The first time I thought I was going to see “Superman” on the big screen was a big disappointment.
My parents had taken me to the drive-in. I was hidden under a blanket in the backseat. (Kids under a certain age were free, and money was tight.) We were there to see Superman. However, when we arrived, the marquee had changed.
No cape. No Clark Kent. Just some Tom Selleck movie.
So my real introduction came earlier—likely on TV, though memory has turned it into something more luminous. I remember Christopher Reeve flying across the screen, smiling like he meant it. He was kind, strong and impossibly good.
Something in me stirred. I believed he could catch a falling plane or change the course of a river. And maybe, just maybe, I could too.
I flew around the house in Superman underoos. I hid a Superman T-shirt under my button-up on preschool picture day because, of course, I was Clark Kent. Even if no one else knew it yet, I did.
Now, as James Gunn’s Superman prepares to fly again in 2025, I’m in my late forties. But the longing I felt under that blanket—real or imagined—hasn’t gone away.
If anything, it’s grown more urgent, because the world feels heavier now, more cynical and fragmented. And a lot of us are wondering if the stories we once believed in still matter. Which is why this Superman might just be exactly what we need.
The Man of Tomorrow and the Battle for Tone
To understand why this reboot matters, we need to revisit the Snyderverse.
Zack Snyder’s Superman was a serious man for serious times. Dark, conflicted, raised in a Kansas so bleak it barely looked like home. Snyder leaned into myth and martyrdom.
Snyder’s Superman didn’t smile much. He didn’t rescue cats from trees. He brooded, battled gods, and died for humanity, resurrected in a Justice League shaped more by divine drama than Saturday morning cartoons.
Some fans saw that version as profound, even operatic. Others found it joyless. And in a post-9/11, post-recession, post-truth America, it made sense. But as Snyder’s universe began to fray, Warner Bros. shifted course.
Enter James Gunn—known more for talking raccoons than tortured messiahs—who was tasked with rebuilding the DC universe from scratch. His Superman, played by David Corenswet, isn’t just a recast. It’s a reframe.
Gunn’s take, if the early images and interviews are any indication, looks to rediscover the humanity in Superman’s divinity. He’s wearing the trunks again. He’s smiling. He’s helping. And perhaps most importantly, he seems to believe in people.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Hope
Here’s the thing about Superman: his symbol isn’t really an “S.” At least not in Kryptonian. In Snyder’s world—and honestly, since the early 2000s in the comics—it means hope.
That’s the word that keeps resurfacing in interviews, in fan chatter, even in Gunn’s own language about the film. And not just hope as a sentiment, but as an ethic. A light-in-the-darkness kind of thing.
There’s a cultural hunger for that again. After a decade of deconstructed heroes—Batman who brands his enemies and Avengers undone by their egos—we’re circling back toward something simpler.
Not naïve. Not nostalgic. But necessary.
We need someone who doesn’t punch down. Who isn’t driven by trauma. Who shows up not because he has to, but because he can.
In other words, we need someone who reminds us that power is most compelling when it serves. That goodness isn’t weakness.
That light doesn’t need to be explained—it just needs to shine. Which, not so coincidentally, sounds a lot like the gospel.
Kal-El and the Exodus of Meaning
Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were Jewish kids in Depression-era Cleveland. Their story of a baby sent to earth to escape destruction, who grows up to be a moral leader, was not-so-subtly shaped by the Exodus story. Kal-El’s rocket wasn’t a basket in the reeds, but the echoes are there.
Walter Brueggemann might call it a narrative of dislocation followed by reorientation. He’d also remind us that Moses didn’t have super-strength— just a calling.
That’s part of what makes Superman compelling. He doesn’t save the world by being a god. He saves it by remembering he’s from Kansas.
His strength matters, sure. But it’s his restraint, his mercy, his commitment to small-town values —honesty, kindness, service—that form his core. That’s what distinguishes him from other caped crusaders.
He’s not cynical. He’s not a vigilante. He’s a witness.
Which, I would argue, is also what makes Jesus compelling. Not just that he came from beyond, but that he made his home among us.
That he washed feet. That he wept. That his strength was inseparable from his love.
Why We Still Need This Story
There’s an argument happening right now, not just in Hollywood but in every culture-making corner of the world, about what kind of stories we still believe in. Do we want heroes who are messy, complicated, realistic? Or do we want someone to look up to—someone who reminds us of who we could be?
We may need both. But the pendulum is swinging.
The longing for Superman right now—for this version, hopeful and grounded—feels less like escapism and more like spiritual hunger. We want to know if goodness can still stand. If decency matters. If anything unironically noble can still make us feel.
Because if it can—if someone in a cape can remind us that truth and justice and love still matter—then maybe the gospel can too. Not as doctrine or dogma, but as story. As presence. As power restrained for the sake of love.
Maybe that’s what we’re really looking for: not just a new Superman, but a renewed hope. A story where the light still wins.
And if you listen closely, you might just hear it: a voice from Smallville or even Galilee saying, “I’m here to help.”
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The Rev. Dr. Jason G. Edwards is a pastor and writer based in Liberty, Missouri, where he has served as Senior Pastor of Second Baptist Church for over sixteen years. His poetry, prose, and prayers appear regularly on his Substack at jasongedwards.substack.com.
