Superman has a problem — and it's not the film's commentary on immigration

Superman is in trouble.

I mean, that is if we are to take the introductory title cards to the new Superman instalment seriously. Because to trust them, he's facing a raft of problems.

First of all, it's been three decades since an alien baby named Kal-El fell to planet Earth, three years since Superman (David Corenswet) revealed himself to the world, and a whole bunch of other descending three metrics that are hard to keep in your head.

In short, what you need to know is a bad guy named the Hammer of Boravia — representing, it would seem, a fictional, warmongering and vaguely Eastern-European sounding country — just attacked dear old Metropolis. But worst of all, he just handed Supes his first ever L, knocking him all the way to his Arctic fortress of solitude with a bad case of broken ribs.

That all stacks up to a bad morning for our hero. But there are other things putting our caped crusader in jeopardy, and they don't all take place on the screen.

As numerous reboots over the past couple decades prove, getting this guy right is a contentious question. And because of that, any framing of one of the most well-known and divisive characters in the modern pop culture pantheon is bound to elicit wildly different opinions on what really makes Superman super.

For example, there's a spotty (at best) trajectory in recent years for perhaps the most popular superhero character of all time, which alternates between small-screen Smallville series, cursed and cancelled Nicolas Cage franchises, Brightburn reimaginings of Superman as a villain — and even unfortunately gritty Man of Steels that turned the sunny superhuman into a sociopath with nukes in his eyes.

Poll an audience, and any one of these might be labelled character assassination or much needed character rejuvenation. (OK, maybe not the Nicolas Cage one.)

But it's clear that director James Gunn had these contrasting arguments in his mind when deciding what version of Superman to bring to screen: either the tortured, eminently human and fallible man of DC's recent efforts, or the Jesus-like, campy saviour portrayed by Christopher Reeve in the 1978 classic.

His solution is simple: do both. Make Superman both the huggable, uncomplicated paragon of truth, justice and the American way. But also: complicate the relationship between him and his adopted home with a political hot potato — one that is now predictably making the rounds in outrage media.

If we're just judging by the cape, Gunn obviously trends toward the former characterization: his Superman is rife with cartoonish (though admittedly wildly expensive looking) costumes that wouldn't look out of place at X Æ A-XII Musk's birthday party.

Beyond the now reintroduced — and highly controversial — red trunks on Superman himself, there is the hilariously ugly bowl cut on Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern, the comic-y screeches of Isabela Merced's Hawkgirl, and the somehow-still-cool-looking black "T" emblazoned on Mr. Terrific's (Edi Gathegi) scowling face.

But look elsewhere, and Gunn is playing a different game — one that's putting the franchise itself in hot water, if we are to believe Fox News. In an interview with the Times of London, Gunn called Superman a definitively political story, one meant to showcase "the story of America": in his understanding, it is the story of an immigrant (Superman) accepted by a country that both saves, and is saved by, him.

That those fighting words have proven as provocative as they have is somewhat confusing when looking at the character: he was created by Jewish children of immigrants, initially depicted as a champion against antisemitism in wartime America, and — long before Gunn — constantly and consistently interpreted as an immigrant and refugee by everyone from fans to news outlets to the Library of Congress to DC Comics itself.

In the prequel series Smallville, a sort of very-special-episode has Kent angrily tell his adoptive mom that he was an illegal immigrant she'd been harbouring for 17 years. Less than 10 years ago, the comics company used him as a promotional image for World Refugee Day. In a tweet, they implored readers to "#StandWithRefugees" on the same day in 2018 that U.S. President Donald Trump caved to enormous political pressure and signed an executive order ending family separation at the border.

And then there's the official DC Nation bio of Superman's most recent comics iteration. Their description is similarly deadpan, and seemingly untroubled by Kent's citizen-status at birth.

"This is the story of Kal-El," it reads, "an immigrant, coming of age in the world of today."

But for all the furor outside of the theatre, you'd be hard-pressed to find reasons to be offended in an actual screening. At least, that is, for the reasons already expressed: while this Superman does rest its plot largely on a scheme by Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to discredit the hero as an undocumented alien, it's muddied by all the other masters Gunn tries to serve.

More prominent is Superman grappling with his humanity, or lack thereof: can he really be one of us, when his near unlimited cosmic power positions him as something more like a god? There's also the perennial question confronted by several newer superhero movies: what right do ungoverned individuals have to act as vigilantes, or even world police?

Gunn tackles the latter question via a drawn out and complicated war between Boravia and the vaguely Middle Eastern, African or South Asian residents of Jarhanpur.

The onerously saccharine image of brown faces holding pitchforks and ratty flags bearing superman's logo also threatens to sink the entire movie into the realm of self-parody; as superheroes swoop in to the valiantly save the day, Superman starts to read more like the vainglorious movie-within-the-show of superhero satire The Boys: an-in universe film expressly intended to mock how insipid and offensively shallow superhero franchises tend to be.

And that's even before getting to the various subplots and throwaway gags meant to satisfy every possible whim of every possible demographic. There's the uber-modern pocket universe disaster that reeks of the MCU, and an honestly disgustingly stale joke based around how manchild Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) is both bored and disgusted by a beautiful woman he calls "mutant toes."

His womanizing — like Superman's mildly silly red trunks or his mildly infuriating super-powered dog Krypto — is more-or-less comics accurate. And they all largely function as olive branches to fans disenchanted with the realism-addicted route Superman has taken in a post Dark Knight world.

But seeing them play out in modern-day live-action shows how woefully misguided it is to view that as the all-encompassing guidepost for success. Things that work in comics do not always land in other mediums. Slavishly throwing them in might satisfy an internet argument, but often leads to tone-deaf results.

Far more than any immigrant subplot, this is where Superman suffers: a frenetic and busy story that tries to preemptively answer so many fan complaints that it satisfies none. And despite generally entertaining action and impressive acting performances all around, it leads to a tone less for 14- or 40-year-olds, and instead one that splits the difference. It's a perfect shooting strategy — if you want to hit nothing.