Superman (2025): The Sins That Cost it 4 Stars

A Critical Look at Gunn's Blind Spots [SPOILERS]

I'm writing this as a separate review because I don't want to yuck the yum of those Superman fans who loved the movie. If you want to read what was not only good, but great about the movie, look here. But at the same time, the sins Gunn commits in this film cannot be ignored.

James Gunn channels his inner H.P. Lovecraft and displays his conceit and bigotry for people not from a private school, upper/upper-middle class suburbia background. This doesn't matter if they are people of color in a poor backwater or rural Midwesterners. If you're not from his world, you're depicted as either noble savages or ignorant hayseeds.

1. The Jarhanpur "Army": Noble Savages in 2025

The depiction of Jarhanpur's resistance is perhaps the film's most egregious misstep. When Boravia invades, we don't see a military force or even a proper militia. Instead, we get poor, unwashed people of color bravely massing as easy targets for a Russia stand-in army to obliterate. There is no army, just "the people" in tribal or peasant dress, mostly armed with primitive farming implements. Literally pitchforks! They even brought their children.

While this creates some striking imagery (children raising Superman's flag like the Marines at Iwo Jima), it makes people of color look like idiots. Brave idiots, but idiots just the same. No parent is going to take their kids to a border where a modern army is massing with tanks and artillery. This isn't what modern insurgent combat looks like. This isn't how any resistance movement has operated in the last century.

Gunn could have depicted the people of Jarhanpur as poor but competent. Showing them using guerrilla tactics, improvised weapons, or at least basic military strategy. Instead, we get a mob that looks ready to storm Castle Frankenstein rather than defend against a modern invasion force. At best, he's sacrificing realism for a failed attempt at looking poetic. At worst, some unconscious racism is showing through, reducing an entire nation to helpless victims waiting for a white savior from Kansas.

2. The Kents: WTF?

Martha and Jonathan Kent are depicted as what you'd get if the Waltons and the worst Boomer stereotypes had twins who were born at age 80. Let's do the math: This Superman is 30 years old. How old were Martha and Jonathan when they found baby Kal-El? 50? This should be the first Gen X Martha and Jonathan to grace the silver screen. Instead, we get two people who apparently don't know how a speaker works on a smartphone.

I know farmers and ranchers who are, like me, in their 50s. They're using cutting-edge technology including GPS-guided tractors and drone farming equipment. They have college degrees. They're running complex agricultural businesses, not sitting on rocking chairs confused by basic technology. These aren't the Kents of 1938 - these should be the Kents of the 1990s who raised a millennial Superman.

Beyond the condescending hayseed portrayal that belongs in comics from 90 years ago, there's little substance to them. We get one vague piece of fatherly advice from Jonathan, delivered from a rocking chair while they watch Krypto puzzle over a cow. That's it. These are the people who shaped Earth's greatest hero? Gunn gives us nothing to work with here, falling back on lazy rural stereotypes instead of showing us the profound wisdom and strength it would take to raise a god to be human.

3. General Rick Flag Sr.'s Fashion Forward Pentagon

This might seem like a nitpick, but it speaks to a larger carelessness with details. General Flag sports a pompadour haircut and bespoke suit throughout the film. I get it - he's the director of A.R.G.U.S., so maybe he's playing a civilian role. But do you know how I know that? Google. There's nothing in this movie that indicates he's anything other than a four-star general working somewhere in the Pentagon.

Military regulations exist for a reason. A general doesn't get to have whatever haircut he wants or wear civilian clothes while conducting official military business. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of mistake that pulls you out of the movie. When filmmakers take these kinds of liberties with speculative fiction, it shows they either didn't do their research or didn't care. Remember Rian Johnson's tone-deaf costuming of Admiral Holdo in evening wear so she could be flirty with Poe and show of Laura Dern's physicality? Same energy, same problem.

The Verdict

These issues don't completely torpedo the movie; it still earned 6 stars from me. But they take away just enough to ensure my next viewing will be on streaming rather than in theaters. Gunn has crafted a Superman story with genuine heart and some bold creative choices, but his blind spots regarding class, race, and rural America shine through in ways that are impossible to ignore.

For a movie about an alien immigrant who was raised by farmers and fights for the oppressed, Superman (2025) shows a disappointing lack of respect for anyone outside of metropolitan America. That's a shame, because Superman has always been strongest when he represents all of us, not just those who summer in the Hamptons.