Superman Review: Woke Propaganda In A Cape

Superman is back. But he no longer just leaps tall buildings. In the 2025 reboot helmed by James Gunn, the Man of Steel lands not in Kansas or Krypton, but squarely in the middle of a geopolitical firestorm. Audiences expecting mythic heroism have instead found themselves watching a not-so-subtle allegory of the Israel-Palestine conflict, masked in the language of science fiction but framed with unmistakable moral cues.

At the heart of the film lies a fictional conflict between Boravia, a wealthy, high-tech, Western-aligned state, and Jarhanpur, its impoverished neighbour ravaged by displacement, airstrikes and drone warfare. Refugee camps, grieving brown civilians and white-skinned Boravian troops evoke an uncanny resemblance to footage from war-torn Gaza.

Viewers have rightly asked: is this a Superman film or a sermon in disguise?

That question matters because Superman is not just a character. He is a cultural icon forged across nearly a century. He belongs not to one nation or ideology, but to every child who has ever believed that power must serve principle, not politics. When even he is co-opted, what sacred ground remains?

The Corruption of Superman: From Übermensch to Activist

Superman was never just a superhero. He was an ideal. He is what many children like me aspired to be. He represented what humanity could aspire to if blessed with godlike power but raised with human decency. Kal-El, the orphan from a dying planet, was not just a metaphor for immigration or alienation. He was a parable of strength constrained by morality, of immense power guided by humility and love.

Across decades, Superman has symbolised the pinnacle of Western ideals, carrying echoes of Moses (sent in a basket from a doomed homeland), Christ (a saviour raised among mortals who sacrifices himself), and Nietzsche’s Übermensch (the one who rises above herd morality, not in cruelty but with purpose). He was the bridge between myth and modernity, between power and restraint.

The 2025 film reduces all of that to political activism. It does not even pretend to be neutral. There is no ambiguity, no moral tension, no “grey zone” to navigate.

Superman, alongside Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific, explicitly fights on behalf of Jarhanpur (modelled on Palestine) to protect it from invasions by Boravia (modelled on Israel), an ally of the United States. This is not storytelling. It is scripted activism in the guise of a superhero saga.

The symbolism is unmistakable. Many shots look as though they were taken directly from the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is not even subtle. It is cinematic dogma. Superman is no longer a universal symbol of moral restraint. He is now a political actor in a postmodern morality play, where the villain wears Western armour and the hero delivers justice through selective compassion.

This is not an accidental choice. It is ideological weaponisation. The film hijacks the emotional power of childhood icons and redirects it toward a specific geopolitical narrative, one that flatters Western progressives while vilifying their historical allies. Superman does not represent the best of humanity anymore. He represents the anxieties of elite screenwriters who believe activism should come disguised as myth.

This is not heroic clarity. This is narrative conscription. Superman and his allies do not fight for truth and justice in the abstract. They fight for the approved causes of the cultural Left, and children watching are told, without nuance, who is good, who is evil, and what side they must support.

What this film offers is not evolution. It is erosion by design. A deliberate attempt to overwrite heroic mythology with the language of grievance, guilt and geopolitical guilt-tripping.

The Global Woke Complex and the Colonisation of Children’s Cinema

What is happening to Superman is not an isolated event. It is part of a broader phenomenon. Over the past decade, Hollywood has steadily transformed itself from a storytelling machine into a moral factory. The new assembly line does not produce dreams. It mass-produces dogma. From Barbie to The Marvels, Snow White to The Little Mermaid, children’s films have become delivery systems for progressive orthodoxy, dressed up in nostalgia and sparkle.

The formula is familiar by now. Start with a beloved franchise. Strip it of its original moral and cultural roots. Inject modern political messaging, usually centred around race, gender, colonial guilt or anti-Western narratives. Then market it as “bold”, “inclusive” and “necessary”. If audiences push back, dismiss them as bigots or reactionaries who “just do not understand”.

But children’s cinema is not a battleground for abstract theory. It is where moral imagination is shaped. It is where children first learn about courage, compassion, truth and sacrifice, not through lectures, but through symbolism, stakes and stories.

When these stories become ideological vehicles, the line between entertainment and indoctrination blurs. The child is no longer treated as a thinking being, but as a cultural subject to be reprogrammed. When Superman, Disney princesses and Marvel icons are all rewritten to reflect the anxieties of modern American academia, the target is not the character. It is the viewer.

This is not diversity. It is deracination. It is not empowerment. It is enculturation.

By embedding adult political frameworks into childhood mythologies, Hollywood has effectively colonised the minds of the next generation and disguised it as “representation”.

The Real Problem: Not That It’s Political But That It Pretends Not To Be

Let us be clear: political cinema is not the problem. In fact, it is essential. A thriving society must be able to tell stories that provoke, unsettle and challenge dominant narratives. Films like The Kashmir Files or Article 15 do exactly that, without apology. They do not hide their intent. They confront the audience directly. You may agree with them or not, but you know exactly where they stand.

Even a hypothetical Palestine Files, if made with sincerity and accountability, deserves a space in the public square. Because real political cinema is declarative, not deceptive. It seeks to spark debate, not smuggle ideology through allegory.

The problem with Superman (2025) is not that it is political. It is that it disguises politics as parable, activism as myth. It does not invite debate. It embeds its conclusions in imagery designed to bypass the rational filter. The cities may be fictional, the names invented, but the moral cues are real, loaded and unmistakable.

This is not storytelling. It is narrative laundering, using the trust we place in iconic characters to deliver politicised messaging that would not survive on its own.

James Gunn insists the film is not about the Middle East. That is irrelevant. Because in cultural warfare, intent is secondary to impact. When the film echoes headlines from Gaza, when its villains are dressed like Western soldiers and its victims resemble displaced refugees, no amount of creative denial can stop the associations from forming.

This is the sleight of hand: cloak ideology in fantasy, and no one will notice the ideology, only the fantasy. Until it is too late.

What India Must Learn and Guard Against

What Hollywood is doing to Superman today, it will attempt on Hanuman tomorrow. The cultural subversion of childhood heroes is not just a Western crisis. It is a global contagion. And India, as both a civilisational state and a rising creative power, must treat it as such.

We have already seen the early signs. Streaming platforms filled with “modern retellings” of epics that twist dharmic heroes into caricatures. Schoolbooks that flatten sacred stories into moral equivalence. Children’s cartoons that dilute Indic narratives to fit imported frameworks of oppression and intersectionality.

The same ideological machinery that turned Superman into a confused, conflicted figure of moral relativism will eventually turn Indian deities into self-doubting, apologetic tropes if we allow it.

To Indian parents: be vigilant about what your children consume. Not just in terms of violence or language, but in terms of the values being implanted. Ask not just “is this appropriate?” but ask “is this ours?”

To Indian creators: do not outsource your imagination to the guilt complexes of the West. Tell stories rooted in dharma, not derivative shame. Our heroes do not need redemption arcs written by Columbia University. They need to be reaffirmed, not rewritten.

Amar Chitra Katha does not need to become “inclusive”. It needs to remain authentic. Hanuman does not need to be a symbol of climate justice or gender neutrality. He needs to remain what he is: a timeless icon of devotion, courage and power used rightly.

This is not a call for isolation. It is a call for rootedness. Hollywood’s mistake is not that it changed. It is that it forgot where it came from. India must not do the same.

Final Take

Superman (2025) is not just a film. It is a flashing cultural warning light. A franchise that once embodied hope, restraint and the quiet dignity of doing the right thing has been converted into a lecture in cape and spandex. There is no wonder left. Just weary messaging.

The tragedy is not that Superman is being politicised. It is that he is being conscripted quietly and insidiously into a war of narratives where the audience is not invited to think, but conditioned to absorb. Where the child, once uplifted by heroism, is now burdened with ideology.

A story that once taught us to rise above ourselves now asks us to wallow in someone else’s moral confusion.

Let political cinema be political. Let The Kashmir Files, Article 15, and even a Palestine Files come forth, if they must. Let them be explicit, confrontational and intellectually honest. That is how democracy breathes.

But let childhood remain sacred.

Do not put Gaza in Metropolis. Do not make Superman a symbol of guilt. Do not turn every fable into a fight, every myth into a manifesto. Because when you strip away the clarity of heroes, you do not produce better citizens. You produce confused ones, trained not in courage, but in compliance.

In the end, when symbols of strength are hollowed out and repurposed to carry fashionable guilt, we do not get justice. We get propaganda.

And no child should be asked to wear that cape.