The song that plays over the end credits of Superman is “Punkrocker” by the Swedish group Teddybears (featuring Iggy Pop). It’s a musical bookend to a running joke between Superman/Clark Kent (David Corenswet) and his girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan). Lois claims she’s more credibly “punk rock” because of her journalistic cynicism. “I question everything and everyone,” she declares to Clark, while he trusts “everyone [he’s] ever met.” His response: “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.”

This corny but sincere quip encapsulates both the spirit of the movie and the post-cynical zeitgeist of our moment. Call it metamodern oscillation or a vibe shift. Whatever the label, the gist is clear: Pessimistic, cynical deconstruction is out; optimistic, earnest joy is in. The trauma plot has given way to the triumph narrative: from defeatist to aspirational, can’t do to can do. The pendulum might still swing back and forth in this metamodern transition, but the momentum is decidedly in the direction of hope.

The trauma plot has given way to the triumph narrative: from defeatist to aspirational, can’t do to can do.

More than just a reboot of the iconic Superman franchise, James Gunn’s take on the Man of Steel is a reset of the superhero genre as a whole. After decades of comic-book universes with ever more diminishing returns (both artistically and commercially), superhero fatigue is real. Audiences are ready for a factory reset. This movie gives it to them.

Silly Sincerity and a Rebuke of Stifling Seriousness

One thing that feels jarring—and refreshing—about Superman is how much it recognizes the inherent “Zap! Pow!” silliness of comic-book action and the fantastical weirdness of superhero world-building. Comic-book narratives don’t require inherent logic or verisimilitude; they’re free to do whatever they want within a loose set of “rules” or boundaries. That’s why they’re fun. And in 2025, we’re hungry for post-woke, unproblematized fun.

However exceptional it was as cinema, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight take on Batman circa 2005 to 2012 doesn’t resonate with the 2025 mood. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and other Snyder-helmed Justice League films also look too bleak and gritty in retrospect. Comic books are supposed to be diverting, right? Heroes are supposed to be heroic, yes? To quote Heath Ledger’s Joker: “Why so serious?”

Gunn’s Superman feels like a reembrace of the comic-book form and a rebuke of how the movie genre lost the plot, joy, and humanity of superheroes along the way. From its bright-colored palette (exactly the opposite of the brooding noir darkness of Matt Reeves’s 2022 The Batman) to the gleefully retro Superman suit (bright red undies and all) to the His Girl Friday vibes of Lois’s romantic banter with Clark, Superman is assuredly happy and eager to invite audiences into unapologetically silly fun.

Gunn’s Superman feels like a reembrace of the comic-book form and a rebuke of how the movie genre lost the plot, joy, and humanity of superheroes along the way.

After years of superhero movies that situated comic narratives within painstakingly realistic, disenchanted milieus (see Nolan’s Batman films especially), or within “universes” that became messier and less plausible as the sequels, prequels, and spinoffs mounted, Superman embraces a freewheeling, playful, be-a-kid-again aesthetic. It’s a film that doesn’t take itself more seriously than it should. It’s liberating.

Gunn’s wild plot feels like a jab at the incoherent multiverse plots and sci-fi hokum that over time made the MCU films so boring. Superman’s story incorporates “pocket universes,” “monkeybots,” “dimensional portals,” “dimensional rifts,” “nanobots” and so forth, but in a way that highlights their absurdity. Rather than condescending to audiences by attempting to make these things make sense, Gunn instead embraces their weirdness and the chaotic color and texture they bring to the overall cinematic canvas.

Meanwhile, the film’s purposefully corny dialogue also serves as a reproof to the exposition-heavy, too-serious scripts of recent comic-book movies. When Lois says “You’re kidding!” in response to some sci-fi nonsense spouted by Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), it’s both a knowing wink to the audience (“It’s OK you don’t get it; we don’t either!”) and a sweetly nostalgic nod to the exclamatory phrases common in comic-book speech bubbles.

Similarly, Superman’s vocabulary is rife with 1940s-era lingo that reinforces the film’s retro aesthetic: “What the hey, dude?” “Good gosh!” “No can do!” Though Gen Alpha audiences might be baffled by some of the archaic words Superman uses (e.g., “goons,” “guff,” “golly”), the overall impression is endearing. This is an old-school film unashamed to embrace wholesome entertainment where virtue is attractive, aw-shucks romance is unironically embraced, and there’s nothing toxic or embarrassing about a chivalrous, masculine, constantly-saving-women-and-children-from-peril good guy.

Normie Is the New Radical

Corenswet’s take on the character is the best since Christopher Reeve. A family man himself, Corenswet captures the charming normalcy of the character in a way that makes us care. Sure, he’s got superhuman strength, speed, and eye lasers. But he also bleeds and feels. He’s a Midwestern farmer boy with a beloved dog at his side (the scene-stealing superdog, Krypto) and a girl he loves. Corenswet doesn’t overcomplicate the character. He cries when he’s sad and smiles broadly when he feels love or joy. He may be a “metahuman,” but he’s still human.

Turns out a character can be compelling and interesting without being transgressive. Transgression is overdone and stale. Normie is the new radical.

Though the film doesn’t play up Superman as a Christ figure as much as previous franchise entries did (especially 2006’s Superman Returns), the parallels are still there. If all myths are filtered echoes of the “true myth” of Jesus Christ, as J. R. R. Tolkien argued, the messianic mythology of Superman is especially resonant.

Choices and Actions Define Us

One of the clearest ways Superman reflects a cultural shift is how it rejects the “origin story” obsessions of recent superhero movies. That there are good guys and bad guys is simply assumed in Superman; Gunn isn’t interested in the sort of “bad childhood” psychologizing of villains that has been ubiquitous in recent movies (e.g., Joker, Cruella, or Wicked), nor in tediously dark origin stories that make heroes murkier than they need to be (e.g., X-Men Origins: Wolverine). He’s not interested in how heroes or villains are made as much as in what they do with their power now.

As Pa (Pruitt Taylor Vince) tells Clark in a moving scene prominently featured in the trailer: “Your choices, your actions—that’s what makes you who you are.”

Despite Freud-shaped secularism’s insistence that we’re bound by “born this way” identities or irrevocably tethered to past pain, our personal history doesn’t determine our future. Secular narratives like Superman chalk this up to human resilience (a real, common-grace gift). But Christians know there’s a deeper truth powering our hope: the gospel. New life is possible. New birth. Beyond what you were, you can be someone new.

Superman embraces that sense of possibility, even if it doesn’t have the theological justification for it. It gets us out of these characters’ heads and into their actions: Whatever happened to you before, how now shall you live? What will you do with the time that’s given to you?

Superman gets us out of these characters’ heads and into their actions.

For archnemesis Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), the envy-driven actions are devious and deadly. For Superman and his “Justice Gang” buddies, the actions are workmanlike acts of valor to save innocent lives—which often means fighting giant lizard monsters and helping people get out from under falling skyscrapers. Lo and behold, it’s more inspiring—even more interesting—to watch heroic actions like this than to probe heroic psychology ad nauseam. We don’t go to the movies to be therapists or cynical journalists. We go to be inspired by ideals of valor and goodness.

Look Up

When Superman surges skyward from the rubble, bloodied fist raised high, we’re inspired simply by the sight of this nonverbal resolve. When we see him shield a child from an explosion or hold a baby out of harm’s way, we don’t need to know how he got here. We’re just moved by what he’s doing. These iconic, heroic tableaux are what we’ve been missing in a pop cultural landscape mired by therapeutic navel-gazing and character-flattening identity politics.

The film’s aspirational tagline—“Look up”—speaks to the shift. It’s not “Look within” or “Look at how broken this hero is!” It’s “Look up.” See how valiant he is. Be inspired to be like that too.

Even when Superman gets misunderstood and the public turns against him via a Luthor-orchestrated smear campaign, he (and the movie) spends little time dwelling on it. There are problems to solve and people to save. The closest Superman gets to being defensive is when he asserts to Lois, “I’m not here to rule over anyone.” His purpose is instead rather simple. He wants “to be a good man.”

Goodness, decency, kindness, normalcy. Serving others more than obsessing about the self. Stewarding power to serve rather than be served. This is what Superman embodies. In a cynical and narcissistic age, this is why he’s punk rock.