doesn’t spend his nights traumatizing petty criminals and his mornings gaslighting the people he’s supposed to protect.

Superman flies in the light.
He leads with his heart.
He’s not here to punish – he’s here to protect.

The Real Threat Was Never Kryptonite

The truth is, this version of Superman, Gunn’s version, isn’t weak. He’s dangerous. But not in the way the bros think.

He’s dangerous to the idea that you need to suppress your emotions to be strong.
He’s dangerous to the fantasy that might makes right.
He’s dangerous to empire. To patriarchy. To the theology of power-over.

He’s not “woke.” He’s awake. And that’s terrifying to those who are still asleep at the wheel of their own insecurity.

A Hero Who Still Believes

So maybe it’s time we stop letting toxic masculinity pretend it owns the blueprint for heroism.

Because when the original Superman showed up in 1938, he didn’t ask for a throne. He didn’t demand obedience. He didn’t whine about being misunderstood.

He just rolled up his sleeves, looked injustice in the face, and said: not on my watch.

That’s the Superman I saw in Gunn’s vision.

And if that version offends the testosterone-panic crowd?
Well, maybe that’s the most Superman thing about it.