Why I Won't Be Watching Superman
A DC Fan's Manifesto
I don’t remember a time before I read comic books. My father was an avid collector for the first half of his life, in addition to writing, drawing, and selling his own comics. On rainy days, starting practically as soon as I could read, he would bring three or four green plastic bins up from the basement and crack them open on the living room floor. Most were The Flash or Iron Man issues (these were Dad’s favorite superheroes), but there were also plenty of X-Men, Green Lantern, and, best of all, Justice League.
The Justice League quickly became my favorite characters. Dad’s issues featured a sizable roster, from the bread-and-butter Batman and Green Arrow to more niche heroes like Firestorm. Some of this rotating cast I enjoyed more than others, but the core concept always enraptured me: a veritable Round Table of the most powerful people in the world, watching over us from a satellite in the stars. It spoke to me in just the same way as did Hercules, King Arthur, or Pecos Bill. It was mythic.
Although, being Gen Z, I bore witness in my childhood to the unprecedented mainstreaming of comic book heroes thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was unfortunately lost on me. From 2008 to 2012, the years when Nick Fury went from obscure pulp character to household name, I gained no satisfaction. My heroes were DC, and while the Dark Knight trilogy was integral to my formative years, Batman seemed to represent the extent of Warner Brothers’ cinematic aspirations. While every other kid I knew got to watch Marvel rule the box office and reshape entertainment as we knew it, I was still waiting for my turn. I was waiting for the Justice League.
The first glimmer of hope for such an improbable thing as a Justice League movie came in the form of a character who had featured in disproportionately few of my favorite comics: Superman. Despite his being one of the oldest and most popular superheroes ever created, something never quite clicked between the Last Son of Krypton and me. He was too perfect. He always got the right answer. He was the embodiment of every good quality a person could have. He was charismatic, optimistic, and, of course, bulletproof. I was none of those things. I was a bookish, friendless homeschool kid. Even amongst demigods, vigilantes, and magicians, the idea of a guy who was completely perfect and yet still pretended on purpose to be an awkward dork seemed, frankly, ridiculous.
That all changed one day. The date was June 14, 2013. My parents were not movie buffs by any stretch, yet they were sensible enough of the cinema’s merits to attend on sufficiently frequent occasions for their middle child, yours truly, to become one, and this day was perhaps the most important of them all. This was the day that, unbeknownst to my eleven-year-old self, would change the trajectory of my life forever.
This was the day I saw Man of Steel.
This movie didn’t feature the Superman of my dad’s old comics. This was a Superman who didn’t really think of himself as a “superman” at all. He was ostracized as a child. He got pushed around by people to whom he couldn’t show his true strength. He had doubts about himself and his place in the world. He felt fear, anxiety, turmoil, pain. In other words, this Superman was human. For the first time, I had a Superman who spoke to me. I had a Superman who showed me that even someone who felt as alone as I did could one day change the world for the better.
I knew little to nothing at that age about what made a movie a movie. I didn’t know what a director was, how editing worked, or any other information that could have given me a vocabulary to understand the impact Man of Steel and its star Henry Cavill had on me. All I knew was that whatever I had felt when I saw Clark Kent learn how to fly, whatever way my heart had stirred when Lois Lane told him knowingly, “Welcome to the planet,” as Hans Zimmer’s score began to rouse, I wanted more of it.
And in fulfillment of my wildest dreams, more of it is exactly what I got. On the final day of the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con, Man of Steel director Zack Snyder and supporting actor Harry Lennix delivered the most epic movie announcement of all time, declaring to the world that for the first time ever, Superman would share the big screen with Batman. The following year, the upcoming film was revealed to also include Wonder Woman, completing the DC Comics “Trinity,” the nucleus of the team I’d dreamed for so long of seeing brought to life in live action. While Snyder and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Chris Terrio intended to title the picture Justice League: Foundations, the studio decided on a wordier title:
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
On Good Friday 2016, I was conscious for the first time that I was witnessing cinema history. No longer would the pesky Marvel stans I grew up with have the comic book movie genre to themselves. DC was finally coming out to play, and it wasn’t pulling punches. I was vaguely aware that some self-important movie critics out there somewhere didn’t like it, but that affected me about as much as inclement weather on Jupiter would have. The rest of the world be damned: BvS was everything I could have ever wanted and more. It had intrigue, action, politics, and Shakespearean drama. In stark contrast to the excessively quippy, ironic MCU, every line was delivered with gravitas. Every character felt like a force of nature. It felt like a legend passed down to me from the gods. When the extended Ultimate Edition came out on Blu-Ray shortly thereafter, filling in some gaps and fleshing out some subplots, I loved it even more.
From there, the “DC Extended Universe” picked up steam. Suicide Squad was patchy but fun. Wonder Woman was awesome and beat Marvel to the first female-led superhero movie. The “Marvel versus DC” battle that I’d spent my whole childhood fighting finally seemed like a fair fight. All eyes looked to November 17, 2017, when the world would finally see incontrovertible proof of just how serious it should or should not be taking this franchise. All these DC movies were well and good and were making more money than Phase 1 of the MCU made, but Marvel was ahead by two Avengers flicks, three if you counted the overstuffed Captain America: Civil War. DC needed to get serious points on the board.
They needed the Justice League.
To say that this was the most anticipated movie release of my life thus far would be to understate so much that I might as well lie. This was my Super Bowl. This was the moment that not only would I relish, but that all my younger selves would get to relish through me. The kid who got picked on for saying DC was better than Marvel would peek his head out from behind the jaded teenager who’d never given up.
The only interruption in my wild excitement came in May of that year, when it was announced that Zack Snyder had withdrawn from post-production duties in the wake of a family tragedy, the passing of his daughter, Autumn. The remainder of his responsibilities were to be covered by Avengers director Joss Whedon. Now, while I’d picked up some working knowledge of the filmmaking process in the four years since Man of Steel, I still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant for a movie to switch directors six months before the premiere.
But boy, would I find out.
I didn’t feel the triumphant euphoria that I expected to when the credits rolled on Justice League. I didn’t feel…anything, actually. This was nothing like Man of Steel or Batman v Superman. This wasn’t like anything. It was a short, choppy, heavily saturated nothingburger. I looked over at my sister, my ever-faithful DC-moviegoing companion in spite of her skepticism of all things comic book.
“There’s something up with that movie,” I told her. “I don’t know what it is, but something is definitely up.”
I have never hating being right more.
As time went on, the world would find out exactly what that something was. Joss Whedon wrote an 80-page script for his own Justice League, reshot swaths of the movie, and spent most of that process unloading racist, sexist, and other abuse on the cast. He transformed what was intended to be a Arthurian-inspired mythological epic into an MCU-lite action comedy. He effectively neutered DC from ever growing into something that could hold its own against his former employers at Marvel Studios. From then on, under executive Walter Hamada, the DCEU would never achieve the creative ambition1 or financial success2 it knew under Zack Snyder. It would only ever try to ape Marvel’s style. All hope of anything more was lost.
Well. Not all hope. Not really.
Before and during the exposure of Whedon’s bullshit by Cyborg actor Ray Fisher and others, a spark of hope grew slowly but surely into an inferno.
Zack Snyder was known for, among other things, releasing “director’s cuts” of his works on physical media after their initial releases. This was common in the pre-streaming film industry: Studios could sell more copies of more movies if they could promote longer, theoretically better versions of them. Movies from Blade Runner to Apocalypse Now to The Lord of the Rings had successful director’s cuts. But given Snyder’s proclivity for them, and the substantial improvements that the BvS Ultimate Edition had over its theatrical counterpart, a legend started to build within the DC fandom.3 Whispers grew to rumblings that grew to a roar:
“There’s a director’s cut of Justice League somewhere. The movie we dreamed of for years is out there.”
This hope ebbed and flowed for me. As months turned to years after the release of “Josstice League,” I tried to let go of it. The state of DC seemed so bleak that faith seemed foolish. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic rolled around in early 2020, I had bigger problems. But deep down, I never really gave up.
One of the worst weeks of my life was the third week of May 2020. Don’t get me wrong, I had many terrible weeks that year, as did most other people. But I was supposed to graduate high school that week, specifically on Wednesday, May 20th. As you can imagine, graduate I did not. My high school years ended not with a ceremony, but with a dispassionate signing of an emailed diploma and a brief one-man photo op.
I didn’t want to get out of bed that day. I wanted to hide under the covers and wait for the world to finally give me a fucking break. I was angry. Angry at whoever or whatever unleashed this virus. Angry at the governor for locking down my state. Angry at my employer and my parents for listening to him. Angry that of all the years when this could have happened, it had to be the year when my life was actually supposed to begin.
I had nothing to live for. I had come to that conclusion some time earlier. For the first time in my life, my problems and my pain felt greater than my ability to survive them. I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want to exist even as a concept. I just wanted it all to be over.
Then, that night, I opened my laptop. Tapped the browser shortcut for YouTube. Scanned the front page. And by God…
There she was. The livestream that rocked the world. The moment when Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill told us that we’d won. One of the most powerful movie studios in the world had surrendered. After over two years of fighting, we had finally made them release the Snyder Cut.
I knew right then and there that I was not going to die. Whatever I had to go through before this pandemic was over, I would survive it all.
I was going to live to see Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
I stayed up all night long on March 17th, 2021 to watch it the instant it went live on HBO Max. Four hours later, I sat in my freshman dorm, stunned, uncharacteristically lost for words. It was beautiful. It was worth every moment of waiting. It was worth living for.
Something didn’t feel the same about me after the Snyder Cut. Since my early teens, I’d never settled for long on something to do with my life. Career fields as widely ranging as oceanography, game design, the military, and criminal justice had all been on the table at one point or another, each with its own inner voice, clamoring for dominance. But they all went quiet that night.
I was alive that day because of a movie. When family, friends, a relationship, even religion had failed to give me a compelling reason to keep going, I’d put one foot in front of the other just because I knew that no matter what, I had to see my Justice League in the film they deserved at least once before my curtain call.
I decided on March 18th to pay it forward. If I was to dedicate my life to anything, it would be to doing for others what Zack Snyder and company had done for me:
I was going to become a filmmaker.
As I changed my major and recalibrated my life to reflect my new mission, I eagerly awaited news of what would come next. Best case scenario, Snyder, Cavill, Ben Affleck, and the rest would all be invited back to continue their story now that the true Justice League film was out there, but dare I even hope for that after the miracle I’d seen pulled off?
The first step in restoring the Snyderverse came the following year, in the unlikeliest of movies: Black Adam.
You could be forgiven for any unfamiliarity with the character of Black Adam. He’s a fairly minor DC character, at least from the perspective of anyone who isn’t an avid comic reader. But something about him compelled the Rock to push for years for the opportunity to bring him to the silver screen, and he brought someone else along with him. He said it better than I could:
We will create Black Adam to be the most powerful and unstoppable force on this planet. The most powerful and unstoppable force in the universe has been on the sidelines for too long.
That’s right: Half a decade after his last day on set in a red cape, Henry Cavill returned to play Superman.
Cavill wrote in the caption to his Instagram reel announcing his comeback:
A very small taste of what’s to come, my friends. The dawn of hope renewed. Thank you for your patience, it will be rewarded.
I don’t think there’s ever been a better day to be a DC fan. The world went wild. Take some time, if you so desire, to look up some screenshots and clips of people’s reactions to the news. Even people who vocally disliked the Snyderverse in its day cheered him on. The IMAX official Instagram commented their congratulations. For a blissful moment, it didn’t feel like it was pro-Snyder DC versus anti-Snyder DC, serious DC versus lighthearted DC, or any other dichotomy of competing visions for the franchise. All that mattered was that our Superman was back.
Then James Gunn fired him two months later.
Gunn had recently assumed leadership of DC’s movie arm with co-CEO Peter Safran. His path to that job was tempestuous, to say the very least. He was fired from his cushy Marvel gig in July 2018 when the public discovered that he had in the past tweeted repeatedly about having sexual relations with children and other disturbing topics. Somehow, he was able to land a job helming a “soft reboot” of Suicide Squad for DC, which was released in 2021 under the imaginative title, “The Suicide Squad.” This movie significantly underperformed at the box office, failing to even gross its budget of $185 million (it’s common knowledge in the industry that published production budgets are often significantly lower than the amounts necessary for a film to earn in order to “break even”).
If openly tweeting about how much one enjoys pedophilia is not a dealbreaker for being hired to run a major Hollywood franchise, apparently losing the studio tens of millions of dollars isn’t either. In spite of The Suicide Squad’s flop, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav invited Gunn to spearhead the newly-rebranded “DC Studios.”
Among his first official acts was to reverse Henry Cavill’s rehiring to play Superman.
Since then, Gunn hasn’t wasted any time in remaking DC into his own image. He announced a lengthy slate of upcoming projects, which ostensibly constituted a full reboot of the DC universe, except for the conspicuous continued presence of DCEU actors that Gunn had already worked with or casted himself, such as John Cena’s Peacemaker.4 He canceled Superman & Lois and other active projects that didn’t fit what Zaslav called his “mission from God.”5 He also presided over the release of four final DCEU movies, all released in 2023, all financial failures, and two of which were produced by none other than Peter Safran. This is without getting into the catastrophe that was Joker: Folie a Deux in 2024, also on Gunn’s watch.
This brings us to the present. James Gunn, after much flip-flopping about which characters and projects are technically canon under his regime, has finally shipped the first movie to belong unambiguously to his new DCU: Superman.
I’m not going to get too deep into my opinions about the quality of this movie. I have watched every trailer and monitored the film’s marketing from start to finish, and I have concluded that it does not like a good example of cinematic craftsmanship. That is all I intend to say about Superman itself, because I will not be watching the movie in full.
Now, this isn’t because I think the movie looks bad, or because I am generally disinterested in DC’s output after years of primarily slop. Both of these things are true and have caused me to pass on DC movies in the recent past, but alone, they are not why I’m staying home this weekend.
I’m not watching Superman because James Gunn is a bad person. He probably should be investigated by the FBI for his posts, and the pedophiliac tendencies of the character he named after himself in his novel, The Toy Collector, if he hasn’t been already. He should have been blacklisted from the industry after his tweets came to light, and the studio executives who hired and rehired him should all be ashamed of themselves. Hollywood has a reputation in large parts of America as a den of vice precisely because it empowers people like James Gunn and protects them from consequences for their actions. It revolts me that DC Comics, something I have loved as long as I can remember, is in the hands of a pervert like him.
If you’re among the group of DC fans for whom the above gross misbehavior is not as important as winning fandom wars, and I know from being active on Twitter that there are many of you, then know this:
I am a DC fan. Your twelve years of telling me I’m not a real fan because I like Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill have failed. You have not shaken me. You have not stopped me.
You may finally have the Superman movie of your dreams this weekend. You may have stupid Marvel quips, bright-colored underwear on the outside of Superman’s pants, and ham-fisted fan service. Congratulations. I hope you enjoy it. But I will not financially support this movie.
Your precious CEO screwed over an actor who has been a class act both on screen and off. Every decent human being should be able to acknowledge that regardless of our differences, that’s not how people should be treated by the corporations which employ them.
Henry Cavill is the greatest Superman of all time. Argue with a wall. But even if he wasn’t, he’d still deserve the respect of his colleagues and his bosses.
To conclude, I love movies. If you’ve read this far (and if you have, I appreciate you), then you have seen just a fraction of the love I have for them, yes, including the ones based on comic books.
But some things matter more than movies. As Ray Fisher used to say, “Accountability over entertainment.”
Treating people with decency matters.
Choosing to elevate and give authority to people who deserve it matters.
Standing up to scumbags matters.
Remember that when you vote with your wallet this weekend.
-EJC
A > E
Argue with a wall. Even if you hate these movies, ambitious is what they objectively are. Snyder does many things; playing it safe is not one of them.
The sole exception being Aquaman, which entered production before Snyder’s resignation, and remains the highest-grossing DC film of all time.
At least within the part of it that wasn’t busy gobbling down Walter Hamada’s unambitious, disorganized drivel in 2019 and 2020.
If you’re asking yourself, “If James Gunn’s buddies can keep their roles under the new regime, why couldn’t Henry Cavill?” then congratulations, you have a functioning brain. Welcome to DC, we need folks like you around here.
If you hadn’t figured it out, we are not dealing with serious people.