Director James Gunn addresses ‘Superwoke’ backlash for ‘Superman’

“Superman” director James Gunn remarked on Friday that he’d want to see what’s considered “woke” in his movie after facing backlash for some of his comments on the film.

“I’ve heard people say it was woke, and then I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not,” Gunn told Entertainment Weekly. “I am curious as to what in the movie is considered woke.” 

Gunn recalled the original interview for the “London newspaper,” The Sunday Times, when he said that “Superman is the story of America,” describing it as “an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.”

Gunn said that the reporter was the one who first remarked that Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of immigrants and that the character was written as an immigrant story.

“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,” Gunn said.

He added, “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.”

The character, first introduced in 1938, was born from the imagination of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in Cleveland, Ohio.

In the comics, Superman is the sole survivor of the planet Krypton, sent to Earth by his parents as their world faced destruction.

Gunn faced backlash for his original comments, which were made just days before his “Superman” movie was released on July 11 and at the height of national discussion on the ongoing immigration raids throughout the country. 

In the same interview with The Sunday Times, he emphasized that his movie was about politics but that it was mostly about kindness and morality.

“And obviously, there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them,” Gunn remarked.