This post contains spoilers for James Gunn’s SUPERMAN (2025).
Some people aren’t getting it.
Lex Luthor didn’t edit the tape.
There’s an argument in the socials right now about what is quickly becoming the 2025 SUPERMAN’s most controversial twist (though I am given to understand that it originates from an 80’s comic run and it is not unique to the film at all), that Superman’s parents, Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara (Angela Sarafyan), intended for their son to lord over Earthlings, using his superior power to dominate them and choose the best to breed with them. He was to be, essentially, Hitler’s version of the Nietzschean Superman – the genetic ideal and the conqueror. In a stroke, this change from all the previous Superman films makes his Kryptonian parents truly alien, viewing Earth the same way those Martians saw it way back in War of the Worlds, its inhabitants inferior vermin.
But it also pushes Superman (David Corenswet) into an identity crisis. He is, of course, an orphan, and this positions him at a point of reckoning with his heritage. Is he simply the product and the ruthless mission of those who are his genetic father and mother, or are his true parents those who raised him, Ma and Pa Kent (Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vence), whom he loves tenderly? This introspection and struggle are relatable in a human way to anyone who was adopted or fostered.
Of course, Superman doesn’t even consider following the commands of Jor-El and Lara. He is too far beyond that. Instead, he at first insists (to the “Justice Gang”) that the tape must be edited, which is why, I assume, so many people online have now come to that very conclusion, despite the fact that the movie tells us multiple times thereafter that no, it was not edited. Well, say some comic book fans, maybe it was mistranslated. Maybe a future film will explain what really happened. I am sure Superman was thinking similar thoughts before, by the end of the film, he accepts the truth. His “real” mom and dad kinda sucked. Ma and Pa Kent are the only parents he needs; their advice, and their ideals, are what’s worth fighting for.
If you’re still seeking excuses while the credits are done scrolling, you missed the whole dang point of the film. I mean, what the hey? (Sorry, this wonderful movie is rubbing off on me.)
Through the course of the film, Superman wrestles with following his guiding spirit of being the good guy, the one who acts unselfishly, who always strives to do the right thing in the face of the sort of unrelenting, greedy evil that we see on the news every day. And that evil is embodied in Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who attempts to manipulate the news cycle’s narrative and social media feeds (the latter in a hilarious way that demonstrates the film’s dashes of satirical viciousness) out of an overall resentment for everything that Superman represents: to put it simply, the exceptional outsider.
And that’s the thing. Superman’s struggle with his lineage is also part of his immigrant story. When Fox News now infamously ran their “Superwoke” headline because James Gunn happened to mention that this hero was an immigrant, they seemed to either be unaware that Superman comes from another planet, or that this has been a key part of Superman’s themes since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the character in 1938. (Or they know and don’t care, because they’re just another of those screaming monkeys from the movie, drumming up phony outrage.) I’m not going to go into the history here, since it is so well-trod, but Wikipedia’s Superman page has a whole section labeled “An Allegory for Immigrants.” This is very, very old news. And although the film is not explicitly political, it does make the “punk rock” suggestion that we should all treat each other with kindness, even those who don’t come from within our nation’s borders. Meanwhile, I hop over to CNN.com and the headline is about “Alligator Alcatraz.” Suffice it to say, the film is only political if you object to the ideals, such as truth and justice, for which Superman has always stood.
Superman’s parents being not-so-great gives him something to shove away from. To prove himself against. And, let’s face it, the “standing in the Fortress of Solitude listening to his father solemnly intone” was always the dullest part of Superman movies anyway. In James Gunn’s SUPERMAN, while he plunges us right into the middle of a rebooted DC Universe and what seems to be issue #673 of an ongoing saga (I love that choice), the real story is about Superman coming to grips with how he’s decided to be a hero and realizing that, despite so many forces pushing against him, including the voice of his dead parents, he will believe in the person he’s become – the human that he’s become – and that is punk rock.
So NO. Lex Luthor didn’t edit the gosh darn tape.
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