Can James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ unite America? I believe it can.

Doing the right thing, rising above cynicism and despair, and seeing the good in others isn’t always easy—but it’s always imperative.

The teaser trailer for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman film depicts the titular hero in a form we’re not used to seeing: bloodied, frightened, and in the fetal position, struggling to breathe.

It’s a dramatic choice, but Gunn says there’s much more meaning behind it. “We do have a battered Superman in the beginning,” he said during a December press event. “That is our country.”

It’s hard to argue with the comparison. We’re living in a time of unprecedented polarization—so much so that Merriam-Webster named it 2024’s Word of the Year. Whether it’s race, gender, DEI, Trump, or any of the other contentious culture war issues pervading our news cycles and social media feeds, one thing that is difficult to deny is that Americans seem more jaded, cynical, and at odds than ever.

But Gunn seems to think there’s more hope than we might suspect.

“I believe that most people in this country, despite their ideological beliefs, their politics, are doing their best to get by and be good people—despite what it may seem like to the other side,” the director said. “This movie is about that. It’s about the basic kindness of human beings, and that it can be seen as uncool and under siege [when] some of the darker voices are some of the louder voices.”

Some may call this sentiment hokey and naive, and perhaps it is. But it is also something else: Desperately needed.

As Superman hits theaters on July 11, 2025, there will be a number of things vying for our attention and coloring our perceptions about our fellow Americans: Trump’s second presidential term; the ongoing chaos and culture warring around our most important institutions; the yawning chasm of understanding between political and ideological factions; vast swaths of people siloing themselves into social media platforms, social circles, and media environments that confirm their biases and excise dissenters; and any number of new horrors and wastes of time that we couldn’t possibly predict.

In a cultural miasma like that, can a film that is fundamentally about goodness, humanity, and rising above our daily squabbles to recognize our commonality really hope to make an impact? Can a character who is by many accounts quaint, corny, and out of step with the times really resonate with a culture so practiced at side-eyeing that sort of thing?

I believe it can, and it’s not because I’m some pie-in-the-sky idealist. It’s because it has happened before.

The Superman character debuted in 1938’s Action Comics #1, at the tail end of the Great Depression and on the eve of World War II. Of course, the character was treated by the general public as little more than children’s entertainment, but Superman always meant more than that—especially to his creators.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish kids from Cleveland, poured all their hopes, dreams, pain, and aspirations into their Man of Steel. Siegel’s father was killed during a botched robbery when Jerry was still in high school, and the young man’s longing for justice informed both the method and the ethics behind Superman’s heroics. Meanwhile, Shuster was small and shy, and as a result channeled into his Superman artwork his own desire to be bigger, stronger, and more confident than he was in reality.

For these two teens, their creation was at once a power fantasy, thrilling sci-fi escapism, and a way to combat the desperation felt by many working class Americans during that decade. As American Jews, it was also a method for grappling with the creeping dread over the terror brewing in Europe.

And it resonated. Superman reached a level of popularity beyond anything his creators could have imagined. His strength, his goodness, and his status as a light of hope in a seemingly all-encompassing darkness became meaningful to generations of comic book readers. As the character was adapted to other media, he became a symbol of justice and triumph over evil—the embodiment of tolerance, honesty, and humility—during the war years and beyond. Believe it or not, he even played a part in dismantling the Ku Klux Klan.

Superman made his first feature film debut four decades later, amid a similar period of darkness and cynicism. The 1970s saw crippling inflation and political turmoil, the oil crisis, the Watergate scandal, and the war in Vietnam, among other moments of cultural and societal upheaval. Some of the biggest movies of the time—Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather—reflected and reacted to the grim, gritty realism that had captured the zeitgeist. Many of the era’s most popular cinematic protagonists were anti-heroes at best and villains at worst, and their stories took place in a world that seemed barely worth saving.

But 1978’s Superman: The Movie took a different tack. Christopher Reeve’s now-iconic portrayal of the character was unabashedly earnest, standing tall and unironically declaring his intention to fight for “Truth, justice, and the American way”—principles that unite and inspire hope despite the depressing climate in which the film was released.

And it resonated. Superman: The Movie went on to gross $300,478,449 worldwide (a little over $1.4 billion in today’s dollars), made Reeve a superstar, and remains the gold standard for cinematic superhero storytelling nearly half a century later.

Reeve himself would go on to become a hero in his own right, propelled in no small part by the power and influence of the role that made him famous. After a 1995 riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, Reeve used not just his public image as Superman but also the resonance of the character’s ideals and philosophy to inspire action, activism, and scientific research for the benefit of the disabled. The recent documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is yet another beautiful accounting of how the Superman character and ethos has become a powerful force for good in the real world.

No matter how dark things have seemed in our history, there has always been a longing for beacons of hope—for signs that things aren’t so bad that they can’t be improved. As we have so many times before, we need reminders of our common humanity today. We need ways to recognize that what unites us far outweighs what divides us, no matter how potent or urgent our differences might be.

“For me, it’s about bringing the innate goodness of Superman, bringing it home,” Gunn said of his upcoming film. “Bringing this character home, bringing our battered world to a brighter place of healing.”

That’s exactly the kind of story society needs to hear. Doing the right thing, rising above cynicism and despair, and seeing the good in others isn’t always easy, but it’s always imperative. And when our popular culture can point to avatars of those principles, to ideals we can strive towards, the way becomes much clearer and easier to achieve. If those examples just so happen to arrive in spectacular Hollywood blockbusters, even better.

As a lifelong fan, I have always maintained that Superman’s greatest ability isn’t that he’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Rather, his true power as a story and a symbol lies in his capacity to inspire, to kindle in us the drive to be better versions of ourselves, to be a mirror for the goodness, grace, and generosity we can all summon if we try.

The most beautiful aspect of the Superman story is that, despite being an alien with godlike powers, he has a human heart and spirit. He’s an immigrant, a farm boy, an outsider, an orphan, an alien, a seeker of justice, a symbol for hope, and a reflection of who we are when we’re at our best. He is a being with the powers of a god, who can take over the world in a day if he wanted to. But all he ever wants to do is help. To use his unique abilities to make things better. To be a good neighbor, friend, family member, and fellow citizen.

I share Gunn’s intuition that the vast majority of us, deep down, are the same way. Superman’s not real. Never has been. Never will be. What that means is that all the positive qualities with which we imbue him are those we already value and possess, and which we choose to have him represent.

In the more cynical and hopeless phases of my life, I have indulged the erroneous notion that I was the only one who could see the principles and ideals fueling these fictional stories about a man in tights. I was wrong about that. By now, I’ve seen the power and resonance of good stories too often to ever doubt it again. In fact, I am more certain than ever that plenty of people already resonate with the values that serve as the foundation for the Superman story, and that plenty more will in due time.

This summer, I will happily join a few hundred of my fellow Americans in my local movie theater to watch a film that can—and hopefully will—remind us of goodness, of humanity, and the most important truth of all: We’re all in this together, and there’s no challenge we can’t rise to if we keep that in mind.