I don’t think I’ve ever properly explored my issue with Superman as a concept when it comes to movies, nor do I think you’d expect me to have thoughts on the issue. After all, I don’t really think I’ve written often about superhero movies that weren’t godawful. That said, I think there’s an issue to confront here that a lot of you will take issue with. I dub it:
The Israel-Palestine Conflict
So let’s get this out of the way. I’m not anti-semetic. I’m not going to encounter a Jewish person and have an aversion to them. I didn’t even know about the stereotype of Jewish people being cheap or having big noses until Rick and Morty and The Godfather, respectively. I don’t think that Jews run the planet or our financial systems. Even if they did, they did a pretty decent job up until 2008 considering the fact that the financial system is just one big LARP that involves money and human capital instead of swords and sandals. I do not think Judaism is a worse religion than any other religion.
It goes without saying that I think nationalists suck, regardless of their religion or country. In the same way that certain middle eastern countries strip rights from women and functionally enslave other humans to build monuments of glass and concrete in the desert, other middle eastern countries have issues with the people who live on the other side of an imaginary line. And that’s not a good character trait, y’know?
I know I sound like Rick from Rick and Morty, and fuck you for making that comparison because I hate the show. I attribute that shit adult comedy for singlehandedly contributing to the rise of adult self-diagnoses of autism because people want to feel special, and I despise the idea that a biology-induced random mental difference between people can lead people to feeling better about themselves. Fuck you too.
I am aware that I still sound like the alcoholic from the show about a self-proclaimed autistic interdimensional scientist.
No, I do harbor any resentments or phobias against people with mental differences than the ‘normal’, because I don’t truly believe that there is a ‘normal’ human brain, and we all veer off in different directions, and once someone is out of the bell curve in a specific measure, they get a diagnosis.
AND NO, I do not think that the field of mental health, the professions of therapy, or the chemical field of psychiatry are invalid.
Someone can believe that mental states can be improved to more sustainable levels through the help of psychotropic drugs, behavioral intervention, and a medical diagnosis that allows professionals to hone in on treatment plans. Someone can believe that Judaism is allowed to exist, and that Jews shouldn’t be considered lizard people. Someone can believe that maybe we’re taking our TikTok- recommended mental health routines a little far, and that we should consider not exterminating neighboring nations.
All of that is to affirm that I’m aware that the creators of Superman were Jewish and created him as a way to create a symbol to fight back against Nazism. This is not an issue to me, and is not, at all, the point of my issue with Superman. I just think the guy is a problem when you try to put him in a movie. I also wanted to prove I can make jokes about Jews to myself, and to no one else, really.
ON TO TALKING ABOUT COMICS AND MOVIES!!
Planes, Trains, and Lazy Fucks
As I write this section, I haven’t seen the original 1978 Superman starring Christopher Reeve in a very long time. According to my watchlist, I saw that movie a long time ago, along with like 10 different pieces of Superman media. The 1978 Superman movie is number 137 on my list of movies watched, so it was probably something like 15 years ago. I also apparently forgot to log that I watched the new James Gunn Superman, which is a lesson to myself to not put stock in the fact that, as of writing this discussion, I’m approaching 1700 movies watched. Is that a lot? Is that not a lot? Does anyone count? Is it weird that I do? Is it weird that my count isn’t accurate? What are we talking about?
When I was in high school, probably a freshman or a sophomore, which takes us back approximately 14 to 15 years ago, I recall my JEWISH best friend asking me what I thought of the upcoming movie, Man of Steel. I also distinctly recall giving him a crappy monologue about, what I had dubbed for the first time, ‘The Superman Problem’.
See, back in 2013, it felt like movies with heavy CGI were far and few between. Not many movies at the time got away with a massive amount of computer generated effects, and people didn’t take kindly to shit CGI. One of the big reasons that Iron Man was so big was that the CGI in that movie was fucking crisp. Even today, the effects of that movie stand the test of time. Hell, Iron Man looks better than large parts of Captain America: Brave New World, which was released in 2025. It makes a difference when you’re convinced that the action you’re seeing is believable or or not.
See, ‘The Superman Problem’ is one that stems from the fact that modern movies, dating back at least 20 years, have the “benefit” of CGI. Note my use of quotes around the word benefit. See, back when the first Superman movies were released, computer effects weren’t as advanced. Heck, the first Tron movie was only released in 1982, four whole years after the first Superman movie. The CGI just wasn’t there yet to give us truly otherworldly visuals. That’s why movies like Star Wars: A New Hope, released in 1977, relied so heavily on practical effects. Miniatures, stop motion, matte paintings, etc. Hell, even the laser bolts were literally hand-drawn onto each individual frame because they didn’t have a way to demonstrate them without them looking shitty.
Before CGI became prevalent and easy, people had to actually put in effort to their craft. People like Sam Raimi and Steven Spielberg (both Jews) had to do actual stuff to make their movies come to life. And that worked. Heck, if you look at something more recent, like, say, Backrooms, you’ll find that the strength of that movie is in its practical elements, the built sets, the people doing acting. The weakest part of that movie, if you don’t subscribe to my issue with its second act, is the CGI-created pirate monster.
That brings me to people like Zach Snyder, who functionally started his career in 2006 with the movie 300, who didn’t have the obstacle of trying to bring their vision to life without the crutch of CGI.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that CGI is bad. I’m not saying that computers haven’t positively impacted how we’re able to bring to life certain ideas. Unironically, the best example of early 2000’s CGI comes from Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.
Most people point to the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but that example works less in my discussion because we get actual boats and prop guns and fun costumes and fantastic on-location sets and huge built sets. When they tried it again without the original practicals, my point is proven because holy fuck what was that shit?!
So no, CGI is not bad. The overreliance on CGI is the issue. So, you may ask, how does that play into ‘The Superman Problem’?
To demonstrate, let me compare two clips:
In the first, the actors feel like they’re moving like cinderblocks. They’re waiting for one person to finish speaking before the next one starts. They have movement in their locations, but it’s squarely directed. In the second, the only emotion you feel is chaos.
The surface difference to these two clips is the speed. The sheer velocity at which stories and characters are allowed to move at. It’s why something like The Green Knight or Skinamarink or even In a Violent Nature wasn’t as popular with audiences as something like The Conjuring: Last Rites or F1. We. Crave. Speed. This isn’t an indictment of the TikTok generation or anything stupid like peoples’ shrinking attention rates. This is a consequence of editing and the ease of digital videography. It’s also a consequence of changing and evolving filmmaking techniques to trend towards realism, but this sentence is pretty self explanatory. When you’re on page 15 of this article, you’ll thank me for this moment of brevity, bitch.
Admittedly, this is a truncated argument and there are many examples of movies from the 80’s that weren’t good, and that’s not symptomatic of filmmaking techniques or storytelling trends, it’s more a symptom of human laziness. The good stuff survived the test of time, so we still remember people like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Marilyn Monroe, Christopher Reeve, Akira Kurosawa, and Sanjeev Kumar. These artists did the art thing, and they did it in a way that stuck with us.
But there were and remain so many lazy, unimaginative, boring, or otherwise shitty movies and songs and performances that are lost to time. The laziness remains an integral part of humanity, and as such, now that it’s a little easier to film and edit things, those lazy bum fucks are a lot louder and annoying. Keep this in mind. Keep in mind that technology makes it easier to be lazy. I promise I’ll try to remember to come back to it.
Let’s shift gears for a comedic beat. Say you did the marshmallow test on me now, as a full-blown adult.
If I saw a marshmallow, I’d leap across the table and steal your wallet then ravage the bag of marshmallows like a cartoon stoner eating a burger. Not because I have any sort of love or affinity for the candy, but because I can. Because in my dream scenario, I want to be funny, and rather than doing something clever or interesting, I decided to go for spectacle.
Who could blame me, y’know? I had the privilege of an unlimited imagination with no budget constraints and a focus on spectacle. So, when I could, I went all out.
That’s exactly what shifted in George Lucas between the original and prequel trilogies. He got free reign to let his imagination soar, and his desire to create spectacle led to cartoon messes, which also somehow led to a poorer story overall. Given the infinite playground, Lucas somehow couldn’t find a limit, and as a result, there was no intentionality.
This issue expands to a lot of movies over the last few years that had so much computer-generated stuff in it that, even if they sometimes had solid source material, they got lost in the sauce. Examples include:
- Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them
- Jupiter Ascending
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
- The new Hellboy movies
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
- Kraven
- All of the Hobbit movies
- The GI Joe movies
- Rebel Moon
- All but the first of the new Godzilla movies
- Monster Hunter. Actually. Basically any Mila Jovovich movie
Contrast this to, say,
- Dune (1984) (no, seriously)
- Alien (1979)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- The Terminator (1984)
The point is, modern technology makes it easier for people to be lazy and then they get lazy about their CGI creation.
Explosions Extraordinaire
Let’s now compare Citizen Kane to Black Adam. Ok? Ok? Are you ok with this? Are you ok with me making a “coughing baby vs neutron bomb” comparison? Is that alright?
Just kidding. Let’s just talk about Black Adam, and… say… Dirty Harry. Think about these next few things in the context of you trying to actually make the movie. Like, think about what you’d have to do, given the character, to make a movie about them that’s satisfying.
What is Harry capable of? What can he do? Well he’s just a guy, right? He’s a dude who shoots and drives and glares. So the guns can go bang bang and cause blood explosions. Let’s add to our shopping list prop guns and simulated gunshot apparatus. His car does vroom vroom, so you’ll have to get a few cars, plus the bad guys’ cars that also do vroom vroom. You’d have to crash them to make it fun, so let’s get some demo guys to catapult the cars. What else? Building on fire? Let’s consider some pyrotechnicians and cheap buildings. Let’s say there’s a bazooka and a helicopter and a boat chase. That’s manageable, right? Props and rentals. Maybe you get a guy to do some digital touch ups. Perhaps some miniatures if you plan on crashing the helicopter. This is an achievable scale!
What’s Adam capable of? Punching and flying. Ok. So first and foremost, you gotta get the guy to fly somehow. There’s greenscreens and fans and wires to dangle the guy from, we can do that in a warehouse. What about the punching? The guy can level buildings. He can crumble mountains. He can punch helicopters and tank missiles. How do we do that? CGI? Fine. He’s also bulletproof. Might have to do some more CGI. Oh shit, did I mention he can shoot lightning from his hands? Hang on, he can move at superspeed? Fucking hell… a Texas Switch, maybe?
How do you factor in that his main bad guy is a lucifer stand-in with equivalent powers. And a zombie army.
Explosions, right? Lots of explosions. Lots of big explosions. Lots and lots and lots of bing bang and boom. A lot.
So say you don’t do that. Say you go for a movie where you’re gonna try to curb the explosions by giving your heroes their superpowers late.
That won’t work. That’s like saying you’re making a Dirty Harry where he doesn’t have his gun. Or a racing movie without cars. Or a heist movie without theft. You can’t make a movie about a schtick without actually having the schtick. You’re not only being boring and averse to your material, but you’re also doing a huge disservice to your audience. People went to the schtick movie for the schtick, not the schtick origin story. Give people their schtick. Really give it to them, y’know? Schtick ’em for 2 hours until they’re satisfied and go home and write about the schticking on a schticky movie review blog.
The reason I bring up Black Adam is not so I can dunk on Dwayne Johnson (I have since disavowed that intention). No. I bring it up because of:
See, Black Adam and Captain Marvel and Shazam all have something very similar about them: their power level. When your character’s schtick is all about how fucking powerful they are, then translating their story to the screen involves a mandate of demonstrating their power. We have to see them being powerful, otherwise there’s no difference between them and Dirty Harry, is there?
This particular point is one where I lose people, because even among my examples up there, there’s movies that kind of prove me wrong. Chief among them is the first Thor movie, where the guy spends about half the runtime without having powers, and the whole theme of the film is that Thor had to earn his power back. That’s a good arc and a clever way to keep things from getting too big! I’m going to even concede the glossy CGI of Asgard, because it’s the abode of the gods and maybe it was meant to look that way. There’s also The Marvels, where Captain Marvel is handicapped by not always having her powers. Though that movie goes to lengths to show how she can literally destroy stars, the powers switcheroo is more of a bit than a character thing.
My favorite example of this issue with ultra-powerful characters was the character of Sentry, in The Thunderbolts. I really love this film because Sentry’s initial fight as a villain versus the Thunderbolts involved him wiping the floor with a team that consisted of 3 supersoldiers, a lady who could teleport, and a human assassin. Nobody except for Sentry was particularly ‘powerful’ in the sense that their film adaptations could normally cause too much carnage. So when they had the climactic fight, the film took the brave route of ‘talk no jutsu’ where they talk Sentry back from the evil precipice.
That said, it’s hard for me to convince people that unless your super powerful character gets to be super powerful, you’re going to have to either be really clever, or risk your movie crashing and burning if you don’t show shit crashing and burning.
Man of Steel and Superman 1978
As I wrote this, and you better believe it took a very long time to write, I decided to go back and rewatch every Superman live-action film. I started with Gunn’s Superman, then back to Snyder’s Man of Steel, skipped back to the 1978 Superman, and then went in chronological order through Superman 2, 3, and 4: Quest for Peace. The penultimate film I’ll watch will be the 1984 Supergirl film, and then, ideally, the new Supergirl. I will not be acknowledging Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh.
I found something interesting by the time I got to the 1978 Superman film.
Quick! Was the very first Superman movie good? Did people like it? Is it a sweetheart movie that everyone’s always liked?
Quicker! Was Man of Steel good? Did people like it? Have people’s opinions changed about it?
Ok. I want you to try to guess which movie I’m describing:
The movie begins with a prolonged scene of a legendary actor playing Superman’s dad as he faces a Kryptonian council of sorts. Zod and his henchmen’s coupe fails and they’re imprisoned using the phantom zone. Clark spends his youth being asked by his dad to mask his powers so people don’t freak out. As a teen, he is shown the ship he arrived on Earth on. The first half of the movie is just Clark saving various people in various ways, including Lois Lane. He takes off as a young adult to learn about who he is. He gains his supersuit at around the halfway point of the film. There’s a small interlude of Superman being interviewed by Lois Lane. The villains’ evil machinations, which had been brewing in the background, come to light. Superman faces near defeat, and is then forced to break a core character tenet in order to save people. Lois Lane is present at the end of the movie.
So… was that description of Superman with Christopher Reeve? Or was that Man of Steel with Henry Cavill?
You dumb bitch that was both movies.
Both movies.
It’s both. I described both the really good one that everyone dotes on and also the ‘really bad one’ that everyone hates.
Fuck you, but Superman and Man of Steel were the same goddamn movie. At their core, based on story structure, major plot beats, and the inclusion of Superman’s youth, these are identical films. The only differences are the color grading, the villain, and the CGI.
And, in fact, if you know anything about the production of the first two Superman movies, then you’ll know that they were intended to be filmed together, and that Zod was introduced in the first film but only became a villain in Superman II was actually the plan.
Admittedly, the pacing of Man of Steel leaves something to be desired, and the chemistry between Clark and Lois is lacking, and everyone thinks the dad dying was fucking stupid. That’s all valid.
I’ll tell you something that you’re not gonna like. Man of Steel was actually a pretty decent film. Again, excusing the plodding middle where we transition from his origins to his fight with Zod, the theme of this film kind of works. That Superman has to kill Zod to keep him from killing civilians was a divisive scene for people, but it was his whole thing the whole fucking time. Superman saves people. He has to learn what that responsibility means, and if it means sacrificing his own values for others, then so be it. Kind of makes you think, huh? About the end of Snyder’s Batman v Superman, where Superman dies? Makes you think.
Compare that to the 1978 Superman, where the voice of his dad tells him twice that he is not to meddle with time, but the dope does it anyways just to save Lois. And then the fucking movie ends. There’s no consequences to this action. Superman breaks a major rule, and there are no repercussions. And fucking hell, don’t even get me started on that Lois Lane interview scene, where she puts on fucking lingerie and asks Superman what color underwear she’s wearing and then he reveals all of his weaknesses because clearly he’s horny too.
Gunn’s Superman wasn’t as good
I’m gonna say something else, ok? I’m gonna lose a lot of people here.
James Gunn’s Superman wasn’t that good.
In fact.
I think it’s on par with, if a little worse than, Man of Steel.
Ok look, I know that I’m at risk of being labelled a contrarian, given my opinion of The Batman, but I don’t care.
Let me explain. What was the theme of Gunn’s Superman? What did that character learn at the end of the day? Hell, explain to me what his monologue to Lex Luthor had to do with his other interactions with Luthor? How did Luthor and Superman’s goals in that film philosophically clash? I know I’m asking very complex questions straight from The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, so maybe I’m not being fair, but I don’t really care.
See, I had a hard time, initially, figuring out why Superman didn’t sit well with me. In fact, I didn’t even bother writing a review for it. I knew I had thoughts, but I didn’t give enough of a shit to form words of them. I do now!
Let’s take the four scenes of Clark and Lois interacting:
- Scene 1: They banter as Clark and Lois at the daily planet
- Scene 2: They have a lil new relationship kissy kissy, Lois interviews Clark as Superman, and he runs off like a fucking child because he couldn’t explain why he thought he could intervene in international affairs, and their relationship looks like it’s about to end
- Scene 3: Lois comforts Superman after his parents’ original message was revealed
- Scene 4: They reunite after the climax and there’s more kissy kissy
When, exactly, did these two reconcile? And for the record, that 3rd scene isn’t as substantial as you remember. Lois and Clark don’t really discuss their issues, they mainly discuss his parents’ message.
Let’s look at the whole not-Israel invading not-Palestine. Off screen, Superman intervenes, and they now look to him as their savior. In the climax, however, Superman fights his doppelganger, whereas other superheroes go in and fuck not-Israel’s shit up. I mean, they did not pull their punches with these human soldiers. Hey. Remember when Hawkgirl fucking murdered not-Netanyahu? Did you remember that Superman admitted to sticking not-Netanyahu to a fucking cactus? That is torture, my friends.
So. Can we piece together the beginning of this film with what happens at the end?
And so, I conclude that James Gunn’s Superman was… ok. It was fine. It was fun at times, and funny at others, and every casting choice was good to great, but as a whole, the movie was not structurally connected.
I went off on a tangent, but I really wanted to bring this up because of the Ultraman character, Superman’s clone. Gunn devises a big issue with a portal, and that was an interesting issue for them to solve, but that wasn’t necessarily an issue that Superman could solve. He’s brawn, not brain. Thus, Mr. Terrific. So to give Superman something to do, we get Ultraman. Yes, the clone twist was well hidden, and it was set up pretty well with that opening scene of Superman fighting the Hammer of Boravia, but that dude wasn’t there for a thematic reason. He was there for a powerscaling reason.
The same reason that Man of Steel needed Zod.
The same reason that Superman 2 needed Zod.
The same reason why Superman 3 needed a fight between good and evil superman.
The same reason why we only had patience for one Shazam movie.
Why we didn’t like The Marvels’ villain.
Why Iron Man fights another mech in the first and second movies.
Why Dirty Harry only fights guys with guns.
Why Bruce Lee doesn’t battle a magician or a dragon.
To foreshadow, I fear that it will only get harder to be clever about Superman as technology progresses.
Bringing Together CGI and the consequences of Big punches
Ok, so we’ve got a few ideas set up. Let’s recap, because a few sections got away from us. And by us I mean me. I don’t have an editor or any modicum of self restraint whatsoever.
Idea 1: I am not antisemetic
Idea 2: Modern technology makes it easier for people to be lazy and then they get lazy about their CGI creation.
Idea 3: Characters with intrinsically vast quantities of power can and must use that power. That power translates to action, which, in turn, is destruction.
Idea 4: Powerful characters will either punch and destroy, or you find a clever way to depower them so your story doesn’t get too crazy.
Idea 5: When your character is super powerful, their antagonist needs to be on par with their strength, or the fight isn’t just interesting
With that thought process set, the character that we should discuss is the Man of Steel himself.
Since his creation, Superman’s power set has grown and changed, and at this point, the cultural understanding and expectation of his abilities is the following mishmash hodge podge of random ideas:
- Frost breath
- Laser vision
- Super hearing
- Super intelligence
- Super speed
- Xray vision
- Super strength
- Super durability
At this point, we expect to see a guy who is an impenetrable, omnipotent behemoth. In the comics, the guy has defeated literal gods. If I’m not mistaken, he’s defeated people like Hercules (famously strong), Apollo, and a bunch of made-up goofballs like Orion and Darkseid and Doomsday. Isn’t it stupid that if you asked the question, “how strong is Superman” the answer is “there is no limit”? Do you understand just how hard it is to capture that on-screen without it looking like a fucking hallucination? That level of power is so bafflingly beyond our comprehension that there is no way to create tension in a film without depowering the guy or by giving him a villain of equal or greater power. This is why Gunn had to resort to Superman fighting Ultraman.
A common counterargument to taking issue with the theoretically undefeatable hero is that he’s vulnerable to kryptonite and magic and fuck you nerd. Heck, wouldn’t the twenty bajillion comics based on Superman invalidate the opinion that his powerset drains the character of any possible dramatic tension?
But that’s comics. Comics get fucky. There’s a comic where Batman invented a Tylenol that gives you Superman’s powers for a day. There’s another comic where Superman invents a Tylenol that gives you Superman’s powers for a day. This isn’t a comic book review blog. I don’t know jack shit about comics. I read them, but I am not an authority figure in the field. The Superman problem isn’t the fact that he exists in the comics, it’s the fact that he exists in movies.
I mean, fundamentally, how in the fuck do you capture on screen an individual with limitless power? You can try and find the biggest thing you can film and make him hold it. You could have him fly so fast that he turns back time. What about invulnerability? You could nuke him. You could nuke him twice. Fuck it, nuke him over and over again. Put all of the nukes in a giant minigun, and then blast him like you’re a vengeful 1920’s mobster in a bowling hat.
You will always, always have to resort to special effects to capture the sheer strength and abilities of a proper, modern Superman. In the past, when technology wasn’t so widespread, Superman 3 got away with Superman beating a supercomputer with acid, but even in that movie they needed him, at one point, to fight an evil version of himself.
All of these things lead to the fact that Superman, if you capture his true, zeitgeist-accepted power level, which you absolutely must capture, then you’re subjected to CGI, and in turn, the limitlessness of CGI, which is a slippery slope to lazy filmmaking and storytelling.
The problem with Superman is that the character lends itself less and less with each passing day to an acceptable, structurally sound story with visuals that are both appealing and believable. Even James Gunn, as great of a storyteller as he is, and despite his roots in Super starring Dwight Schrute, was unable to tackle the character any better than Zach Snyder.
Further, the Superman Problem isn’t just an issue that plagues the character of Superman, it also affects other characters of his power level, including the aforementioned Black Adam, Captain Marvel, Sentry, Thor, and more. In every instance of a character whose strength reaches a cosmic scale, us feeble humans become less and less capable of capturing that character’s abilities on screen, and the narrative suffers due to both the characters’ invulnerability and the apathy that CGI breeds.
Narrative Struggles, White Male Leads, and Supergirl
Now, there is an argument to be made as to why my belief in ‘The Superman Problem’ isn’t one that’s unassailable. I do believe that someone can overcome the issue, and when they do it, they’re gonna make a fantastic film.
Superman is an indestructible god with limitless strength and speed, but he is, at the end of the day, just a guy trying his best to do good. He isn’t defined by his power, but his belief in good. These aren’t my words, these are the words of everyone who’s favorite character is Superman. I get that. I think that that character can lead to satisfying, interesting stories.
Heck, we didn’t get comic series like All Star Superman and Kingdom Come and Red Son and arguably Injustice for no reason. We’re not enamored with shows and comics like Invincible and The Boys for no reason. In fact, there’s a reason why, in my watchlist, half the Superman content was animated, and why those films were so lauded. I mean, there is, right now, a Superman show on the air that people really, really like. Superman can be narratively tackled, and the visuals are easier to capture in some formats, especially those that are markedly not in the real world, a medium that is not beholden to the audience’s expectations of realism.
I will also mention, at the risk of ragebaiting the right wingers (a group who’s cinematic opinion I don’t really care about), that Superman being a white dude who’s never been anything but straight is not doing the character any favors. I’m not saying that being a straight white male is a problem. I’m just saying that people these days don’t really buy that life is harder for him than people with other descriptors.
I think that if we get characters of Superman’s level of power, and they’re some combination of minority characteristics, the possibility of character drama opens up considerably. There is simply more opportunity to craft a compelling story for this character who faces struggles that a white dude would not, and that it would give us, a modern audience, a little more to latch on to emotionally. It would give the writers a bit more depth and complexity to give a thematic or narrative hook to the film. It would mean that the action and explosions could rightfully take a backseat to character drama.
I’m not asking for a gay black Superman, because we’re about to receive a girl Superman. A girl version of Superman. A femaleman. Supergirl.
So what happens when we try that? Can minorities overcome ‘The Superman Problem’? Let’s see what happened when they tried.
Supergirls, Girls, and Sex
We all wonder what’s so difficult about writing a ‘strong, female’ character right? Like, why can’t we just… write a story about a guy, then swap in a girl? Like, say we got an asexual robot, and then we made it a future asexual robot, and that robot is sometimes an antagonist, sometimes a protagonist. What would happen?
Ok. So maybe that was 2003 and we can let it slide. I don’t think we have a more recent example, so let’s drop the subject and skip ahead to focus on our super girls.
You know this was coming. It was promised, it was teased, it was planned… ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems, let’s get into the 1984 Helen Slater Supergirl.
The 42 year old movie features a teenaged Kara Zor-El who arrives on Earth to retrieve a little sci-fi doohickey to save her city, but it falls into the hands of an evil witch. Kara enrolls in school, falls in love with a 40 year old construction worker, goes to hell, comes back, defeats the evil witch, and then returns to her city.
The film carries the same happy go lucky optimism of the early Superman movies and Slater carries the torch of the wide-eyed charm of Christopher Reeves. The film also features extremely dated and wonky special effects, some of which stand the test of time better than others. In fact, the practical effects in most scenes were truly inventive. Many set pieces were extremely gorgeous and detailed and inventive, but in some sets you could still see the little tag from the Halloween store where they bought their witchy decorations hanging off the props.
Of note at the time was the aimlessness of the first act, where the witches faff about with parties and minor magic tricks, and Kara joins a school for no reason. Modern viewers will take exception with the illogical romance between her and a man who is, initially, under the effect of a date rape spell. When he comes to, it doesn’t really change the fact that he’s a fully grown adult man, and Kara is a 16 year old who doesn’t know what trains and horses are yet, and still sits splay-legged to play with toys at times. Icky.
Liberal viewers will note that the villains are portrayed as women clinging to their youth, manipulating men for pleasure, being jealous of other women when they receive attention, and generally just being creepy cat ladies. They’re old enough that it seems like their cleavage was meant to make fun of them rather than sexually entice men, which is a level of sexism I couldn’t have fathomed until I saw it.
The ‘Superman Problem’ arises first when Kara faces down a bewitched, self-driving construction vehicle that has captured her middle aged love interest. The action set piece lasts an inordinate amount of time, and there’s quite a few logical fallacies in the sequence of events and Kara’s actions, all of which can be hand-waved away by the 80’s and their low standards. The second instance comes during the climax, which has to top the excitement of the previous action scenes. The filmmakers abandon their incredible practicals in favor of computer-generated effects, effects which do not age well.
To put this film and its inexcusable special effects into context, Supergirl released 7 years after the release of A New Hope, 4 years after Empire, and 1 year after Return of the Jedi.
In their pursuit of spectacle due to the sheer amount of strength and ability the protagonist possesses, Supergirl falters in its final stretch. A film which should have been known for its (visually) amazing opening sequence, their routinely impressive and charming practical effects, and a relatively (in the context of the other Superman movies) focused plot, even people who have seen the movie have wiped the film from their memories.
Another obstacle the film is faced with is women. Girls, amirite?
We return to our earlier question of ‘how to write a strong, independent woman’ and the writers decided that whoever asked that is clearly suffering from hysteria, prescribed them with a mind-numbing dosage of some ill-researched drug, and went back to their manly pursuits of whiskey, cigars, and protecting women’s uteri from trains.
Ok but this was 1984, right? Hand wave it away? I mean, this was the era that gave us that Lois Lane ‘what color is my underwear’ scene. It also gave us Leia, but whatever, y’know? What happens if you consider a modern mentality?
As I write these words, I am two hours removed from having watched the 2026 Supergirl film, and… I wish… I wish I’d been proven wrong about ‘The Superman Problem’. Heck, I wish the way that the movie let me down could be covered by what’s already been discussed.
If I had to sum up my issues with this film in one term, it would be… “sex slaves”.
Look. The film almost dodges sexualizing Supergirl (and I mean they got so, so close. They resisted right up until the last five minutes of the movie). The movie passes the Bechdel test. Supergirl has no romantic motivations. Her character is complex and atypical and messy and driven and compassionate. Milly Alcock is fantastic. The 2026 movie seems to have learned some lessons from its 1984 counterpart and the villain isn’t an aging woman jealous of a teenager.
Unfortunately, the film also succeeds at commodifying a terrifying and horrible female experience: sexual slavery.
See, among the many ways the antagonist is villainized, they decided that his sins would also include kidnapping girls and using them as vessels for breeding to keep their community ‘all male’. The film even goes so far as to include a scene of young women being served drugged fluids by people they trusted so that slavers could easier capture them, and a particularly cringeworthy ‘comedic’ scene of Kara bartering with evil aliens over her 13-year old companion.
One issue (of many. So many. So so many) that I have with modern Bollywood popcorn flicks is that they continue to use things like rape and violence against women as lazy devices to demonize their antagonists. Sexual assault is a shortcut at the expense of normalizing a truly heinous act that happens to women all the fucking time. Unfortunately, Supergirl goes a level deeper and decides that human trafficking of children is an acceptable concept to use as shock factor and an easy ‘look, girls defend girls!’ moment.
If the issue here isn’t apparent to you, let me spell it out: minimizing a trauma that 1 in 5 women experience to bypass characterizing your antagonist is not a smart or clever move, and does nothing for social issues or for developing credibility in your film or your writer. Utilizing sexual assault and kidnapping of children for sexual purposes is an exploitative move that homogenizes what should be an outlandishly evil act. Like, be fucking real dude, we’re talking about superhero movies. This shit is cartoons come to life. If you’re gonna pick up a complex subject, treat it with some goddamn respect.
With my woke mind virus tirade out of the way, if we decide we have the patience to return to something as silly as ‘The Superman Problem’, I’d like to point you towards the multiple, multiple times the film had to churn up a reason why Kara was not as powered as she should be during the movie’s entire runtime. Let’s list them, because you can fucking list them.
- Red sun
- Green sun
- Kryptonite soil
- Kryptonite darts
- Being away from a yellow sun for too long
- Poison
I mean fucking hell, man, this movie faced the issue of having an enormous amount of power by headbutting it. I think we have a total of 6 minutes of Kara being at full power, 1 of which happens off-screen, 2 of which are immediately interrupted by a space thug benefiting from the following points: a) knowing she’s a Kryptonian b) knowing Kryptonians are vulnerable to Kryptonite c) having access to Kryptonite and d) developing said Kryptonite into fucking wrist darts.
‘The Superman problem’ manifested itself in a way that forced the writers to invent half a dozen reasons why Kara was not wiping the floor with bad guys. Hell, they even decided they needed to make the antagonist have ‘the strength of a 1000’ men, and even that was not deemed by the filmmakers to be enough of an issue for a Superman-adjacent character. Then they had the gall to shoehorn in Lobo, a character that left my 65-year old dad wondering who he was.
See, Supergirl had the foresight to realize that a reckless, half-drunken Supergirl would lead to big action pieces, and it forced them into setting this film in space. And ignoring Gunn’s obnoxious fingerprints all over this movie, that just feeds into one of my earlier points about ‘The Superman Problem’: endless CGI. Endless, endless CGI. You guys remember this shot from the recent Punisher special?
It’s all over Supergirl. There’s some good CGI, but there’s enough bad CGI that it stands out.
And as a musichead, I gotta just throw in this quick aside: The James Gunn nostalgia music bit is growing old. It’s just growing old. From using ‘The Chain’ twice in Guardians 2 to now every movie wanting to shove classic hits into their movies, Supergirl just cannot help but interrupt its orchestral soundtrack by Claudia Sarne with truly mediocre tracks was fucking nauseating. Fucking lazy soundwork, and insulting to Sarne for a track that fucking sparkled when it got a chance to play through.
In all, in a new form, ‘The Superman Problem’ persists. What should have been a story of Kara helping a young girl understand that revenge is not a path to redemption turns into an explosion-riddled snipe hunt without any true characterization for the titular character. Despite the massive potential for Kara set up in pieces throughout the film, there was no thematic tie beyond ‘girlboss saves girls from sex slavery’.
Once again, despite a minority twist, ‘The Superman Problem’ has proven to be insurmountable.
It feels a little disingenuous to rag on the writer here, but Ana Nogueira, shawty what is you doing. Seriously, what the hell is she doing here? She’s another Wikipedia rabbit hole that’s worth a browse. Her interview on Backstage reads as if someone interviewed me about Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces and I’m the kind of guy who ChatGPT thinks I have some sort of literary or cinematic credibility.
Conclusion
Let’s recap some things I covered in this absolute behemoth of a study:
Idea 1: [REDACTED]
Idea 2: Modern technology makes it easier for people to be lazy and then they get lazy about their CGI creation.
Idea 3: Characters with intrinsically vast quantities of power can and must use that power. That power translates to action, which, in turn, is destruction.
Idea 4: Powerful characters will either punch and destroy, or you find a clever way to depower them so your story doesn’t get too crazy.
Idea 5: When your character is super powerful, their antagonist needs to be on par with their strength, or the fight isn’t just interesting
Let’s then add to it the fact that not a single Superman-branded movie, nor stories of characters with Superman-level power, were immune to any of these ideas. And even though having a CGI-heavy film isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, even though a movie without heavy destruction isn’t necessary to underline the character’s power, even if you find ways to convincingly depower your super-powered protagonist, even if you find a way to introduce an antagonist that challenges our super-abled protagonist in a way that isn’t just physical: We have never been able to combine equal amounts of each of these ideas into a successful film.
Never.
The closest we got was Man of Steel, and I say that with my whole chest. Ignoring sexism, one could argue that the 1984 Supergirl got close. You’re a narratively-deaf comic purist if you think the 1978 Superman film did it. Honestly, in a way, of all movies, Black Adam also made a decent run at things. You’re a fanboy fool cosplaying a cinefile if you think Gunn’s Superman got there.
Never has a singular, live action film managed to challenge and overcome, what I have deemed, ‘The Superman Problem’. You can argue with me over it, and I openly accept your challenges. But I warn you, I do not give a fucking shit about Superman, despite 18 pages of prose as evidence to the contrary.
One day, I hope someone is going to figure out a story for this boy scout. I hope one day they figure out a compelling, coherent story about Superman, and pit his limitless brawn against an antagonist who challenges Superman on a moral, philosophical level that presents an obstacle to the character rather than the strength. One day, I fucking hope to get a movie that realizes that a character of limitless strength does not need to succumb to a film bursting at the seems with explosions, apocalyptic stakes, and the computer effects to bring to ‘life’ said cacophony od destruction. One day, I sincerely hope that someone overcomes ‘The Superman Problem’. Because the day they do, I think they’re going to make one of the best movies of all time.
As is tradition when discussing many movies in a series, I rank the Superman and Superman-adjacent movies as follows:
| Film | Rating |
| Superman (1978) | YMMV |
| Superman II (1980) | YMMV |
| Superman III (1983) | BAD |
| Supergirl (1984) | YMMV |
| Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) | YMMV |
| Man of Steel | YMMV |
| Superman (2025) | YMMV |
| Supergirl (2026) | BAD |
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