James Gunn isn’t letting the “SuperWoke” right wing criticisms bring his “Superman” down. The writer/director, who is also the co-head of DC Studios, told Rolling Stone that the superhero film has reached success at the international box office despite rising “anti-American sentiment[s]” worldwide.
The film has reached $235 million domestically since its release; internationally, it’s only at $171 million, but Gunn is glad it has had a strong multiple. “We’re definitely performing better domestically than we are internationally, but internationally is also rising and having really good weekday numbers in the same way we are,” Gunn said. “So obviously the word of mouth is very positive both here and everywhere else, which is the thing that we needed to do the most. At the same time, there are certain countries in which it’s really performing well, Brazil and the U.K.”
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He added, “Superman is not a known commodity in some places. He is not a big known superhero in some places like Batman is. That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment around the world right now. It isn’t really helping us. So I think it’s just a matter of letting something grow. But again, for us, everything’s been a total win. Having the movie come out and be something that has been embraced by people everywhere — this is just the seed of the tree that Peter [Safran] and I have been watering for the past three years. So to be able to have it start off so positively has been incredibly overwhelming.”
Domestically, “Superman” has been deemed “SuperWoke,” especially after Gunn told the Times of London that Superman is an “immigrant” and the feature is about “the story of America.” Now, Gunn is detailing the nuances of the statement.
Gunn told Entertainment Weekly that “Superman” is really about humanity, which transcends politics. “I’ve heard people say it was woke, and then I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not. I am curious as to what in the movie is considered woke,” Gunn told EW. “I think people took something I said…The guy for the London newspaper. Originally, he said that [Superman comic creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants, and they wrote Superman as an immigrant story. And I said, yeah, it’s a story about an immigrant, but mostly it’s a story to me about kindness, which it is. That’s the center of the movie for me.”
He continued, “That’s the thing we can all act upon, is kindness. And so what does that lead to? Well, does that lead to the way you vote? Sure. Does that lead to everything? Yeah. Does it lead to how many people are dying from road rage? Yes. All those things are affected if people just start to value kindness. I mean, people did value kindness in the past. That was an American value, was kindness, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to be that way to me anymore. So that was always the center of the movie for me, and it wasn’t about anything other than that.”
