I don't usually review movies that are playing in theaters, but we just saw Superman (2025). I went in with an internet full of complaints about "wokeness," so I expected a lot of LGBTQ representation. Here's what I got:
The Wokeness: There are some nonwhite people around. Big deal.
The Plot: The tyrannical leader of Boravia (mostly Russia, a little Israel) wants to invade neighboring Jarhanpur (mostly Palestine, a little Ukraine), and promises to make Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, left) king of half the country if he helps. So he sells them $80 billion in arms for cheap.
But Lex's main goal is to discredit and hopefully kill Superman (David Corenswet), because he doesn't like aliens, because he's envious of Supe's popularity, because...well, even he isn't sure. He's a movie villain, it's his job.
Lex has a vast number of high-tech resources to help with the discrediting/murder:
1. The Engineer, who can fill your lungs with nanobots so you suffocate.
2. A prison in an unstable pocket universe, where he keeps political prisoners and people who criticized him on social media.
3. An interdimensional rift that can take down whole cities.
4. A lot of Superman clones.
5. Super-genius employees played by Terence Rosemore and Stephen Blackehart.
6. A monstrous kanju that grows to Godzilla-size and breathes fire.
Left: Blackehart's d*ck
7. The message that Jor-El and Lara sent along from Krypton. Supe always thought that they asked him to help the people of Earth, but they actually told him to rule Earth, and massacre anyone who resisted. This is real, not fake, and when it gets into the media, people reject poor Supe. Why do they care about the career his parents planned for him? My parents wanted me to work in the factory.
Supe has a number of allies this time around:
1. Food cart guy Malik Ali (Dinesh Thyagarajan), who jumps into a crater to help the injured superhero. Lex kidnaps him.
2. Krypto the Superdog. Lex kidnaps him, too. Spoiler alert: The dog doesn't die.
More after the break
3.-5. The bickering Justice Gang: Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi, left), Hawk Girl, and The Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion). In some of the comics and the tv series, Green Lantern is gay, but there's no indication here.
6. The superhero Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), who can transmute into any element. Lex imprisons him to turn into kryptonite and torture Supe.
7.-8. Supe's adopted parents, Jonathan (Pruit Taylor Vince) and Martha Kent of Smallville, Kansas. Except they have the most over-the-top stereotyped Southern accents you've heard since The Beverly Hillbillies. I expected to see Granny in the kitchen, fixin' some possum stew for vittles. And Kansas isn't even in the South.
9. Number Four (Alan Tudyk), an android who continually states that he is not sentient and does not experience emotion, but thinks of himself as Supe's friend, and wants to be named Gary.
Beefcake: None. the 1978 Supe showed his chest, but Corenswet keeps chastely covered up.
Heterosexism: Lois knows Supe's secret identity from the start, and is dating Clark Kent, but keeping it quiet at work. They kiss about a hundred times at the beginning of the movie -- it's literally half a sentence, kiss, finish the sentence, kiss. Then another long....long kiss as they're spinning in mid-air at the end. And on a big screen! I had to look away.
LGBT Persons: No such thing. But a lot of queerbaiting.
Queerbaiting #1: Remember Metamorpho, trapped in the pocket-universe prison? His infant son is being held hostage. There's a lengthy escape sequence, including a dip in an anti-proton river and a nick-of-time jump through an interdimensional portal, with no wife mentioned. One assumes that a being made of crystals practices asexual reproduction. Nope; when they are all rescued, there's a brief scene with Metamorpho and his wife .
Queerbaiting #2: This one is more egregious. I was expecting a Supe-Jimmy Olson romance, or at least a gay-subtext friendship, but the two have one very brief scene together, consisting of Jimmy swatting Clark Kent with a newspaper.
Instead, Jimmy is identified as gay through constantly being revolted by women's come-ons. At the Daily Planet office, he emphatically rejects two women who are flirting with him. A photo on his desk shows him looking very uncomfortable as two women hug him. Then he goes downtown and rejects the approaches of at least three women before meeting with Lex Luthor's girlfriend Eve.
She implies that they used to date, but it is obvious that she was misinterpreting a friendship: Jimmy is repelled by her. He finally agrees to a date -- a short date -- if she provides information on Lex's activities. She does, and after the crisis is resolved she grabs him and says "Now we can be together forever!" He looks disgusted, but then suddenly he smiles,warming up to the idea. Dude has been obviously gay through the whole movie, but in his last scene, he isn't.
This was over-the-top queerbaiting, a deliberate slap in the face of gay viewers.
My Grade: The queerbaiting ruined the movie for me, and turned me off to Skyler Gisondo in general -- why didn't he omit the last second smile, and stay gay? The only thing of interest for gay viewers is David Corenswet's bulge.
See also: Solar Opposites Episode 4.9: Skyler Gisondo queerbaits as a muscular bat-alien with a human buddy.
Skyler's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 4: A baseball bat, a hickey, a little dog, and more queerbaiting
"Warm Bodies": A zombified Nicholas Hoult meets a girl.
Jimmy Olsen, Superman's First Boyfriend
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